“We provide the leads. Salespeople reply a day later.”
The first impulse is understandable: gather the salespeople and demand that they reply faster. I wouldn’t rush anyone just yet. First, I’d open yesterday’s enquiries and ask one question about each: at what point was it left without a next step?
Because a reply “the next day” does not yet prove that a salesperson is slow. It may mean there was no one to pass the enquiry to, the new lead lost out to other tasks, or the first unanswered call was somehow treated as the end of the work.
From the outside, it all gets the same label: the client was left waiting.
Internally, these are three different shortcomings in the work of the head of sales.
An enquiry can have someone assigned to it but no one taking ownership
Open the record. It shows the arrival time, an automatic reply and the salesperson’s surname. On paper, the enquiry has been dealt with.
Now look for evidence of a person’s work. What did they find out about what the client needs? What question did they ask? What did they agree on? When will they follow up after failing to get through?
If there is no new fact and no next step, the surname in the field has changed nothing. The system assigned a record. No one started selling.
But it is still too early to draw conclusions about the salesperson. Reconstruct four events for several enquiries in a row:
- when the enquiry arrived;
- when a particular salesperson saw it;
- what they did first;
- what they scheduled next.
This sequence is not there to produce another report. It shows the first point where normal work stopped.
A day’s wait starts in three different places
No one picked up the enquiry. It stays unassigned until someone checks and notices it. There is nothing for the salesperson to speed up here: the head of sales must change how enquiries are assigned and how unassigned enquiries are checked.
Someone was assigned straight away but got on with something else. This means the team has no shared rule for deciding which comes first: a new enquiry, a calculation for an existing client or other tasks. The head of sales needs to set the order of priority and go through the exceptions separately, rather than repeat that “leads matter”.
The salesperson called quickly but did not get through. The record shows an attempt, so the average response time looks decent. But the client still received no message and was not told when they would be contacted next. Here, the work after the first unsuccessful attempt needs to change.
Now the claim that “salespeople are slow” falls apart. In one case, the handover is failing; in the second, it is the choice of priority; in the third, it is keeping the conversation going.
If you simply set the same target for all three, the figure may improve. The cause may remain.
“But the client doesn’t care why no one replied”
It is a fair question. The client really does not need to understand how our department works.
Two different jobs are being mixed up here. The first is to show the person quickly that their enquiry has been received. Automation can do that. The second is to start selling: understand what they need, give a substantive answer or agree when an answer will come.
The difference is visible in the record. After the acknowledgement, it contains only a sent template message. After the salesperson’s work, it contains a new fact and a clear next step.
So speed matters. But five minutes to an automatic reply and five minutes to the start of a conversation are not the same result.
Check the work of the head of sales, not the salesperson’s promise
A “don’t do that again” conversation works until the next busy day. The work of the head of sales shows up differently: they have found a recurring cause, changed a rule and checked the next enquiries.
Take enquiries from several working days and look at:
- where the first pause occurs most often;
- when the head of sales notices it — on the same day or after a complaint;
- what they change: how enquiries are assigned, the order of tasks or the action after an unanswered call;
- whether the same pause recurs in new records;
- whether a personal push from the owner is needed to speed things up.
After a week, it is too early to promise more sales. But you can already see whether the department has learnt to keep incoming enquiries moving. If enquiries only come back to life after a message from the owner, the rule has not worked — the owner has.
And only after this check does it make sense to discuss whether there are enough leads and whether they are right for the company. Adding traffic any earlier means adding enquiries to the same queue, where there is no one to deal with them.
How this work is organised at RENTROP
In “turnkey sales management”, work on a new enquiry does not end with an automatic reply and someone’s surname against it. The head of sales examines where the delay occurs and changes a specific rule for how the team works. The business development director checks their decision and sees whether the same error has disappeared in subsequent enquiries. AI helps find delays in the available data and communications, while people make the decisions.
The marketing budget, product, prices and strategy remain the owner’s responsibility. Our work starts once an enquiry has arrived and the department needs to turn it into a proper conversation with the client.
An automatic reply says: “We’ve heard you.”
The sale starts when that becomes true.