How to Get Field Reps More Involved With Lead Engagement

Your sales reps are in the field meeting with clients and earning business. Getting them to sacrifice customer face time just to find a WiFi hotspot and respond to inbound leads is a lot to ask.

If you don't have a call center or inside sales team, it can be especially tricky to field those incoming leads and find a healthy balance between "in-the-field" and "in-the-office."

Even if you do have those, your current lead process may look a little something like this:

• A customer submits a sales request through your website or a system like Home Advisor.
• That lead ends up in someone’s email inbox, probably your office admin, waiting to be routed to a sales rep.
• The lead is sent to one of your field sales rep's inbox for follow up, however that rep is currently out in the field doing demos.
• At the end of the day, or worse the next day, the sales rep finally follows up with the lead.
  
  

If you aren't getting to those leads in time, you are missing a HUGE opportunity to close more deals.

Customers that receive a response to their sales request same day close deals 30% more often than those who don’t hear back in over 24 hours.

That time waiting for your team to respond, means more time for the customer to research other options (aka: your competitors). In fact, we've seen customers typically reach out to 3-4 different competitors within that same hour. Responding first gives you the upper hand on those other home improvement companies.

Here's how our team is attacking speed-to-lead problem with Hatch. These should give you some ideas on how to employ our insights for your own sales process with or without Hatch (though it'd be a lot easier if you did had Hatch 😁).

Give Your Reps the Power of a Mobile Office

The lines are blurring between office and out-of-office work - with so many tools at your disposal, there's no reason why your sales reps can't knock out in-the-office work in the parking lot between appointments.

Important to consider - we consider there to be a huge distinction between a mobile office and remote office.

Whereas remote office work typically lets an employee hole up in a bedroom with a laptop, the mobile office is typically in an automobile.

While laptops can be tricky to use while in a car (this is joke - please do not use a laptop while driving a car), the idea is to create an entire lead engagement experience on your reps mobile phone or tablet for lead engagement.

How can you achieve this?

• DON'T use email. You stand a chance to lose a lead in the endless abyss of spam and other internal emails. Additionally, email is siloed within an app, and turning on email notifications will make your cell phone feel like it's about to explode.
• Check out some free texting tools like WhatsApp to ping a rep in the field when a lead comes in. Include phone number within the text so your rep can call as soon as possible. This still creates a poor speed-to-lead engagement, as your lead is being funneled from another source to your rep. Tick, tock, tick, tock!
  
  

Here's how we've addressed this pain point.

Here at Hatch, we've developed a mobile platform experience. When a lead comes in, your reps will be immediately notified through text notifications of any waiting request to follow up same day, leading to increased customer confidence in deciding to work with you.

With this in place, we've made the lead process look like this:

• A customer submits a sales request through your website or a system like Home Advisor.
• The lead is instantly sent to your field sales rep’s mobile device and they are immediately notified they need to follow up.
• The field sales rep reaches out to the lead between demos and is now the first quote the customer receives.

Long story short - we found that the most important thing is to get leads in your sales reps hands as quickly as possible.

Already using Hatch? Login today on your phone to see the newest mobile version and start thinking about how your field reps could power more follow ups.

Want to see how Hatch can empower your sales team and increase your speed-to-lead?

Get your hands on Hatch. Set more appointments, reconnect with cold leads, and make more sales.