Your contact rate is an important Key Performance Indicator (KPI) you need to be measuring. Some CRMs will tell you your contact rate, while some ignore it all together. No matter what CRM you use, this is a key KPI that will indicate the success of your sales efforts.
The Problem
What gets measured gets improved, so if you don’t know your contact rate you don’t know how well your sales teams are doing. Many senior living communities don’t know their contact rate, and those that do aren’t always measuring it correctly. For example, many sales teams are measured by their lead to tour rate and won’t enter all the leads that come through to the CRM. Unless your sales team enters in all leads to your CRM, your true contact rate is not being reflected. You can’t manage the lead sources if you don’t know everything coming in.
What is your contact rate
Your contact rate is the number of new leads where a meaningful conversation has taken place divided by the total number of new leads that were generated in that same time period. A meaningful conversation would include any conversation where you decide if a person’s inquiry is valid.
What does this KPI tell you – why is this important?
Your contact rate is important to measure because it will tell you what leads are performing as expected. Without knowing your contact rate, you could be paying for leads that continue to fall flat. Your contact rate will also tell you if your sales team is performing as expected, or if you need to make changes to your strategy.
What is the industry standard contact rate?
The contact rate industry average is around 70 percent. Serviam clients on average see 85 to 90 percent contact rate over a 30-day period.
What to do if your contact rate is low
1. Evaluate it by source
The first step to increasing your contact rate is to understand your sources. Your various sources of data will tell you where to focus your efforts. For example, let’s imagine you make contact with 80 percent of your website form leads, but you are only making contact with 40 percent of your leads from an aggregator. Maybe your aggregator leads are not being reached fast enough.
With Serviam, you can see your contact rate by source in one click, without having to dig around for the data or do the math yourself. Serviam will look at leads from any source, including website (organic and/or paid), direct mail, aggregators and referrals.
2. Call faster
Speed to lead matters, especially in the senior living industry. Most communities are happy if they get to a lead within 24 hours, but that’s not fast enough. Prospects are likely to go with the first community they make a human connection with. If you aren’t reaching them first, you aren’t getting their business. With Serivam’s senior living call center services, you can reach leads in less than 10 minutes. In February 2021, Serviam’s speed to lead time was just 3.9 minutes, and our contact rate was over 85%!
3. Have a more thorough follow-up strategy
If a lead doesn’t answer the first time, what do you do after that? Sending a few automated emails is not enough to make contact, however, most salespeople will follow up on the phone with a lead one or two times before giving up. In contrast, Serviam will call anywhere from 10 to 20 times over 90 days. Having a consistent follow-up phone strategy is the best way to increase your contact rate, however it will take more time and effort from your sales team.
4. Ask people how and when they want to be contacted
If someone is filling out a form on your website at 9:00 at night, it’s unlikely you will be able to connect with that lead during normal business hours. Pay attention to when people are filling out forms or calling your community. Another strategy is to ask people when they want to be followed up with, and how they want to be followed up with. This will increase your chances of contact.
Extend Your Sales Team
If you don’t have the systems and the workforce to create a dynamic follow-up strategy, consider Serviam’s lead management services. Serviam will handle all the regimented follow up and let your sales team do what they do best – build and nurture relationships with families and the community.
Our funnel reporting allows you to report your entire conversion funnel by source so you can be assured leads are progressing through your pipeline at an accelerated rate. Ready to boost your contact rate? Talk with Serviam today.