How To Follow Up With Leads: The 4 Steps Every Lead Takes Before They Pay You

If people fill in your form and then never buy, I know how frustrating that is, because I've been there with my own businesses, and what I found when I read every message on 244 of our own leads at V8 Media is the reason I made the video above.

Owners Blame The Ads Because The Ads Are The Only Part They Can See

When leads don't buy, the first thing most owners do is blame the leads and change the ad.

The ad is the only part of the process you can actually see: you can open it, you can see what it costs and you can see how many leads it brought in.

What happens after the form is different, because most owners I talk to don't track it, and if you don't track it you can't measure it, and if you don't measure it you can't fix it.

That gets expensive, because a new ad just brings in new leads that you lose in exactly the same way.

Why Leads Don't Convert: We Never Got Back To 92 Of Our Own 244 Leads

On 30 September 2026 we took 244 leads who had asked to work with us and had not bought from us yet, and we read every message, every email, every WhatsApp chat and every recorded call.

110 of the 244 had replied to us at some point, which is almost half. The other 134 never did.

The hard part came next.

We never got back to 92 of the 244, which is almost 4 in 10. They asked a question we never answered, asked for a call we never made, or our message never arrived.

Those 92 sit across both groups: some replied and we went quiet, and some never replied because our message never reached them.

15 of those 92 were clearly a strong fit for what we do, so we most likely could have helped those 15 businesses and we never even got back to them.

• One business sent us a voice note, and we answered it three and a half weeks later.
• One business asked a simple question, and nobody answered.
• One asked us to call back, and we did not.
• Our automatic first WhatsApp failed on 40 leads, about 1 in 6, and on 30 of those 40 every WhatsApp we sent failed.

88 of the 244 looked like the wrong kind of business for us, or not a real business, judging only by what they typed into our form. That is 36 in every 100.

I have to be honest about that number. Only 24 of the 244 ever had a real phone conversation with us, about 1 in 10, so we never spoke to most of those 88 and I can't tell you as a fact that they were wrong for us.

Only A Small Part Of Your Leads Are Ready To Buy Today

Out of 100 leads who have never heard of you before, I think 5 to 10 are ready to buy right now. That is what we see in our own businesses, in South Africa, and it is not a study.

Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute gave a similar rule of thumb in 2021: only about 5% of business buyers are looking to buy in any three months, and the share depends on how often people buy what you sell.

Where the lead came from changes the number too. Implisit, in research published by Salesforce in November 2014 across hundreds of companies that sell to other companies, counted only about 36 customers from every 1,000 referral leads, about 16 from every 1,000 website leads and about 10 from every 1,000 search ad leads.

Wherever the lead came from, most of them never became customers.

That is why what you do after the form decides whether you get paid. I go deeper on this in why 95% of your leads don't convert.

The Lead Follow Up Process: Every Lead Takes The Same Four Steps Before They Pay You

There are four steps, and they happen in the same order in every business that sells through leads: you get hold of them, you talk until you know they want what you sell, you sell on a call or a visit, and you collect the cash.

If one step doesn't happen, the next one can't happen either.

Here are three examples: a plumber with a burst geyser, a clinic that does microneedling, and an agency like ours.

Step 1, Get Hold Of Them: Phone Every Lead Within Five Minutes, And Keep Phoning Until You Reach Them

I think talking to a real person is what makes people comfortable enough to buy, but only 24 of our 244 leads ever had a proper phone conversation with us.

Five minutes is our rule for our own team, because every minute you wait is a minute for them to phone somebody else. If you can't do that, at least phone in the first hour.

The hour is what the study measured. It is a Harvard Business Review study from March 2011, across 1.25 million online leads from 42 US companies. Companies that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to have a proper conversation with the person who decides as those that tried an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as those that waited a day or longer.

The study compared companies with each other, so it can't tell you what happens to one specific lead, but the companies that tried within the hour were far more likely to talk to the person who decides.

Phone first. If they don't pick up, send a WhatsApp and an email straight away so they know who phoned. A missed call is not a no.

Make Sure Your First WhatsApp Actually Arrives

Our automatic first WhatsApp failed on 40 of our 244 leads, and we only found out much later.

Fill in your own form with your own phone number and see what arrives. On WhatsApp, one grey tick means the message was sent but has not been delivered, and two ticks mean it was delivered.

How Many Times To Follow Up With A Lead: Phone Six Times, Then Start Again In Three Months

If you phone once and give up, you are stopping far too early.

Velocify, a sales software company, published its own study in 2012 of almost 3.5 million leads from more than 400 companies. 93% of the leads that converted, meaning they became customers, had been reached by the sixth call attempt, so only 7 out of every 100 of those customers took more than six calls to reach.

It is a software company's own study, so treat it as a guide.

If you still haven't reached them after the sixth call, wait three months and then start the six calls again, because a single message after three months is easy to ignore.

