At what point do you stop calling a lead?

The short answer is that it depends. However, it usually takes more follow-up calls on a raw lead (such as a webinar attendee or non-attendee, a white paper download or another form of web hit) than most people think. If you are calling mid-to-large size companies and relatively senior people, it might take as many as twelve touches to optimize completion of a list of responses. The old "three and out" is a recipe for disaster unless the list is useless (in which case why even call it) or the offer is so compelling that a large percentage of the audience calls back (generally not the situation for most offers). We actually have one situation where the number of touches reached 42... but that turned into a mega-deal after the prospect called us back.

Two to three calls per day until you get them on the phone or they ask you to stop calling.

If you have a team of war dialers who each have a list of 50 prospects, there is no reason they cannot put in 3 (maybe even 4) calls to each prospect per day; morning, before and after lunch, end of the day. I don't believe in leaving voicemails; at the end of a 10-12 call process, send the contact to nurturing and try again if and when they return to your system .

This is an age old question and I love reading the multitude of answers that are out there. The Lead Response Management survey conducted in 2007 by James Oldroyd, Professor Sloan School of Management asked, amongst other questions, “how many call attempts do you suggest sales reps make before they abandon a lead?” (see Page 19).

How relevant! 42% Don’t Know, Don’t Measure or Didn’t Respond. 42%! The survey clearly reveals that marketers and sales representatives DO NOT KNOW when and how efficiently to follow up on web-generated leads. Page 15 suggests however that “not knowing or measuring when a sales rep should abandon correlates with lesser qualification rates.” So the net-net here is “it depends” (like most of the others have stated) but you better measure your results to improve your qualification rates.

Here’s what you should do to get a more concrete answer to this question for yourself!

1. How many attempts/touches (email, call, voicemail) does it take to generate a closed opportunity? How many activities (calls, emails, voicemails) did your sales team log last month? How many closed opportunities did your sales team log last month? Divide activities by calls and you have your “touches per opportunity” metric. You can use this as a boundary for answering this question for your organization. It takes 19 touches for my sales reps to close one opportunity.

2. How long is the buying cycle? Measured in days or months. From first touch to close opportunity closure, how much TIME expired? I know that approximately 90% of my opportunities close within the first 30 days and our average sales cycle is 42 days. If I see a salesperson working an account for longer than 42 days, we need to seriously discuss how qualified it really is because the probability of it closing declines significantly past 42 days right?

3. What does third party research suggest? Trish Bertuzzi’s latest Lead Gen Report gave us some good stats here. It takes 9.3 touches to take a prospect to a win. She also reports 6.5 touches from suspect to prospect. So it takes 16 touches to get from suspect to win. Josiane Feigon suggest that “an executive will on be receptive to TALKING with you after seeing your message at least nine times!

4. Armed with this information (which acts as boundaries), create a “Call Process” that includes multiple touches over many days or months that is dependent on the data you find above! I developed a Call Process that uses this exact information. It’s a 12 touch process (no less than 9 but not longer than 19) that spans 13 days (90% of my opportunities CLOSE within 30 days) that includes calls, voicemails and emails. My sales reps DQ (read “put back into email nurturing campaign”) the lead and move on once this call process is complete.

You like apples? How about them apples?

Most inside sales teams are surprised that it takes multiple touches to get an inbound lead to talk live. The fact is, even if the prospect is interested and wants to learn more, they're crazy-busy - well beyond what you're offering, even if it has a clear benefit and positive outcome for them.

We typically coach sales teams to be more aggressive with follow-up if the lead specifically requested a demo or product information. If it was a white paper request or something more content-based than product-based, we typically proscribe a lighter follow-up process. All of these are followed by a "pass-back" to marketing to continue nurturing the lead (in the sales rep's name) until they again respond and get active, at which time it's back to sales for the conversation.

With the caveat that it does depend on the product you are selling, average sales price, the role and organization-size, here's some data that may help in your discussions. From our direct experience of making millions of B2B calls (to small, medium and large organizations) it takes over 20 outbound dials to get 1 live conversation with the intended target. This is a system-wide average - and each organization is different - but it only takes a couple of days of tracking to confirm your own metrics.

Like Dan says above we also see many examples where perseverance really pays-off. It comes down to how badly you want to reach a particular lead or contact - and that comes from knowing your target audience and buying influences.

