At AAJneeti, we have been running lead generation campaigns for over a decade – for multiple niche(s), including:
- real estate developers and brokers,
- education brands,
- interior designing firms, and
- various other businesses.
We run online ads, design funnels, manage budgets, optimise creatives, and try to give best leads to our clients. We have worked with different sectors, generated leads in different cities, and worked for various ticket sizes.
And we have noticed one thing over the years.
99% of the time campaigns work for clients who answer their calls within the first few minutes.
This piqued our curiosity.
We checked our targeting, cost per lead, buyer intent – and tried and tested everything on our end. But if the client’s sales team doesn’t respond to the call from the lead or respond to his or her query soon enough, it gets wasted.
That led to us digging more into the leads that are marked ‘invalid’ or ‘junk’ or ‘not interested’ by our clients. And we also tried to see if it is happening only to us or others have noticed it too. And we did find some highly credible research papers to back up our observations:
- One of the most cited studies we found in this regard was the MIT Lead Response Management Study which stated that reaching the lead is 100 times higher and lead qualification is 21 times more likely if you call it within 5 minutes…than calling it 30 minutes later.
- Harvard Business Review published a paper on ‘The Short Life of Online Sales Leads’. Over 2,000 US firms were studied and it was found that the businesses that reached out to leads within an hour were 7 times more likely to qualify. Yet, the average response time to online sales leads was 42 hours – and the buyer intent faded considerably during this period. More the delay, sharper was the drop of lead qualification rate.
- The Xant Lead Response Management 2021 report studied three years of data across 400+ companies and analysed responses to 5.7 million marketing leads. It found that if the lead is contacted within the first 5 minutes, the conversion rates increase by 8x. But the sad truth was that less than 15% of leads were contacted within the first day.
These studies matched with our observations of fast responders on calls and WhatsApp messages and lead form queries were consistently the ones that were benefitting the most from our real estate leads or education leads.
That made us conclude: Speed to Lead is not optional. It’s necessary if you do not want your ad spend to go to waste.
Our Ads Bring High-Intent Leads. The Intent Erodes With Every Minute.
One thing you – as a business owner – need to understand is that ads don’t close deals.
Conversations are Keys to Conversions.
At AAJneeti Connect Ltd., we take full accountability of effectiveness of our creatives, targeting, and platforms we choose. But it is you (our client) which has to decide what to do once the lead expresses interest in your product or service.
With our online ads, we help you find buyers who show intent in your offering. Once we share the lead with you, our work is done. Algorithms and CPL (Cost Per Lead) do not matter anymore. As the clock keeps ticking, the intent keeps fading. The lead nurturing process from this stage onwards is critical in deciding whether the lead will convert or not.
How quickly you handle a lead, how well you handle it decides its fate.
A prospective buyer who filled a form at 11:15 am is likely to forget all about it by 2:30 pm.
Intent is a fragile thing. It exists only when curiosity, emotions, and urgency overlap – and that often happens for a very short period of time. You need to nab the lead during that narrow period.
If you ignore your response time, it will be difficult for you to convert your leads – and your ad campaigns fall flat in terms of ROI.
If you are not prompt in answering your calls and responding to leads, increasing ad spends or lead volumes make no sense because you still won’t get desired results.
Why The First Five Minutes?
As mentioned above the MIT Lead Response Management Study emphasised that if you answer calls in first 5 minutes were the ‘hero’ of the lead response time story. And here’s why.
In the first five minutes, buyers still:
- remember they filled the form and why,
- in the emotional zone that triggered their action,
- remember the context of their query.
So, you are not pitching afresh. You are taking the conversation forward.
On the other hand, between ten and thirty minutes, the probability curve of their responding positively drops sharply. They might have:
- started working on something else,
- talked to another broker or service provider, or
- come across another option.
So, when your sales team finally calls them, they don’t want to respond to it and your offer doesn’t seem relevant to them. You need to chase them!
The Harvard Business Review study reinforced this belief. Time erodes lead intent and hence, lead value. It also revealed that most companies responded to leads far slower than they think they do.
The leads are not waiting for your call. Their attention shifts – and once it does, it’s not easy to get it again. No discount or follow-up message can restore the intent fully.
This is where we, at ACL, become helpless. The lead intent is a human factor – not a technical one. Meta Ads, Google Ads, Search Ads, Display Ads – none of it matters. Only your prompt response to the lead does.
Think Like A Buyer For Once
To understand the real importance of the lead response time, one has to stop thinking like a seller or a marketer and get inside the buyer’s mindset for once.
