The Speed-to-Lead Problem: Why Response Time is Killing Your Sales

Episode Transcript

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Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome to the Marine Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Harry Casimir. This podcast is all about marketing your marine business, whether you are a boat dealer, boat builder, boat club, all in between. If you want to get more leads, more sales, and marketing that actually works, you are in the right place.

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And every episode we break down what’s working right now in the marine marketing space. There is no fluff, no generic advice, just real tactics you can take home and grow your business. This podcast is brought to you by Boat Marketing Pros, where we help marine businesses grow through digital marketing. Learn more at boatmarketingcourse.com. All right, let’s get into it.

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The speed to lead problem: why response time is killing your sales. Research shows that almost 80% of customers buy from the company that responds first. Yet most marine businesses take hours, sometimes days, to respond to leads. In this episode, we are going to cover why speed matters and exactly how you can fix it for your dealer. Here’s one of the things that we’re gonna cover in this episode.

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We’re gonna cover the wake-up call. We’re gonna go over the why this matters more in the marine industry than any other space. The reason you are slow, and we’re gonna do a deep dive, no feeling on this, right? And then we are going over the 15-minute solutions and how you can implement that. Let’s dive right in.

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The wake-up call. As I mentioned in the introduction, almost 78%, to be exact, of customers buy from the first company that responds to them. And this is a stat you can find everywhere and across the board. If you think about it, when was the last time that you reached out to a company and they never get back to you? I can guarantee you, if you were in a very, very bad need and there are few services of that company’s type around, I’m pretty sure you were upset.

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With that number, 41% of consumers expect a dealership response within 1 hour. So that’s the expectation, but the reality is almost 80% don’t get that. As you guys know, what we have seen over and over in the marine industry across the board takes way, way longer than that 1 hour. And every hour you wait to get back to that lead, your close rate drops drastically. The opportunity to put these leads in a warm category or a good possibility category is significantly decreased as the time goes by.

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So this is why it’s so crucial to understand those wake-up calls and what are some of the things that you need to know. And you might wonder why this matters more, especially in the marine space. Well, let me break this down. So the average boat purchase sell cycle at the moment is about 4+ months. So at least someone takes roughly about 4 months to fully make the final decision or at least sign on the dotted line.

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And when we talk about the sales cycle, we’re looking at when someone shows interest in the product that you are selling and they reach out to you. From there, that’s when the sales cycle starts until that person signs on the dotted line and they take the key from you this is the end of the cycle. On average, it takes about 4 to 5 months. What happens if you lose them at first, you may never get them back because think about your competitors that already reached out to them or they reached out to 2, 3 dealers, whoever called them first, there’s a good chance they go on with whoever they go on with. Unless of course, you’re the only one in town that has that one piece of inventory they need, but at the end of the day, there are too many options around.

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People now have more resources around. They can do their own research. They see what’s available. They’re not going to wait for you to get back to them. They will take action.

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And of course, when someone submit a lead to you, they are already comparing and shopping around. Across multiple dealers, multiple manufacturers’ websites, marketplaces. So when they get to you, it’s not because you’re the only one in town. It’s just that you may be the one that carry the one piece of inventory they have, the type of malo or the type of boat they want, you the one that have it. So the longer you wait to get back to them, the more chances that you are giving them to get away.

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So first impression, set the tone, get back to them right away, especially in the marine industry. A lot of things are not automated. So you want to make sure you are on top of getting back to the customer because that can set the entire relationship going forward.

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So what are the real reasons that you are slow to get back to your leads? We’re gonna, let’s do that. Deep on this. Again, this is not a personal statement to anyone, but it is true that you will get leads from all over the place. Phone calls, direct email, random person calling.

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You get leads from your website, leads from marketplaces, leads from social media, leads from you name it, from the brand you carry. You’re getting leads from at least 10 to 12 places depending on how you set up. And with those leads coming in from all those different places, and they are not centralized. If you do not have a centralization for your leads capturing, then it will be very, very hard for you to be on top of follow-up as well. The other piece is there is no clear ownership of who is responding to what.

