The numbers behind the wait.

The core finding

Whoever replies first wins the work.

Across two decades of lead response studies, one pattern holds. The business that answers an enquiry first wins the large majority of the time, and the advantage decays within minutes.

Note on the 21x figure: this comes from platform data analysing millions of contact attempts, not a randomised controlled trial. We treat it as a strong directional finding that has been reproduced for almost twenty years, rather than a precise law. We use the cautious end of these ranges everywhere on the site.

The cost of the wait

Most enquiries are answered slowly, or never.

The reason speed is such an advantage is that almost nobody does it. The average business takes the better part of two days, and a large share never reply at all.

Follow up

One try is not enough, and most firms stop there.

Winning the job is rarely about the first message alone. It takes persistence that most businesses never apply.

Our calculator

How we estimate your lost revenue.

The Lost Lead Calculator on our site turns these findings into a pound figure, conservatively. Here is exactly how it works, so you can judge it for yourself.

We take your monthly enquiries and assume a small share of them are genuine jobs lost specifically because the reply was too slow or never came. That share is set low, and lower again if you already reply quickly, in line with the response time research above. We multiply by your average job value over a year, then show a recovery figure of 75 percent rather than 100, because answering first wins back most of the lost work, not all of it. It is an estimate to start a conversation, not a quote. Your discovery call replaces every assumption with your real numbers.

Sources

Where these numbers come from.

• MIT and InsideSales, Lead Response Management Study (Professor James Oldroyd), 2007. The five minute response window and the 21x and 100x figures.
• Harvard Business Review, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” (Oldroyd, Elkington and Trailer), 2011. Audit of 2,241 US companies. Average response time, the share never contacted, and the decay in lead quality.
• Lead Connect, 2024. The 78 percent first responder figure.
• Velocify, lead response and follow up research, reported by Forbes. The average number of follow up attempts versus the optimal.
• Home services and trade lead timing benchmarks, 2024 to 2026. The share of enquiries arriving after hours.

These are third party studies, not our own. Where a figure is platform or vendor data rather than peer reviewed research, we have said so above. We will update this page as we gather our own results across the firms we work with.