What Is Speed to Lead? + How to Improve Yours

Speed to lead definition: Speed to lead is the average time it takes for your business to respond to an inbound lead. It is typically the elapsed time between the moment the prospect fills out your form and the time they receive your response for a demo, quote, or appointment.

Did you know that if you respond within five minutes after a prospect becomes a lead, you’re nine times more likely to convert them? Your speed to lead is a crucial aspect of a lead-generation strategy that drives revenue.

If you want to know more about speed to lead, you’re in the right place. This blog post will discuss these topics:

• What is speed to lead?
• How to improve speed to lead
• Why speed to lead is important: 3 speed to lead statistics

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What is speed to lead?

Speed to lead is the average time it takes for your business to respond to an inbound lead. Also known as lead response time, speed to lead is typically the elapsed time between the moment the prospect fills out your form and they receive your response for a demo, quote, or appointment.

For example, let’s say you’re in the franchise business and a prospect expresses interest in your business by filling out a form on one of your landing pages. One of your sales reps then calls your inbound lead in an hour. Your speed to lead is one hour.

Speed to lead looks at how fast a lead hears from you. It doesn’t consider which communication channel you used to respond, whether you called them via phone, emailed them, or messaged them through live chat or social media.

6 ways to improve speed to lead

Now that you know what speed to lead is and how important it is to respond to your leads as soon as possible, here’s how you can improve your speed to lead:

1. Optimize your landing pages to encourage prospects to sign up as leads
2. Use lead data enrichment to help your sales team collect and analyze information
3. Automate lead scoring to identify which leads to prioritize
4. Systematically assign leads to sales reps based on prospects’ industries and sales reps’ strengths
5. Explore chatbots, email automation, and self-service product demo
6. Track your speed to lead to determine drop-off points

Let’s go through each one!

1. Optimize your landing pages to encourage prospects to sign up as leads

Imagine a prospect landing on one of your pages. Is your page designed to engage your site visitors?

Use conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies to encourage your prospects to fill out your forms so you can improve your speed to lead:

• Have a clear call to action (CTA) on your landing page. Your CTA tells your prospects the next step that they must take. A clear CTA guides your prospects to conversion.
• Understand how site visitors engage with your landing page with heatmaps. Do your site visitors scroll further down your page and click your CTAs? Heatmaps determine if site visitors click your CTAs or fill out your forms.
• Optimize your lead forms. Make sure your forms are easy to fill out. Conduct A/B tests on your forms to identify which small changes contribute to better conversion rates.

2. Use lead enrichment to help your sales team collect and analyze information

Sales reps must know their prospects before they reach out to them, so they must conduct background research on their prospects. To improve your speed to lead, employ lead data enrichment.

Lead data enrichment combines first-party data with third-party data to enhance your insights about your leads. Data enrichment tools like MarketingCloudFX can flesh out your first-party data with data from other sources.

As a result, your sales reps will know your prospects better, understand their pain points, and nurture them to convert them to paying customers. In addition, lead data enrichment shortens your sales reps’ research time about your prospects.

3. Automate lead scoring to identify which leads to prioritize

Lead scoring helps your sales reps to determine which leads are close to purchasing. That said, with automated lead scoring, your sales reps can improve speed to lead because they can focus on contacting prospects instead of sorting through a list of new leads.

Our customer relationship management (CRM) software, Nutshell, simplifies the lead scoring process with its lead confidence feature.

4. Systematically assign leads to sales reps based on prospects’ industries and sales reps’ strengths

Each sales rep has their strengths. Assign specific leads to the sales reps who had successfully converted similar leads — say, according to industry, company size, or job title. That way, you’re setting up your sales team to improve their speed to lead.

For example, let’s say you’re in the business of workforce management for industrial companies. Some of your sales reps have previously worked at manufacturing companies, while some have experience in the mining industry.

Assign leads to sales reps according to the industry of your leads, as it may improve your sales reps’ lead response time. In addition, tools like Nutshell can automate lead assignments so your sales leaders don’t have to manually assign them, thus enhancing your speed to lead.

5. Explore chatbots, email automation, and self-service product demo

Your sales reps don’t need to craft unique emails and make daily calls for each lead to improve your speed to lead. Your sales team can create automated workflows using your martech stack to improve your speed to lead.

Chatbots and email automation can support your sales reps to improve your lead response time, resulting in customer satisfaction. If self-service product demos apply to your business, consider using them.

Do you want to give your leads the option to book an appointment with you? Create a self-service appointment booking process using meeting scheduler tools. Ensure you create a workflow that sends an email confirmation and reminder about your appointment so your lead immediately hears from you!

6. Track your speed to lead to determine drop-off points

Monitor your team’s progress in their speed to lead efforts by tracking their performance so you can develop strategies to improve their lead response time. A lead response time sales report paints a picture of how fast your reps respond to your leads and your conversion rates.  You’ll also get to see patterns of drop-off points or friction points so that you can streamline your process.

MarketingCloudFX, our proprietary marketing platform, can track your leads from their first point of contact with your business, so you can identify the optimal speed to lead that engages your prospects to proceed with their customer journey.

Why speed to lead is important: 3 speed to lead statistics

Not yet convinced that speed to lead is important? Here are three speed to lead statistics that show lead response time is crucial to converting leads to customers:

• Businesses have seen a 34% increase in sales revenue by using marketing automation, improving lead speed.
• When companies respond to their leads within five minutes, they’re nine times more likely to convert leads.
• You increase conversions by 391% when you respond to leads within a minute of their inquiries.

Measuring the metrics that affect your bottom line.

Are you interested in custom reporting that is specific to your unique business needs? Powered by MarketingCloudFX, WebFX creates custom reports based on the metrics that matter most to your company.

• Leads
• Transactions
• Calls
• Revenue

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Accelerate your lead generation strategies and speed to lead with WebFX

Speed to lead is crucial for your business’s success to convert leads to customers and grow your revenue. If you need help with jumpstarting your lead generation strategies and accelerating your speed to lead, let WebFX help.

We’re a full-service digital marketing agency that has generated 24 million leads and $6 billion in revenue for our clients. With the help of our IBM Watson-powered marketing platform MarketingCloudFX, we can help you improve your lead response time so you can close more deals.

In addition, you also get at least 10 seats in our user-friendly CRM Nutshell, which can streamline your sales team’s process. As a result, they can more efficiently respond to leads.

Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak to a strategist about our lead generation services that drive qualified leads and improve speed to lead!