A buyer fills a form because they saw something that caught their attention – at a price they could pay. Probably they felt that the deadline was too close and they didn’t want to miss the opportunity. They felt that ‘urgently’ needed to solve a problem. Filling up the form seemed like an easy solution to them ‘in that moment’.
But when that moment passes, their ‘logical thinking’ takes over.
And as experienced salespeople already know, it’s not easy to appease a logical buyer.
Logic creates doubts and endless questions:
- Do I really need this?
- Do I need this now?
- Should I explore some more and check out more options?
- Should I talk to someone about this?
- Is the price right?
- Is the brand trustworthy enough?
As the emotional spike of leads cools down, their willingness to engage starts dipping.
If you are fast enough to catch your buyer when they are still in their ‘emotionally high’ frame of mind, the chance of your buyer being open, responsive and curious about whatever you are selling is much higher.
If not, you might lose your prospect altogether.
The buyer in question may see another ad. Some relative or friend or colleague may offer him a different opinion. He may start comparing your real estate project with others in the vicinity, or read a news about the developer that may create doubts in his mind. Or he may get busy in something else – and your call may feel like an irritating interruption.
You lose the magic of the ‘emotional’ moment.
In cases of high-value purchases like education, real estate, or B2B deals, this effect seems even more prominent. The decision to buy starts with an impulse and then fear and self-doubt start creeping in. You need to talk to warm leads at the right moment to guide them to a favourable decision for you.
Why High-Ticket Sales, Real Estate, And Education Are More Vulnerable?
Not all industries suffer equally from slow responses. Ecommerce can afford delayed responses. But in high-ticket sales cases (like real-estate), waiting for 10 minutes can mean losing one booking.
We studied this phenomenon a bit and found that the ecommerce sales cycle is mostly self-contained and free of human interaction. People see something they are interested in online, check reviews, compare prices, and make purchases. The need for ‘support’ is minimal and if these replies get delayed, the decision loop remains open for a longer time.
However, in cases of high-ticket sales like real estate or enterprise services, ads do not lead to purchases right away. They lead to scheduling appointments with counsellors or consultants or demos or site visits. In short, they require human interaction at multiple levels to move the leads forward.
And hence, the speed becomes critical.
In cases of high-value products or services, the first call sets the expectation of a prospective buyer, establishes credibility, and gives some clarity about the offering. The first call sets off the motion. If some other developer or broker (in case of real estate) calls in between, he or she gets that advantage. A counsellor (in case of education) who responded immediately to a student’s or a parent’s query – gets that advantage.
The business sales teams that respond promptly close more deals because buyers are receptive at the time when they are making a call, filling up a form, or making an inquiry. If you respond to a lead before ‘hesitation’ and ‘second-guessing’ steer them away, you have an edge over your competitors.
Are We Trying To Defend ‘Bad Leads’?
No! 90% of our business comes from our repeat customers. We promise 60% Qualified Leads and we leave no stones unturned to fulfill our promise.
When you mark a lead as ‘unreachable’ or ‘invalid’ or ‘not interested’, we call them. If they are genuinely unusable, we replace them. If they are not, we use the recordings to learn what we could do to generate better leads. Sometimes, it’s us. We use those learnings to optimise our campaigns.
But sometimes, it’s you – our clients.
We are not defending ‘bad leads’. We replace them instantly.
But as your growth partners, we want you to understand that as a lead generation agency we have our limitations. You need to understand that:
Businesses in the same city, same segment, with similar offerings in the similar price bracket – are all buying leads. They are targeting the same keywords and chasing the same audiences from the same places.
Some are seeing good conversions and some are not.
And it might not be your lead generation agency’s fault. Delayed lead response times might be the culprit here.
And we want you to be aware of it.
Let’s Talk Numbers!
If you are buying 100 leads for an XYZ residential project from us – and spend ₹1,00,000 for them – and you get 2 bookings, your cost per booking comes to ₹50,000.
If you are able to cut down your lead response time to ‘within 5 minutes’ golden period and your bookings increase to 3, your cost per booking will come to approx. ₹33,000. If it increases to 4, your cost per booking will come to ₹25,000!
That’s a 30 to 50 percent improvement in your buyer acquisition cost – without increasing your ad budget by a single rupee.
At ACL, we value long-term relationships with our clients. And hence, we recommend you to fix your processes so that you benefit more from our lead generation services.
Want to schedule a Lead Response Time audit with AAJneeti? Call us now at +91-7827575143.
