What Is Speed to Lead? + How to Improve Yours

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Speed to lead definition: Speed to lead is the average time it takes for your business to respond to an inbound lead. It is typically the elapsed time between the moment the prospect fills out your form and the time they receive your response for a demo, quote, or appointment.

Did you know that if you respond within five minutes after a prospect becomes a lead, you’re nine times more likely to convert them? Your speed to lead is a crucial aspect of a lead-generation strategy that drives revenue.

If you want to know more about speed to lead, you’re in the right place. This blog post will discuss these topics:

What is speed to lead?
How to improve speed to lead
Why speed to lead is important: 3 speed to lead statistics
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What is speed to lead?
Speed to lead is the average time it takes for your business to respond to an inbound lead. Also known as lead response time, speed to lead is typically the elapsed time between the moment the prospect fills out your form and they receive your response for a demo, quote, or appointment.

For example, let’s say you’re in the franchise business and a prospect expresses interest in your business by filling out a form on one of your landing pages. One of your sales reps then calls your inbound lead in an hour. Your speed to lead is one hour.

Speed to lead looks at how fast a lead hears from you. It doesn’t consider which communication channel you used to respond, whether you called them via phone, emailed them, or messaged them through live chat or social media.

lead form example

6 ways to improve speed to lead
Now that you know what speed to lead is and how important it is to respond to your leads as soon as possible, here’s how you can improve your speed to lead:

Optimize your landing pages to encourage prospects to sign up as leads
Use lead data enrichment to help your sales team collect and analyze information
Automate lead scoring to identify which leads to prioritize
Systematically assign leads to sales reps based on prospects’ industries and sales reps’ strengths
Explore chatbots, email automation, and self-service product demo
Track your speed to lead to determine drop-off points
Let’s go through each one!

1. Optimize your landing pages to encourage prospects to sign up as leads
Imagine a prospect landing on one of your pages. Is your page designed to engage your site visitors?

Use conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies to encourage your prospects to fill out your forms so you can improve your speed to lead:

Have a clear call to action (CTA) on your landing page. Your CTA tells your prospects the next step that they must take. A clear CTA guides your prospects to conversion.
Understand how site visitors engage with your landing page with heatmaps. Do your site visitors scroll further down your page and click your CTAs? Heatmaps determine if site visitors click your CTAs or fill out your forms.
Optimize your lead forms. Make sure your forms are easy to fill out. Conduct A/B tests on your forms to identify which small changes contribute to better conversion rates.