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When the leads coming in, who’s taking charge of it? Do we have a system in place that automate that information? And if you do not have that, it’s one other reason why you are slow. Salespeople are juggling showroom traffic and phone calls. So if you have one or two people on your sales team, that’s a killer.

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This is why it’s crucial to understand what the dynamic is between the sales team, their scheduling, their workload, and how we are responding when a new phone call coming in, when a new email coming in, how are those leads are being distributed and making sure the salespeople have plenty of information, plenty of time so they can execute from a sales perspective. And if that’s not in place, that’s another reason you are slow.

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Manual process and sticky notes instead of a true system, a platform that automate, that keep everybody in check. That’s another reason you are slow. We are in 2026. Sometimes it blow my mind seeing that many, many dealers still using yellow pads and sticky notes just to track leads. I can only imagine what that looks like in terms of following up, who’s in charge of what, what some of the information that’s needed.

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Now I’m not saying that because there are a lot of dealers, I have spoken with hundreds and hundreds of dealers or maybe thousands of dealers over the years where I would say half of them don’t have any system whatsoever. They have manual process and a lot of sticky notes, and they are extremely successful businesses. It’s insane. So I’m assuming to some degree those things are working, but as we get into the age where a lot of things are moving to system and platforms, it’s crucial to have those things in place. So your manual process and your sticky notes instead of using a platform system, that’s one of the other reasons why you are slow.

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So how are we gonna solve all of these problems? Well, here’s the 15-minute solutions that we have for you. The first thing you want to do, set up automated email and text messages inside your CRM. If you do not have a CRM, start looking at getting one. And if you want recommendation, I highly recommend you go with notolead.com CRM, or obviously if you already have, whether it HubSpot or Salesforce or any other CRM that you are using, set up automatic email response.

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So when the leads comes in As soon as the leads hit your inbox, your CRM, there should be an automatic email that goes out. There could be multiple. The first one you want to go out is making sure whoever’s in charge of sales or the salespeople you want to receive this email, make sure they get that message like right away. The second piece is make sure that is very well communicated among your salespeople because there are information you want them to know so that when they call, they don’t look like a fool. Either you set up another email that when someone contacts you from your website, from social media, once they hit your CRM, they will get an email automatically that tells them, hey, we got your message, someone will reach out.

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Sometimes that’s all it takes. It doesn’t really need to be complex and nothing, just Hey, thanks for reaching out, so-and-so. If you can automate and personalize that message, even better, but you don’t have to. Just say, we got your message, thanks for reaching out, one of our team members will be in contact very, very soon. That is a long stop.

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I wouldn’t say bleeding, but because that person is just in the trends of things, they are willing And you just let them know you got the message, that alone is good enough. What’s next to follow is making sure whoever’s getting that lead do follow up because we just promised them we will follow up. But also, you can even take a step further, adding in a text notification. So text that person because everybody’s on their phone 24/7. Make sure you send them a text, say, “I got your message, we’ll be in touch.” And it’s okay to send both an email and a text if you want, and that will be fine.

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Everybody’s okay with that. And of course, create lead notification alerts on your phone as whether if you are the general manager or in charge of the business somewhere, integrator, wherever your position is, and if you are responsible for bringing leads or at least distributing leads, especially if you’re in the marketing space of things, business owner or general manager, you want to know, are we getting those leads coming in? And you can set up a notification on your phone to make sure whenever a new lead’s coming in, you see it. And so that way you make sure your sales team are on top of it. And assign clear ownership.

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Again, I have seen before where Some dealers will have one person and they have, you know, 6, 7, 8 salespeople and they have one person that would be in charge. And if that person’s sick and not showing up that day, and that person is responsible for all the leads that need to be distributed or even responds to, sometimes that person is not available, then boom, all those leads that’s coming in, they’re in shambles. What you want to do is set up a clear ownership for leads response and how those leads get distributed. And we’re gonna talk about a little bit on this. So that would be the first immediate first step option.

