Optimize Lead Engagement with Smart Dialing Technologies

To convert leads into sales, it takes more than just making calls. You have to make the right calls at the right time, and persistently, strategically manage your leads and lead lists. With the right approach, your call center will significantly improve contact rates, boost conversions, and increase revenue.

In this article, we're pulling in some seriously smart dialing strategies from our in-house experts on how to handle both fresh and aged leads to maximize their potential. Comb through the details below culled from the minds of Daniel Foppen, VP of Product & Product Marketing; Ron Griguts, Director of Customer Success; and Daniel Steinman, Manager of Customer Success.

These strategies focus on optimizing efficiency, improving contact rates, and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your lead management. The goal is to ensure that each call your team makes is purposeful, timely, and has the highest conversion potential.

In the world of lead management, employing a one-size-fits-all approach rarely yields the best results. Different types of leads require different dialing strategies to maximize efficiency and conversion rates. Implementing diverse dialing strategies allows you to effectively manage both fresh and aged leads, ensuring a balanced and productive outreach effort.

When it comes to fresh leads, timing is everything.

The speed with which you reach out to new leads can dramatically affect your conversion rates. Foppen says, "Speed to lead is your biggest lever…Our customers will ring high-intent leads within three to five seconds of them coming in. That has a huge impact on conversion."

By responding almost instantly, you can capture the lead's attention while their interest is at its peak, greatly increasing your chances of successful conversions. To optimize your speed to lead, leverage real-time data from your lead generation efforts to instantly identify and prioritize the most promising leads.

Implement predictive dialers to significantly reduce the time it takes to reach new leads by automatically dialing multiple numbers and connecting agents to answered calls. Automation plays a crucial role in ensuring no lead falls through the cracks. Set up automated follow-up systems, such as email and SMS, to maintain prompt communication with new leads.

Aged leads require a different approach to maintain engagement and maximize conversion potential. As Steinman explains, aged data is less impacted by speed to lead because you don’t have dozens of companies vying to close that sale immediately.

Adjusting the dialing cadence is crucial for aged leads. Steinman suggests using temperature control, a strategy that adjusts contact frequency based on lead age. You can create multiple lead lists based on their age (e.g., 15 days old, 30 days old) with progressively less aggressive contact attempts for older leads. This approach helps in managing lead fatigue and keeps the leads engaged without overwhelming them.

Cadence management also allows for better resource allocation. By understanding the optimal contact frequency for different lead segments, you can allocate your agents' time and efforts more effectively, ensuring that high-potential leads receive the attention they deserve without neglecting older leads.

Resting leads is another important tactic. After a certain number of unsuccessful contact attempts, it’s beneficial to give the leads a break. Resting them allows the leads to reset, reducing the risk of annoyance and making them more receptive to future contact. This strategy can significantly improve the chances of converting leads that may initially seem unresponsive.

Resting leads can also prevent burnout for your agents. Continuously working on leads that do not respond can be demotivating and exhausting. By resting these leads, agents can focus on more promising opportunities, maintaining a higher level of morale and productivity. When the rested leads are reintroduced after a suitable period, they often respond more positively, having had time to reconsider their interest.

Another key factor for effectively dialing aged leads is analyzing call efficiency. "A lot of our analysis is around cost savings," Steinman says. "We'll look at how often a lead is being called, and we'll see no success after, let's say, call 37, but agents are calling their leads up to 75 times. This just wastes money on minutes."

You can save money and create a more effective dialing strategy by matching the number of call attempts to the realistic success thresholds indicated by your own analytics.

Steinman advises against resetting or reloading lists, a practice where call center managers reset or reload lists to reactivate disability after reaching the max dial attempts.

This means your agents dial the same leads multiple times, well beyond the max dial threshold, and creates a false sense of activity. For instance, if you call a lead up to 30 times and then reset the list 10 times, you end up dialing that lead 300 times. This reduces productivity and increases the likelihood of frustrating potential customers.

Resetting or reloading lists can also lead to inefficient resource allocation. Agents spend valuable time contacting the same unresponsive leads repeatedly, which could be better spent on engaging with new or more promising leads. This repetitive process also skews performance metrics, making it difficult to accurately assess the effectiveness of your dialing strategies.

Moreover, continuously resetting lists can damage your caller ID reputation. Frequent calls to the same leads, especially when they are unresponsive, can lead to carriers flagging your numbers as spam. This reduces the likelihood of future calls being answered, further decreasing the effectiveness of your outreach efforts.

Another pitfall to avoid is duplicating leads unless you’re selling across different verticals. As Daniel Steinman explains, "A lot of clients will ask, ‘Is it okay to duplicate leads and just have multiple of the same person?’ And typically, it's not, unless you're selling cross vertical."

For example, if you’re in the home improvement industry and sell windows and doors, each one offers different sales opportunities. In a case like that, duplicating your leads across different lists might be a good idea.

However, just having the same lead multiple times within the same campaign is misleading and breaks your call cadence. It leads to multiple agents contacting the same lead within a short timeframe, causing confusion and frustration for the potential customer. This practice reduces the chances of conversion and can harm your company's reputation.

Maintaining a clean lead database ensures that your contact attempts are strategic and controlled. By avoiding duplication, you can streamline your lead management process, improve agent productivity, and enhance the overall customer experience.

