The 5 Minute Rule: How to Streamline Your Lead Response Time

Did you know that new lead inquiries convert 22 times more often when contact is made in 5 minutes or less?

If you don’t reply to a lead inquiry quickly, someone else will. It’s as simple as that. When a lead contacts your home improvement company, time is of the essence. By responding instantly, you can show a lead that their business means something to you, making you more likely to develop a meaningful connection with them. The more time you take to reply to a lead, the more likely another business will get the chance to develop that connection with the lead before you do. The first party to contact a prospect has 238% higher rate of conversion than the second, so, how can you make sure you’re handling new leads effectively and be the first to respond?

Leveraging the Right Technology

Leveraging the right technology can streamline your lead response time and ensure you are the first to respond. MarketSharp, an industry-specific CRM system built for home improvement pros, helps you do just that. MarketSharp comes equipped with a ‘Custom Lead Capture’ tool that was designed to manage new lead information and increase conversion rates. By using the Custom Lead Capture feature, leads from web sites and/or internet lead providers can flow directly into MarketSharp’s database. This means that a potential customer could visit your company website, enter their contact information into a form, and a new lead record would be created instantly in MarketSharp. Ultimately, the Custom Lead Capture tool enables you to:

Get ‘em While They’re Hot… Take Immediate Action on New Leads

In MarketSharp, you can set up distinct ‘Lead Captures’ for every source you receive your leads from (your company website, HomeAdvisor etc.). These individual Lead Captures will control what happens when a lead of that source comes into the system. For each Lead Capture, you can dictate one or multiple of the following actions to occur in MarketSharp:

1. 1. 1. When adding a new Lead Capture to MarketSharp, you can choose the specific people in your organization you wish to notify when a lead comes into the database so that no lead is missed.
      2. Every Lead Capture can be tied to an ‘Activity Process’ which will trigger an action to occur in the system when a new lead is generated. For example, you could set up an Activity Process to automatically send an email to a lead the moment it’s received, confirming that you’ve received their information and letting them know someone will reach out shortly.
      3. MarketSharp’s system offers a Call Center feature that can be leveraged to call leads, prospects or customers based on the ‘Marketing Queue’ that those contacts are associated with. When setting up an individual Lead Capture, you can select a Marketing Queue to associate with those leads. This way, new lead information is sent directly to a Marketing Queue, allowing callers in your call center to reach out via phone immediately.

Reduce Data Entry

As MarketSharp’s Custom Lead Capture tool allows lead information to flow directly into your database, using it will streamline your lead response time by eliminating the need to copy over new lead information from emails or spreadsheets. Moreover, you can leverage the Lead Capture tool to collect more than just basic contact information. In fact, you can set up a Lead Capture to pull address information, a best time to contact the lead, a requested appointment date and time, and the lead’s product interest. With all of this data at your fingertips, you’ll not only reduce the back and forth with the Prospect trying to get this information, but also save time by reducing the amount of information you have to manually enter into the system.

Increase Visibility into ROI

MarketSharp’s Custom Lead Capture allows you to associate a ‘Primary Source’ and ‘Secondary Source’ for each individual Lead Capture so that you can easily report on the performance of each of your different lead sources. For example, if you were to set up a Lead Capture for your HomeAdvisor leads, you could automatically assign those leads to have a primary source of ‘Internet Lead Provider’ and a secondary source of ‘HomeAdvisor’. As a result, you can quickly report on how certain marketing sources are doing vs. others and gain insights into your ROI for those sources.

With MarketSharp’s Custom Lead Capture tool on your side, you’ll have what you need to streamline your lead response time and close more deals. Plus, MarketSharp integrates with over 25 popular lead providers including HomeAdvisor, Socius, and Modernize, so that home improvement businesses like yours can get a leg up on the competition. And even if you do have a quick lead response time, MarketSharp can still help your remodeling company convert more sales using automated appointment reminders and follow-ups, sales opportunity tracking, and built-in closing tools.

To learn more about how MarketSharp’s industry-specific CRM system can help your home improvement business manage leads and increase sales, schedule a demo with one of our team members today!