Tesla Didn't Have a Lead Problem. It Had a Follow-Up Problem.

Before Jon McNeill officially became president of Tesla, he did a little investigating of his own. He visited eight Tesla locations as a customer, took a test drive at each one, and left his contact information behind.

You’d think at least one salesperson would call.

None did.

When McNeill started looking into the sales pipeline, he realized his experience wasn’t unusual. Thousands of people had test-driven a Tesla without receiving proper follow-up afterward.

That’s a pretty remarkable thing when you think about it. These weren’t people Tesla was trying to convince to pay attention. They had already shown up. They had already driven the car. So the interest was there.

The breakdown happened afterward.

And while most businesses aren’t Tesla, that part of the story probably feels familiar.

You may not need more leads

Your business may spend a lot of money trying to get people through the door, onto their website, or on the phone.

There’s paid advertising, SEO, now GEO and AEO, networking, referrals, social media, trade shows, and paid sponsorships. Depending on your business, getting one good lead can take a surprising amount of work.

And what happens when someone finally calls at 6:47 on a Tuesday afternoon when everybody is tied up or gone from the office?

They leave a voicemail. Maybe they fill out the form on the website. Or somebody answers, jots down their information and thinks, “I’ll call them back when I finish this.”

Then Wednesday happens.

This is where a lot of good leads disappear.

Not because the customer suddenly changed their mind, but because another company answered first.

People don’t usually wait around

Most of us do the exact same thing as customers.

If the AC quits working in July, you’re probably not leaving one voicemail and patiently waiting until tomorrow. You’re calling the next HVAC company because your house is getting hot.

If you need a roofer, an attorney, a dentist, or someone to fix something at your business, you usually keep looking until somebody helps you.

There is research behind this too.

Harvard Business Review published a study that found companies contacting an online lead within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to qualify that lead than companies that waited just one hour longer. Compared with businesses waiting 24 hours or more, they were more than 60 times as likely to qualify the lead.

The study also found that 23% of companies never responded at all.

And that study was published in 2011.

Customers haven’t exactly become more patient since then.

Usually, nobody is intentionally ignoring anyone

This is the part that’s easy to miss.

Most businesses with a follow-up problem don’t have uncaring employees sitting around refusing to call people back.

Quite the opposite. They’re usually busy helping the customers already in front of them.

The receptionist is answering another line. Someone is at a job site. The office manager is fixing a scheduling issue. A salesperson gets pulled into a meeting. Somebody writes a phone number on a sticky note that disappears under three other sticky notes.

We’ve all seen some version of it.

The problem isn’t effort. It’s what the process depends on.

When the next step depends on someone remembering to do something later, eventually something gets forgotten and the lead is lost in the process.

That’s where a better automated system can make a big difference.

What happens when the call doesn’t have to wait?

Say someone calls your business while your team is already on another call.

Vorwo Concierge can answer instead of sending them straight to voicemail. It can find out why they’re calling, answer common questions, gather the information your team needs and, when it makes sense, schedule the next step.

Then your team can see what happened without having to piece it together later.

• Who called?
• What do they need?
• Is it urgent?
• Did they book something?
• Does someone need to follow up?

That’s the kind of work that doesn’t necessarily need another person sitting at a desk waiting for the phone to ring. It just needs a reliable process behind it.

And your team still handles the part that matters most: the actual customer relationship.

Before you spend more to generate leads

This is what makes the Tesla story worth paying attention to.

They already had interest.

They already had people walking into showrooms.

They didn’t need to solve the top of the funnel first. They needed to fix what happened after somebody raised their hand.

It may be worth doing the same thing in your business.

• Pull up your missed calls from the last week.
• Look at your website inquiries.
• Think about what happens when someone calls after hours, during lunch, or while everyone is busy.

How quickly does that person hear back?

And who is responsible for making sure they do?

You might find that the next opportunity for growth isn’t another ad campaign at all.

It could already be sitting in your voicemail.

Don’t ghost your clients. See how Vorwo Concierge can help keep the conversation moving.

---

Source: Oldroyd, McElheran, and Elkington, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,” Harvard Business Review, March 2011.