Lead, inquiry

An inquiry is the moment a person or a company asks you for something: they wrote, called or left a request on your website. Many CRMs call it a lead. You do not know yet whether they need what you sell, can pay or have a date in mind, so it is not a confirmed sale opportunity. It is the first stage of the funnel and the only one the customer starts on their own.

In a CRM an inquiry is a new record with a time, a channel and a contact. A website form or a messenger creates it automatically. A phone call usually needs a seller to type it in by hand. Count every inquiry, spam and wrong numbers included, and close those with a reason such as “spam” or “wrong number.” This count is the top of your funnel, and every later conversion is measured against it.

For example, a website request at 11:40.

In a team of 2 to 10 sellers, inquiries come in through three or four channels at once. The first risk is simple: nobody owns them. Name one person per channel and one backup. An inquiry leaves this stage when a person has replied and a first conversation is held or booked. Where it usually stalls: a request lands on Friday evening, or in a messenger nobody opens, and sits there until Monday.

Each Monday the head of sales looks at three numbers: inquiries by channel, how many got a human reply within your response standard, and how many reached the Conversation stage. When inquiries grow and conversations stay flat, look at reply speed and at who owns each channel. Advertising comes later. This view tells you where to put effort before you pay for more traffic.

Two neighboring numbers sit next to this one. Lead response time shows how fast the first reply came, and cost per inquiry shows what each one cost in advertising. Qualification starts here too: a few short questions decide whether the inquiry becomes an active deal or closes with a reason. If many inquiries close with the same reason, say “no budget” week after week, check the advertising before you look at the sellers.

• Creating records only for contacts that look promising. Your conversion then looks better than it is. Create a record for every inquiry and close the bad ones with a reason.
• Leaving phone calls out of the CRM. Agree with the team that every call becomes a record the same day, with its channel and time.
• Counting an autoreply as an answer. The customer is still waiting for a person, so start the clock at the first human reply.
• Calling every inquiry an active deal. The pipeline fills up with contacts who never confirmed interest. Mark a deal active only when interest is confirmed and a next step with a date is in the CRM.

By Friday, the head of sales pulls last week’s inquiries from the CRM and from the call log and puts the two lists side by side. Every call without a record goes into the CRM with its channel and time. Then write down one owner and one backup for each channel and post the list in the team chat. Example (invented numbers): the call log shows 14 calls, the CRM shows 9 records, so five inquiries had no owner last week.

Six areas of the job on one map, with a self-assessment and a plan for your first month.