A growing tide of older adults entering their retirement years often creates a larger pool of leads for many senior living communities. However, more leads don’t always mean higher conversions or move-ins.

If you miss a lead’s call or don’t respond quickly, you’ll likely lose the lead entirely to a competitor. According to a LeadConnect survey, 78% of customers choose the company that responds first to their initial inquiry.

Improving response time is essential to converting qualified leads into prospects. Inbound phone calls convert to revenue 10 to 15 times more than leads from your website, so paying attention to how you’re handling those initial calls is important.

Harvard Business Review reports that companies are seven times more likely to qualify leads if they respond within an hour. Calling within five minutes is 21 times more effective than calling after 30 minutes. In other words, you need to be the first to respond – and respond quickly – to convert more leads.

Besides tracking your response times, how else can you identify problems with your call management system? Watch for these hallmarks of mishandled calls from new leads:

Once you gather data on these metrics, calculate averages and review the numbers to get a complete picture of your new leads.

Do you lose almost half of them due to mismanaged or slow responses? Do most of your leads end up in voicemail? How much time, on average, goes by before your new leads hear from you? Are you receiving a high volume of new lead calls each month?

This data can help you identify where to improve so you can start researching solutions.

• Leads are placed on hold. The longer leads wait on hold, the more likely they will hang up.
• Leads are transferred directly to voicemail. Often, leads lose trust in a company when their call goes straight to voicemail.
• Leads are routed to the wrong department. Getting incorrectly transferred can be frustrating and take longer, and your lead may not have the patience to try calling again.
• Leads speak with the front desk but are never connected to the sales team. Your front desk staff typically has numerous responsibilities, with frequent interruptions. Leads may sense that they aren’t being prioritized, get a bad first impression, and move on to another community.
• Leads hang up without leaving a message. It can take time and a bit of courage to call a community for the first time. When your lead isn’t directed to a person when they’re finally ready to talk, you may miss your opportunity to connect with them.
• Leads leave a message with another team member but never receive a callback. When your leads don’t hear back from you, they may fear this could happen again.
• Leads aren’t responded to in a timely fashion. Connecting promptly with your new leads builds rapport and establishes trust. If you leave your lead waiting for your response, you may start to lose both.

Related: How a Lead Management System Improves Senior Living Sales Outcomes >> 

Tracking your mishandled calls can help you determine your gaps. You’ll want to focus on reducing your lead response times and creating quality connections to convert your leads to prospects.

Considering a lead management system is a good option for many reasons. A successful lead management solution will handle your incoming leads with speed and care, and the system will also be able to set more tours and move prospects through the sales funnel.

An effective system will do the following:

• Each call will be answered personally by an experienced senior living counselor.
• A virtual sales team will follow your company’s discovery process, uncovering pain points and qualifying leads.
• Qualified leads will advance to tours.
• Every lead will be entered into your CRM.
• Web forms will be responded to immediately.

Call LeadGenie to learn how we can help you! LeadGenie is a seamless, customized system supporting your entire sales team. We’ll manage your incoming leads and nurture them along the sales funnel. Book your free demo today!