How has COVID-19 affected lead-to-sale activities? Insights to planning your 2020 Q4 marketing activities

It’s been over 6 months since the start of the pandemic. Due to COVID-19 and the new norm, many businesses were heavily impacted and had to scale down their operations  to turn on their surviving mode. 

However, as we are nearing the year end, we wanted to find out if the situation was improving? Were the sales activities severely hit throughout this period? We’ve performed an analysis of our internal data and prepared a thorough breakdown of the  report. 

Let’s dig in and look at the updated insights provided by our data science team consisting of leads across 5 countries in the Southeast Asia region. The outcome might surprise you!

1. Companies have tripled their digital lead generation initiatives, resulting in a competitive bidding price war

In our previous report, we pointed out how the rise in the number of online leads have doubled since the beginning of the lockdown. It’s now September and the numbers are still on the rise. Online leads have increased by 2-3 times compared to the post-lockdown period.

2. The cost of online advertising increased

As Facebook data shows, the price bid for ads is at an all time high. Cost-per-lead (CPL) increased by 37% and is expected to rise in Q3. This has happened due to the intense demand for the digital ads post-lockdown, when the economy was expected to bounce back.

Thus, companies are expected to yield 30% less leads than they would have accounted for. In order to bid more effectively, we recommend that you consolidate all ad spend under one digital advertising expert.

3. Prospects’ overall engagement is all time high but average call length has dropped

When Covid19 hit, engagement kept steadily increasing past the opening of the economy. Sales activities were expected to be slow, however, our data proves otherwise: since March, the prospects’ engagement has continued to ramp up. Call acceptance rate tripled but the average call length has dropped to about 2 minutes).

4. Concalls as the new norm

According to our records, the concalls have replaced a significant amount of the physical meetups despite alleviated Movement Control Order rules. However, we have seen that physical meetups yielded better conversion results to sales.

Prospects Behaviour have changed with the rise of Super Apps 

After analyzing more than 5 million lead logs, we found out that the first 15 minutes after the lead submission  is the golden window of opportunity. Super apps like Uber & Airbnb have spoiled consumers with services that are instantly gratifying. This has caused leads to go cold faster than ever.   If you’ve made the call 30 minutes later and missed the first 15 minutes golden opportunity window, you would have 14x less chance to close the prospect. Anything past 24 hours, is as good as a dropped lead.

The data speaks for itself: with SalesCandy you can increase your sales conversions and be able to engage the leads instantly after submission. 

If you want to improve your sales process and maximise the number of sales closed, don’t hesitate and talk to us now! Only proactive ones get the best. 

You also can download the full report here.