Do you respond to all website inquiries within 5 minutes?

Do you have a formal, structured plan in place to handle inbound inquiries on your website? If the answer is no, the question isn’t whether you’ve lost business—the question is how much. Over the past month, I have sent out messages to at least a dozen potential vendors trying to secure information. I’m ready to buy. I received no reply from 4 of them. Nothing! My response? Move on to another vendor—you just lost a sale. This is the lowest hanging fruit there is! A salesperson's dream!

Don’t assume that an interested buyer will call—more and more people, like myself, prefer to conduct much of the sales process online/via email. Yet so many companies have no plan in place to ensure a timely response, nor do they even track this metric.

Website forms should be automatically routed to a minimum of 3 individuals within your company, with a designated first responder, second responder (if first not available), etc. Set your system up so these messages come directly to your email as high priority. And respond as quickly as possible. According to an article in Harvard Business Review, an analysis of more than 2,200 American companies found that those who attempted to reach leads within one hour were nearly 7 times likelier to have meaningful conversations with decision makers than those who tried even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.

The greatest, best designed website packed with extensive and relevant content means nothing at all if you don’t respond to your prospects in a timely manner--yes, even on weekends and holidays. By tweaking your response process, you greatly impact the amount of potential business that falls through the cracks.