Count how many leads you actually reached. Our post on which lead gen numbers to measure shows you how.

Step 2, Talk Until You Know They Want What You Sell: Answer Every Question, Then Agree On An Exact Time To Talk

The goal of the first chat is not to sell.

When you phone somebody, they are usually in the car or dropping a child at school, so the goal is to agree on a time when the two of you can talk properly.

Before you ask for that, read back through your chat with them and answer every question they have already asked.

Ask one question per message. Two of our leads got five questions in one message, and neither of them answered.

When they are ready, offer an exact time, and make it today or tomorrow, not next week.

If they are not ready, agree on the day you will message them again, and then actually do it.

Phone Them As Soon As They Book, And Never Cancel The Call To Ask For More Information

We cancelled 11 booked calls because we wanted more information first. Almost none of those people replied after that.

The better way is to phone the person the moment they book, get the missing information on that call, and keep the booking. If you need more information, ask for it and leave the appointment alone.

Send Three Reminders Before The Call, Because People Forget Appointments

People forget appointments, and I am the same: if a call is not in my calendar I am probably not going to remember it.

A review of 29 hospital studies by Hasvold and Wootton, published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare in 2011, found that reminders cut missed appointments by about a third, and that a phone call from a person cut them by 39%.

Those were hospital patients and not sales leads, so send three reminders to be safe: the evening before, the morning of the call, and an hour before. You can send these as messages.

Make each one sound like a person wrote it.

Step 3, Sell On A Call Or A Visit: Understand What They Need First, Then Tell Them Honestly If You Can Help

You are going to have to sell.

Selling properly has two parts, and we normally do them as two separate calls.

In the first part you only ask questions: what they want done, when they want it, what they have set aside for it and who decides.

The person starts to trust you, because you took the time to understand the problem before you gave them a price.

This first part is also the only honest place to decide whether somebody is a fit. We marked 88 leads as a weak fit from what they typed into a form, and we should have decided that on a call.

If you can't help them, say so, and tell them who can.

If you can help, the second part is where you show them what you would do, what it costs and what they can realistically expect.

Jordan Belfort, the sales trainer, writes in Way of the Wolf (2017) that a person only buys when they are certain about three things:

• The product: that it works for someone like them.
• The salesperson: that you know your job.
• The company: that it is solid.

That is his framework, not research.

Step 4, Collect The Cash: Send The Quote The Same Day And Follow Up Until They Have Paid

A yes is not a payment.

You have been paid when the money is in your account.

Before you hang up or leave the house, tell them when the quote will arrive and when you will phone them about it. Then send the quote, the invoice or the payment link the same day.

One business had a proper call with us and then heard nothing from us afterwards.

If they go quiet after the quote, phone and message them again, up to six calls. Write like a person who has been thinking about their problem, and not "have you seen the quote?" three times in a row.

Ask These Four Questions About Every Lead That Did Not Buy, And Stop At The First No

This homework costs you time and no extra money, because you have already paid for these leads.

Open your last three leads that didn't buy, wherever they landed. Ask these four questions about each one, in this order.

Stop at the first no. That is the step where you lost that lead.

When I did this with our own 244 leads, we never got back to 92 of them, and a new ad would not have answered a single one of those.

How To Follow Up With Old Leads: Send A WhatsApp Follow Up Message That Says Sorry And Asks One Question

I don't think it is too late to go back to the leads you never answered.

Say what happened, say sorry and ask one question.

Read the whole chat history before you write anything, and match your message to the last thing that happened:

• They told you when to come back: "You said to check back after the school holidays. Is this a better time?"
• You talked, and then they went quiet: "We chatted a few months ago about getting more customers. Is that still something you're working on?"
• They never answered at all: "You asked us about getting more customers. Are you still looking for help with that?"

If there is no reply, phone once. If there is still nothing after that, wait three months and start the six calls again.

If You Did All Four Steps And They Still Did Not Pay, Look At Your Ads And Your Page

Sometimes it really is the ads.

If you did all four steps properly and they still didn't pay, look at what the ad promised and what your page says.

When the ad promises one thing and the call offers another, you get leads who are confused about what you sell or who can't afford it, and you can't fix that by phoning more. We wrote about the usual causes in why your Facebook ads are getting bad leads and in how to improve your Google Ads lead quality.

Just check the four steps first, because checking them costs you an afternoon and no extra money.

If the part you need is more leads coming in, this is how we do it with our lead generation system.

Check Every Number In This Article Against Its Source

• V8 Media's own audit of 244 leads who had not bought from us yet, 30 September 2026.
• Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011.
• Velocify, The Ultimate Contact Strategy, 2012.
• Implisit, published by Salesforce, sales benchmark research on companies that sell to other companies, November 2014.
• Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, The 95:5 rule, 2021.
• Hasvold and Wootton, review of 29 studies on appointment reminders, Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 2011.
• Jordan Belfort, Way of the Wolf, 2017.