As most of you already know, Internet Sales is definitely a contact sport. Consumers go to the Internet for the convenience. They are trading a little bit of personal information for the convenience of not having to wait on hold at multiple lenders 800 number just to see if they are qualified or you have a competitive rate.

Of course, you already knew why they used the Internet. The question is–are your sales teams organized to maximize your contact rate, or are you just playing the traditional phone tag game?

Here are 5 simple steps to maximize contact rate and customer experience:

1. Set up a contact/qualify team
2. Run all your real-time leads through them and offer incentives on a transfer related metric
3. Typically, attempt 4 calls per day before leaving message (leaving a message puts the monkey back on their back–reference why they used the Internet, above
4. Make sure your lead management system has a hot transfer capability
5. Create a last chance channel and team specialized in no contact leads–most of our clients are squeezing an extra 2% application rate with this method.

Why do these 5 methods consistently work? That is a much longer post on consumer behavior, psychology, and lead management analytics that I will post later for the lead market and sales academics out their.