When should you contact inbound leads?

Focused on B2B services companies with less than ~100 employees.

In order to talk about when to respond to your inbound leads (assuming you have their permission to do so), we need to bucketize first.

We’ll define 3 groups of inbound leads:

SRLs (Sales Ready Leads)

people with a need,
that you can likely help,
and have expressed interest in having a conversation with you about their problem (likely by filling out your contact form).

MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads)

people that filled out a form to sign up to receive info from you,
that appear to be a fit based on the type of company they work for, and/or the role they play.

DQLs (Disqualified Leads)

people that reached out (likely via form fill) that don’t meet the criteria of SRL or MQL.
These aren’t really leads at all, but we need something to call this group.

The short answer for how quickly you should contact inbound leads:

SRLs – usually within 24 hours, preferably within ~4 hours.
MQLs – the first contact should be immediate (within a few minutes), set up with your email marketing or marketing automation platform. Any follow-up is based on many other factors that we’ll get into below.
DQLs – don’t contact them, or, if appropriate, gently let them know that you’re not a good fit. If you’re going to contact them, do so within ~24 hours.

Inbound Disqualified Leads (DQLs)

We’ll get these out of the way quickly. These are leads that you decide are not a fit and likely won’t ever be a fit for your company as a customer. The primary reasons are likely:

They got confused and think you do something that you don’t as a company,
They’re grasping for straws because they haven’t found a good fit for them, or
They’re trying to sell you something.

If DQLs come in frequently, to the point where it’s non-negligibly impacting your operations, the opportunity with DQLs is to think about why the person reached out, and how you can update your website:

Is there a way to tighten up your messaging?
Is there a way you can help them self-disqualify?

Inbound Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

Inbound MQLs are generally a subset of people that signed up (by providing their email address) to receive more content from you after liking what they saw on your website or on social media. I say a subset because not all of the people that sign up should be MQLs.

Deciding what to do with MQLs is tough.

There’s a school of thought that suggests you really want to nurture your MQLs, so that when they (hopefully) have a need in the (distant) future, they’ll want to consider you.

This isn’t a crazy way to think about things IMO, but it’s also not an obvious “yes, of course we should be doing this!”. I think it’s very situational based on several factors.

A few of the main factors:

Think about your business. If someone doesn’t have a need currently, what are the odds that you can get them to reach out to you in the future by building trust with them over time? Is that (likely very low) probability acceptable to you?
Do you have enough content that they’ll find valuable / relevant that you can share with them?
If the overall group of MQLs play different roles or have different needs (they likely do), can you segment them into different groups so that you can personalize reasonably?
Do you have the resources to put the required ongoing effort into this?

Of course, you can implement an email nurturing effort at varying levels of sophistication. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

If you do decide to move forward, consider these tips:

Start with your best foot forward. What’s your most helpful content? Which sub-group is most likely to be interested in working with you in the future?
Ask yourself: why did they reach out in the first place? You need to align with that. Whatever they were told you’d give them is what you should provide.
Don’t be annoying. This can come in the form of too much info, not enough info, the wrong info, getting info too often, or not getting it often enough.
Learn about how to reduce your chances of getting caught up in spam filters / junk mail.
Think about how you can learn more about your audience.

Inbound Sales Ready Leads (SRLs)

Deciding how to respond to SRLs is generally straightforward. They initiated by reaching out to you with a need-in-hand that they want help with.

The main things you’ll want to start thinking about before you reach out are:

Do I need to ask any clarifying questions before our conversation, or do I have a good enough sense to start a conversation and figure it out at that point? It’s generally preferrable to ask as few questions as possible prior to the conversation.
Do I need to involve someone else besides me in the initial conversation (e.g., one of your SMEs)?

Some tips to consider:

Don’t be annoying – there’s a delicate balance between being perceived as annoying and not caring. Don’t be pushy. Don’t try to sell them on something they don’t want / need.
Following up – so what if the potential customer doesn’t respond right away to your initial email? How long should you wait to follow up? As a starting point, go with ~1 business day, and adjust from there based on the context of the person you’re talking to, the help they want, and the opportunity size. Deciding how many times to follow up is complex and goes back to the “don’t be annoying” comment. I lean toward a single follow-up, maybe one more if I can justify it.
Not getting caught up in spam filters / junk mail – yep, this is a thing. Some people are surprised that their mail might not be making it to the SRL’s inbox. There are various ways to increase the probability of your email getting through. Learn about them.
Point them to your FAQ page – does it make sense to send them a link to your FAQ page to help frame the discussion or answer likely questions they’ll have ahead of time?
Check out this article on Actionable Inbound Sales Tips.

Next Steps

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