Sales Strategy: Speed To Contact

Once your company has invested thousands of labor hours and considerable money into developing a steady flow of quality leads, even a small improvement in sales strategy can noticeably increase profits.

One effective way to increase conversions is to contact a prospect at the right time. Expert researchers brought together three years of data on web-generated leads from a spectrum of companies. Targeting effective techniques to improve sales strategy, the research looked at 15,000 unique leads and tracked 100,000 call attempts.

sales strategy - hbr deck

The findings are published under The Best Practices for Lead Response Management in the Harvard Business Review (HBR). This article covers the content of the research.

An Effective Sales Strategy Maximizes ROI

How can companies get the best results when responding to their leads? Even better, how can they optimize the first call to a prospect?
The article will show you:

  • The best days to contact a customer
  • The best times to contact a customer
  • The speed at which leads grow cold
  • The exponential reward of persistence


A salesperson with great energy and no strategy will close deals, but a dynamic sales team with a research-powered strategy can propel a company’s growth.

To see this sales strategy example and others in action, review JumpCrew’s MARCOA MEDIA case study.

What Are The Best Days To Contact A Customer?

best days to make sales calls

To qualify a lead by phone requires a conversation. You may have an outstanding sales strategy, but if you cannot get the customer on the phone, you may lose them.

The best days to qualify leads are Wednesday and Thursday. You will reach about 45% more customers on the first dial when you call those two days.

What Is The Best Time To Contact A Customer?

best times to make sales calls

Your salespeople should also know the optimal time to reach out to potential customers. Implementing a sales strategy of calling prospects at the right time can improve qualifying rates by 100% or more.

Salespeople who called to qualify new leads between 4:00 and 5:00 PM saw 164% more success than between 1:00 and 2:00 PM.

The second best time to call is between 8:00 and 9:00 AM. Prospects who rise early are full of energy and ready to take on the day. Salespeople can catch them before they are busy and distracted.

Actually, our CEO posted about this sale strategy on LinkedIn after receiving an early morning ring.

Robert Henderson LinkedIn Sales Strategy - LinkedIn

How Fast Can Leads Go Cold?

speed to contact

Contact and qualification rates drop dramatically in just minutes and continue to decrease steeply over time. Whether you use an in-house sales team or a sales outsourcing provider, the response speed has a mind-blowing impact.

When salespeople responded within five minutes of receiving a web form from an interested prospect, they got 400% better results than those calling in the five to ten-minute range. That is quite a difference!

Why is response time so important to your sales strategy? A Forbes article titled Why Companies Waste 71 Percent of Internet Leads gives us three reasons a rapid response to incoming leads is so effective.

  • If they just sent the form, you know the prospect is available. Within five minutes of the form submission, they are likely still near the computer and phone.
  • In the moments after submitting a form, consumers are thinking of your company and its products or services. Their minds are on that specific need, so it is an excellent time to discuss it with them.
  • A rapid response is seen as professional and builds trust. The speed of contact makes a positive impression on your customers.

The best moment to reach a prospect is when they are actively trying to contact you.

Sales Strategy Example: The Reward of Persistence

sales call attempts
increase in contact rates
average call attempts

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Most of the results report on contact on the first dial. However, if there is no success on the first attempt, salespeople can improve contact rates with a little persistence.

Salespeople who followed through six times on each prospect saw 70% better contact rates than those who gave up after one try. Moreover, fewer than 5% of salespeople consistently make those six attempts. In the study, 30% of the leads were never contacted.

If you need to add to your current sales team, JumpCrew can help your business scale quickly with trained salespeople. 

How Can You Structure Your Schedule to Take Advantage of These Sales Strategies?

Now you can bring these sales strategies to your team. Each lead costs an average company between $20 and $200. Apply these results to maximize the opportunities generated by marketing and promotions.

At JumpCrew, our teams don’t stop at six attempts to reach a prospect. We know it can take 18 tries to connect with someone—especially in the b2b space. If we do not reach a lead the first time, we employ a multi-channel outreach sequence, including emails, LinkedIn messages and connections, live-chat, and phone calls.

Although statistically, a phone call is the most effective sales strategy, not every prospect is comfortable speaking with a salesperson on the phone, so we offer them multiple ways to connect. Our sales reps have the resilience and tenacity to execute our methodology. 

JumpCrew’s trained and managed teams can help you complete a project, fortify weak areas in your sales and marketing funnels, or rapidly scale up your sales team to improve closing rates and keep up with demand.

For both in-house sales and outsourced sales teams, responding quickly, scheduling your follow-up calls, and repeated attempts to make contact will improve return on leads generated.