With Dreamforce ’09 on the horizon, we decided to put both the attendee’s and the booth sponsor’s remote sales departments to the test. What we discovered was shocking, and we’ll get to that­but first, our sneaky plan.

We dreamt up fictional email addresses and phone numbers unique to this study (does Rockly Strongbeard ring a bell?) and filled out thousands of web forms on websites of those attending and sponsoring Dreamforce ’09. Our hope was to receive compelling data that would give us insight into each company's response strategies, including: method, media, persistence, and time-lapse.

Here’s a little taste of our findings: 60% of you never even gave our pretender a response, while those who did respond took an average of 23 hours to do so. It’s obvious to state that not responding to a lead is just plain bad for business. However, you may not be aware of a recent study done by MIT showing a dramatic increase in sales when a remote sales agent can respond to a lead within 5 minutes. And of all the 2,700 companies we audited, only 16 responded by phone within 5 minutes of their web form being filled out.

And that’s just bad for business.