Summary: InsideSales Kellogg Institute Study

Insidesales.com and the Kellogg School of Management performed a study that in had a few questions concerning the best ways to drive leads to your website and qualify and close them.

The first question was how do you generate web leads to best qualify and close those leads? In the study they found that Search Engine Optimization was the best method for obtaining leads and qualifying them. With Pay-per-Click and Outbound telemarketing not doing well at all. Meaning that leads obtained from search engines were your best bet for just being able to contact and set-up appointments. The next thing they examined was the close rates from these different aspects social network marketing was the best for close rates, with pay-per-click being the worst. There was little too no correlation with the other aspects (pay-per-click, outbound telemarketing) for close rates.

The next question was the effectiveness of different offers on websites for qualifying and close rates. First we'll look at the qualification rates from these

Price Quote—qualification and close rates there was a slight increase.
Video cast—qualification there was an increase while there was no difference positive or negative for close rate.
White Paper Library—did not qualify well and there was no difference in close rates
Ebook—closed very well.
Click to call—closed very well.

People asking for a price quote are interested but someone who reads an eBook or gets right on the phone with a sales agent are most likely very interested. Where as someone who gets a white paper or watches a video cast is interested, but not chomping at the bit to get the product.

The next thing they examined was the relationship between capturing and distributing leads to sales reps, and the relationship of these methods to qualification and close rates.

CAPTURING
Email (Having the lead fill out a personal email to you)- had better than average qualification and close rates

Web form to email - below average in both qualification and close rates
Web form to phone - didn't do very well in the qualifying and had no effect on closing.
Web form to database - was below average on qualification with no difference on closing.

This data shows that the more work the lead has to do to contact you the more likely they are to become a qualified lead, and to close.

LEAD ROUTING

Skills-based lead routing—so sending leads to agents depend on skills such language or product or industry knowledge was very effective in improving both the qualifying and close rates

Contacting via fax—sending your agents faxes to notify them of a new lead was good for qualifying, but had no difference in closing.

Contacting Via Chat—had a positive effect in the qualification rates but no effect in close rates.

Geographical based lead routing (or giving leads to reps from that area or who cover that area)—had below average qualification rates and no effect on close rates.

Email routing—had an above average effect on close but just average on qualification rates.

Phone routing—had no effect on qualification rates, and actually had a negative effect on close rates.

This data shows us that if you want to qualify and close routing your lead based on skills (language, product and industry knowledge, etc.) of each agent is the very best option. With emailing your leads to agents being your next best option. All of the data in this study can be very effectively implemented into your lead response management process for higher productivity in the sales process.

These two aspects of the study are only the beginning to get more information check the actually study out at LeadResponseManagement.com.