Stats, Numbers, and Slogans won't get a prospect talking to a sales rep....and you can't talk to a prospect until you reach them. If that takes more than 3 calls, then so be it.

I just looked at an appointment we booked 5 minutes ago. SVP at JP Morgan Chase. He's been on our client's prospect list for 5 months now and it looks like he's received on average 8-10 dials a week, and several emails. He finally picked up 2 weeks ago. He asked for us to send some info and continue the conversation this afternoon. We did so and then booked the appointment for our client.

Had we given up after 3 attempts, the lead would have gone south 5 months ago.

Mike Damphousse
http://www.green-leads.com/b2b-blog/

Hey Erik,

Great question, and I'm shocked that your inside sales manager would have people stop calling after only three calls! I would agree that it takes much more than that.

There have been some great comments so far, and just to throw my two cents in, I'd say that the only time you really should stop calling a lead is when they ask you to. The way I see it (and have experienced), is that sometimes you need to call someone 10 times. Sometimes you need to call them 20. Sometimes you need to call them 30, but it's that 31st call that converts them from a prospect to a lead.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you dial them like mad, five times a day for 5 days a week (though you can), but you should have some sort of plan in place to deal with those hard to reach people. Additionally, this is where email should come into play, too. Some of those people that you're calling who do not answer the phone, don't want to use the phone; an email to them may, however, be the thing that gets their attention. Not SPAM emails, though - well thought out, carefully planned and targeted personal emails.

I definitely think you're team is going to miss an awful lot of potential opportunities if you're stopping after three calls. By putting some sort of call plan in place and strategically using email, I really don't think there's a need to stop until your told by the prospect to stop.

Good luck!

Our opinion is that you never completely give up on a lead- unless we're told to give up.

From our perspective you should touch a lead 12 times (6 voicemails/ 6 emails) over 18 business days . If you haven't received a response then push them out to a monthly follow-up. The prospect needs to know we're out there. We like to call this polite persistence. Though I must admit leaving a voicemail is generally ineffective, it will greatly increases the chances of receiving a response from your follow-up email.

When we receive a warm lead we'll pull 2 other target contacts from the company using a Jigsaw,Hoovers,Netprospex etc. Generally if you pull in multiple contacts our experience/research tells us we will receive a response 95% of the time which allows us to quickly qualify them in or out.

As a follow on to this question, some data gathered today from the AA-ISP Webinar "Lead Response time – Impact and Improvement". 95% of the deals you're going to close come from the call attempts 1-12 to set an appointment.

In other words, you're giving up more than 20% of the deals you're going to close by giving up after 3 attempts to set an appointment. Here's the link to the slide:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9325748/Percent%20of%20Sales%20Closed%20-%20Appt.is%2...

in sales books there is number 7 for sales attempts. after the 7th attempt you should give up. On my experience, a sales person should give up on 4th or 5th attempt.

Being a Prospect Development Associate I would have to agree with the "it depends" answer. Depending on the solution I am offering and the level I am trying to reach will determine how many attempts.

For example I have offered solutions in the past that may target the office manager at a doctor's office. It was typical that between email and voicemail there could be about six attempts..or I could reach them on the first call(they are the office manager)they would be busy and give me the best time to call.

The other end of the spectrum would be reaching out to a CFO to talk about an IT outsourcing solution whereas my immediate goal was to get the EA to put me on his or her schedule.

So I guess it all depends on if all avenues have been exausted.

While there's value to persistence, there is also sense to pursuing a lead for a preset number of attempts, and then choosing to move on into other contacts within the prospects org structure. If those efforts do not bear fruit either, then it simply becomes a function of nurturing that lead until need meets opportunity.

1) At least 10 touches that mix it up. Think baseball pitcher - throw fast ball, change, curve, etc. Don't just throw one pitch!
2) Call someone else higher or laterally. You don't know the politics of the organization. There could be a better person out there waiting to be found regardless of marketing activity.
3) Can you remember the last thing that you downloaded on the internet? Neither can they.
4) The VP of Inside Sales at f5 said this (not me, but I love it): "A lead is an idea of an account to target. The job of the inside sales person is NOT to call leads...it's to create opportunity."

Hope it helps. - Steve