Speed to lead for MCA and business loan brokers

The research everyone quotes is a 2011 Harvard Business Review article with two findings. First, an audit of 2,241 US companies sent a test web lead to each: 37% responded within an hour, 24% took more than a day, and 23% never responded at all. Among those that answered within 30 days, the average first response took 42 hours. Second, a separate study of 1.25 million leads at 42 companies found that firms that tried to make contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that tried even an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or longer.

That research is about web leads in general, not funding leads, and it is old. Funding is, if anything, faster: a merchant short on cash this week fills in two or three forms in an evening and signs with whoever sends a clear offer first. Treat the one-hour mark as the outer limit, and five to fifteen minutes during business hours as the target.

Speed to lead is the time between the lead arriving and the first real attempt to reach the merchant: a call, or a text if you have consent to text. An automatic email does not count. Measure it per source and per rep, because the average hides the problem: web applications at 2pm get called fast, and the ones that arrive at 7pm on a Friday wait until Monday.

• Pull last month's leads with their created time and the time of the first logged call.
• Split by source (web form, live transfer, purchased list) and by hour of arrival.
• Look at the slowest quarter, not the average. That is where funded deals are being lost.

Most delay comes from nobody being sure whose lead it is. Pick one rule and write it down:

In our CRM an imported list can be assigned to one rep or spread round robin between reps, and a merchant who applies through a rep's personal application link is assigned to that rep. Every lead carries its source, so the lead import and the source report stay connected.

A lead that lands in a list nobody is looking at is not assigned in any useful sense. When a merchant applies through our application form, the assigned rep gets a task and a timeline entry on the new lead, with the statements already attached. Reps who live on their phones can work the lead list and tap to call from the mobile browser. Whatever system you use, test it: submit a fake application at 6pm and see how long it takes for someone to call.

The first call is not a pitch. It is three questions that decide whether there is a deal: roughly how much the business deposits a month, whether it has any advances or loans being paid daily or weekly now, and what the money is for. Then ask for the last three to six months of bank statements while you have them on the phone. If they already sent statements with the application, confirm the numbers and say when they will hear back.

Log the call and its outcome on the lead, even when nobody answers. An attempt counter that shows three missed calls in an hour followed by nothing for two days is the clearest picture of where leads go cold.

Calling and texting quickly is only useful if you are allowed to. Under the FCC's rules for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, autodialed or prerecorded marketing calls and texts to a cell phone need the person's prior express written consent, and the Ninth Circuit has held that this covers business owners' cell phones too. Telephone solicitations are limited to 8am to 9pm at the called party's location, and a request to stop, made by any reasonable means (a reply of STOP counts), has to be honored within ten business days. State rules can be stricter. Our application form stores the consent text the merchant agreed to, word for word, with the date, on the lead.

This is general information, not legal advice. Have your own counsel review your consent language and calling practices.

1. Write down the routing rule and who covers evenings and weekends.
2. Make sure every new lead creates a task or alert for a named person.
3. Set the target: first attempt within 15 minutes in business hours, first thing the next morning otherwise.
4. Script the first call around three questions and the statement request.
5. Log every attempt with an outcome.
6. Review the slowest leads every week, by source and by rep.