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The average American adult checks their phone an astounding 110x a day.

Therein lies the foundation for what makes text messaging such a powerful tool for connect with leads, getting more responses from them, and ultimately converting them at a much higher rate.

Consider that texting has a 98 percent read rate vs email’s 22 percent, and a 750 percent higher response rate than email. But these aren’t just arbitrary numbers about text messaging in general.

In a study by Velocify, they found that leads who are sent text messages during the sales process convert at a 40% higher rate than those who were not texted at all. That obviously could have a significant impact on any sales rep’s year-end numbers.

How texting is used however in sales can look different for different reps. Some run entire campaigns on texting, opting for its personal communication style and high impact. Others use SMS in conjunction with other channels such as emails.

Often, this looks like sending an initial email (which can contain more information than texting’s 140 character limit), then send a text message to draw the lead’s attention to it. Texting can also be used for very specific situations such as meeting reminders.

But texting isn’t solely for outbound messages. It’s also a powerful way to capture leads and lose less of them. Consider these two statistics.

1) 86 percent of people who call in to businesses are placed on hold.

2) A third of people say they immediately hang up when put on hold. That’s a lot of potential leads sales reps are losing right away.

But if reps gave leads a texting option instead, nobody would ever be put on hold, and reps could even have multiple conversations at the same time, rather than having to devote all their time to a single conversation.

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