A lead from a Meta ad is not an order. It is a person who just pressed a button in a feed while sitting on the sofa. The interest is real, but it is also fleeting. Give it long enough and they cannot remember the ad, and your call feels like a cold call.
What happens while you wait
A lead rarely fills in just one form. They see four ads in the same category and fill in two or three of them. Whoever calls first gets to define the conversation: what the problem is, what a solution costs, and what you should compare on. Whoever calls second has to argue against a frame someone else set.
At the same time the chance of reaching anyone at all drops. In the morning people answer the phone. After work they do not. A lead that arrives on Friday afternoon and is called on Monday has had a whole weekend to forget you.
Three things that push the time down
- Send a message automatically, straight away, so the lead knows who is about to call. A missed call from an unknown number does not get called back.
- Put the lead somewhere visible to everyone who calls. A spreadsheet that one person updates is a bottleneck with a human in it.
- Put an owner on every lead immediately. Without an owner a lead becomes everyone's responsibility, and everyone's responsibility is nobody's.
Automatic is not the same as impersonal
The first SMS should not sell. It should remove the uncertainty about who you are and why the phone is ringing. If it writes itself, it happens within a minute every time, including when the salesperson is in another meeting. That is the whole difference between a system and a good intention.