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Set up automated email and text, create a lead notification on your phone, and assign clear ownership. The next step on this you will need to take is implement a CRM if you do not have that in place. Get a CRM that can automate all the tasks we just mentioned. And you can create templates for every single one of the inquiries that coming in, because you will have different inquiries, different information that’s coming in. Someone may go to your website and they are looking at a specific boat.

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Inventory item, they contact you based on that inventory item, you want to respond based on that information, not the generic information. You can generic, but it’s good to showcase that you wish they reach the right person for the right information and you are getting back to them. You can automate that through templates within your CRM. And of course, track response time. This is the beauty of CRM.

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You will see of the 3,100 leads you got this month, you can see when the team responds, when was all of your automated message went out, and is your team responding on time and what that time frame looks like for each one of them. And of course, again, track the metrics, and so that helps you make adjustment to your system. The Third thing you can do for the 15-minute solution is add a chatbot. Add a chatbot to your website. That’s just one of the fastest, most efficient way to capture leads because sometimes people want someone to answer them right away.

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And that chatbot can serve as a lead capture, but also help streamline and filter people because someone comes to your chatbot, there’s a good chance they are very, very interested in buying something. And you can either answer them right away or have the chatbot get their information. That’s another way to get leads. Instead of someone click on contact information, they go to the contact page, the chatbot is super easy. When they click on that chatbot from your website, they will provide their name, maybe email address and phone number.

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And when you get the information from the chatbot, you would know what page they were visiting anyways. So you, when you get back with them, you can actually chat based on that information. And of course, set up automated lead routing. And what that means is who’s getting what and when, how. There’s a lot of different ways you can set up your automated leads distribution.

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One of the common ways is one-on-one. It’s basically if you have 6 salespeople on the hub and every time a lead comes in, it goes to the next person, to the next person and next person. So that really helps, but sometimes it’s tricky because you will have to create workflows so that if someone is not available, we will have to either mark them not available for the day or for the week. Or someone have to monitor this. Round robin works perfectly when you have a very consistent sales team that’s been around for a minute, for with you for a long time, and they know what they’re doing.

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Round robin is perfect. There are other sub, semi-manual automatic one as well, where you would assign it to someone, but because the CRM will trigger both whoever gets assigned the lead and potentially even paying additional salespeople or an assistant salesperson, a general manager assistant, to help them understand the lead is in the queue, make sure it gets assigned. That’s some type of automation you can create as well. And of course, one of the things that you would want to do is create accountability for response time goals. So a lot of times it’s not just about sales, sales, sales, but it’s managing, nurturing the leads that’s coming in.

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That means, are we touching base with them and what the timeline looks like? And you can attach those as part of your goals for your team. I know we unpacked a lot of information here in terms of We went over the wake-up call, you know, the numbers of people that goes with the first company that reached out to them, why this is very, very important to the marine industry and why you need to implement this. And we went over the 5 reasons why you are slow to get back to your leads and offering the 15-minute solutions, by breaking down, the first thing you will do is set up automatic response for email and text, create lead notification, and assign clear ownership for each of those leads. The next step within the 15-minute solution is set up, implement a CRM if you do not have one already, create response templates email that basically whenever someone’s submit information to you, that template is pre-built and personalized to get to them.

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And also within there, track response time as a metrics to ensure that you are capturing leads, those leads are getting response, and your team is on top of it. The third step within the 15-minute solution is add a chatbot to your website to capture leads. Set up automated lead routing, whether you use a round robin or a step-up type of lead assignment. And of course, create accountability for response time as part of your goals for your organization. And the last piece is really get buy-in from your team.

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This is it. I hope you get some nuggets on this in terms of how the speed-to-lead problem and why that is killing your sales and how you can fix it. That’s it for this episode. Please don’t forget to subscribe and share it with anyone in the marine space that needs to hear it. And we would love to hear from you, so drop us your questions or topics you would like us to cover in future episodes.

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And of course, if you need help implementing any any of the tactics we talk about, head on to bootmarketingpros.com. We would love to help you grow. I’m Harry Casimir. Thanks for listening. Now let’s get out there and make some waves.