Remember the good old days when sales teams could work from 9 to 5, then turn on the answering machine for after-hours calls? Alas, those days are long gone. In today’s global and virtual economy, the business world has become a 24/7 arena for competition.
If your team isn’t picking up the phone after hours, someone else’s team is. Up to half of sales go to whichever company answers the phone first, so it’s worthwhile to have an after-hours strategy in place.
When was the last time you considered after-hours revenue loss? If you manage a sales team, attention to after-hours leads is a crucial piece of company success. Take the time today to follow these four simple steps and unlock revenue streams that are currently slipping through your fingers.
Step 1: Assess your current after-hours strategy
The first step is an important one: a thorough review of your current after-hours processes. When your sales team isn’t receiving live calls, what happens? Do you have a third party answering service? Is there some sort of digital voicemail storage?
Sometimes a strategy is implemented with good intentions only to falter in reality. Try calling your sales team as if you are an after-hours lead to see for yourself how your approach works. What sort of experience unfolds? Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and consider if you’d be inclined to follow up.
Next, examine the quantitative efficacy of your current after-hours approach. Identify data on the conversion rate of after-hours leads into actual sales. What is the process for how after-hours leads get transferred to a sales team member? What portion of revenue comes from after-hours leads?
If you’re not measuring this data, now is a good time to start. Talk to your upline if needed and see if your IT team could pull numbers for you to review. According to Spectrum Business, close to a quarter of local leads come in after hours for small businesses. If you work for a larger, global organization, that number could be much higher.
Step 2: Compare with your competitors
Now that you have a handle on your current approach, it’s time to take a look around and see what peers in your industry are doing with after-hours leads.
One way to find out what your competitors are doing is to give them an after-hours phone call. What happens next? Take note of the proportion of peers who use a live answering service compared to a voicemail or text-based response.
In addition, assess your experience as a customer. What type of after-hours approach made you the least frustrated? Which strategy made you want to follow up with a certain company?
Step 3: Make an action plan for change
With a good understanding of your own after-hours strategy and that of your competitors, it’s time to develop a custom solution that fulfills your business needs.
Identify both the assets and constraints of your sales team’s current approach to after-hours leads. Be honest about how it stacks up to the competition and what needs improvement.
If your after-hours approach hasn’t been addressed in some time, it’s also wise to consider technological advances. Is your current strategy up to date? It should be easy to use for customers who are accustomed to today’s instant, digital world. In addition, make sure you are following legal regulations related to SMS texting and data collection.
Finally, look at the bottom line: cost. What are you spending on your current after-hours approach? Try to make room in the budget to increase that amount if needed. Be sure to factor into your cost analysis the lost revenue from after-hours leads that never convert.
Step 4: Implement a solution
All of the work you put into updating and streamlining after-hours leads is time well spent. Done correctly, a modern after-hours approach not only increases revenue, but also improves employee retention and satisfaction by boosting the proportion of hot prospects your sales team gets to interact with.
If you want to become a hero for your sales team, Pipes.ai may be the after-hours solution you’re looking for. The perfect blend of human authenticity and artificial intelligence, Pipes.ai has been one of the best lead-optimizing solutions since 2018.
With human-guided AI that can interact with, sort, and prioritize all of your after-hours leads, your salespeople will experience an increase in sales-ready conversations in their day-to-day work. A proprietary large language model guarantees a top-notch experience for your after-hours customers.
In addition, Pipes.ai is TCPA compliant, compatible with most CRM’s and API’s, and can be implemented in just 1-2 business days. A full-service product, Pipes.ai takes the management of after-hours leads out of your hands and leaves it to the experts. Try our AI today.
