Average business takes almost 18 hours to respond to a lead, and two thirds of the time, they give up after one attempt. Isn't that crazy, Kuma? That's what Leadferno found in a recent study.
However, it's not too surprising to us. We have about 60 small business clients. I can tell you it is not uncommon for small businesses to take way too long to respond.
Why is this a big problem? Most people, when they're looking for a business like yours, aren't just gonna go to one business after doing a Google search. They're going to two, three, and they're gonna fill out a form or call each of them to get a quote.
And nine times out of 10, they're gonna go with the first person who offers them the service at a reasonable rate. So if you're waiting even two hours to get back to your leads, there's a good chance they've already talked to two or three of your competitors, and they may have already sold them on their service. You are very likely losing half of your customers due to slow response times.
If you haven't already set up an auto responder, that should be your first priority. Make it easy for prospects to get a hold of you. Answer the phone, call back quickly, and if you respond to someone and they don't answer the first time, keep trying.