Balancing the mix of fresh and aged leads is vital for a healthy and productive lead management strategy. Fresh leads, with their higher contact and conversion rates, provide immediate opportunities for engagement. On the other hand, aged leads, when managed correctly, offer a steady pipeline of potential customers that can be nurtured over time.

A balanced approach ensures that you give fresh leads the immediate attention they need while you nurture aged leads to re-engage them effectively. By continuously adding new leads and managing aged ones appropriately, you can keep your lead management system healthy and productive, driving higher contact rates and better overall results.

Evaluating the quality of your leads is an essential aspect of creating smart dialing strategies. High-quality leads are more likely to convert into sales, while poor-quality leads can waste valuable time and resources.

Incorporating lead quality assessment into your dialing strategy ensures that you focus your efforts on the most promising prospects, maximizing efficiency and conversion rates. Below are key factors to consider when assessing lead quality.

A prime indicator of bad leads is the amount of operator intercepts. An operator intercept occurs when a lead’s number is disconnected, and the agent gets the dreaded message, “This number cannot be completed as dialed.”

Steinman illustrates why operator intercepts are a clear sign of poor-quality leads: “I’ve seen customers buy lists of say 100,000 leads, but 8,000 are operator intercepts. That means 8% of the leads they paid for aren’t good.” He recommends reporting this issue to the lead vendor for potential credits for the bad leads or searching for a more reliable lead source.

Maintaining a healthy lead list requires regular cleanup of unproductive leads. If a report shows that 10% of your leads are operator intercepts, it’s vital to pull these off the list to avoid wasting time and labor.

Continuing to redial disconnected numbers is almost always unproductive because those numbers are rarely reconnected. Removing these leads from your system allows you to focus dialing efforts on genuine opportunities.

When assessing lead quality, it's more effective to look at the close rate than the contact rate. A higher contact rate might seem desirable, but it doesn’t necessarily correlate with higher sales.

Steinman explains that having a lower contact rate doesn’t automatically indicate poor lead quality if the leads that do connect have a high conversion rate. For example, a 2% contact rate from 200,000 calls, resulting in 75 sales, is more valuable than a 10% contact rate with only 30 sales.

Prioritize sales over connections for a better indicator of the quality of your leads.

Dialing strategies supported by advanced technology can significantly enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Tools like predictive dialers, omnichannel campaign management, and real-time data integration can optimize your approach and achieve better results.

Predictive dialers automatically dial numbers from your lead list and connect answered calls to available agents. This technology minimizes the time agents spend waiting between calls and reduces the number of unanswered calls.

Predictive dialers use algorithms to predict when an agent will be available and automatically dial multiple numbers, reducing downtime and ensuring agents are always engaged with live prospects. By bypassing busy signals, voicemails, and unanswered calls, predictive dialers connect agents only to live prospects, increasing talk time and overall productivity.

Convoso's predictive dialer is the fastest, most power system available for sales and lead generation teams, enabling campaigns to dramatically scale up quickly to take advantage of new lead lists as needed and to always drive efficient use of agent time.

Implementing an omnichannel approach allows you to engage leads through various communication channels, such as phone calls, emails, and text messages. This strategy ensures that you can reach leads through their preferred methods, increasing the likelihood of successful engagement.

Omnichannel campaigns integrate different communication channels, providing a seamless experience for leads. This means you can follow up with a lead via email after a call or send an SMS reminder for an upcoming appointment.

Real-time data integration enables your team to act on the most current information available, ensuring that your dialing strategies are based on up-to-date data. This allows you to prioritize leads based on their recent activities or interactions, increasing the chances of successful connections. Access to real-time metrics and analytics helps managers make informed decisions quickly, adjusting strategies to improve performance and outcomes.

Maintaining a strong caller ID reputation is essential for high contact rates and successful lead engagements. "We’re increasingly seeing that caller ID reputation management is really important,” says Foppen. “Few leads will pick up the phone if they see a Scam Likely call come in.”

If your caller ID is flagged as spam or seen as untrustworthy, the chances of leads answering your calls drop significantly. Effectively managing your caller ID reputation can substantially impact your results.

Foppen shares a real-life example of how good caller ID management improves outcomes: "We have seen our customers using our caller ID reputation management, which includes prevention, monitoring, and automated remediation, see percentage points added to their contact rates. One saw a direct change in contact rate for their freshest leads, from 12% to 16%, which you can imagine has a real impact on revenue."

Employ automated systems to manage and remediate any issues with your caller IDs. These systems can help restore your numbers’ reputation by taking corrective actions, such as requesting reclassification from carriers or adjusting call patterns to avoid further flags.

In the hustle and bustle of call center operations, it's easy to overlook the human element. However, your agents are the backbone of your lead management efforts, and your dialing strategies directly impact their productivity and morale.

Aged leads are often challenging for agents because of the low contact and conversion rates, so it’s essential to maintain a healthy balance of fresh and aged leads. “If your budget is heavily weighted toward aged leads, you’re crushing your agents, and you’re not going to get a positive ROI on that money you spent.” Griguts says.

By mixing lead types, you can keep your agents motivated and productive, ensuring they‘re not overwhelmed by the challenges associated with aged leads. This balance helps maintain their morale and keeps their performance at optimal levels, leading to better overall results in your lead management efforts.

Ready to see these strategies in action? Schedule a demo with Convoso today and discover how our advanced solutions can transform your lead management process and boost your conversion rates.