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How fast should you answer a new lead?

Last updated October 21, 2026

The short version

  • As fast as you can, on every channel, including nights and weekends.
  • The research points one way: leads answered quickly are more likely to turn into real conversations.
  • Be careful with the statistics you see online. Many cannot be traced to a source.

What the research found

Harvard Business Review published “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” in 2011 (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington). The researchers looked at how companies handled leads that came in through their websites. Their conclusion: most companies are not responding nearly fast enough, and answering within the hour makes a lead far more likely to qualify.

An earlier study from 2007, run by MIT professor James Oldroyd with the software company InsideSales.com, looked at web leads across several companies over several years. It measured how quickly salespeople reached leads and how often those leads became qualified. Its authors say it did not measure sales closed. It is also linked to a software vendor, so we treat it as a useful signal and not as proof.

What the research does not tell you

Neither study tells you how many extra customers you will win by answering faster. That depends on your business, your leads and how you follow up. This is why our missed lead calculator uses an example rate you can change, and why we do not promise results.

Statistics to be careful with

You will see claims such as “customers buy from the first company to respond” and sweeping multipliers for answering within minutes. Many trace back to a single 2007 vendor study, or to no source at all. We do not use them. Ask for the source before you rely on any of them.

How to measure your own response time in ten minutes

  1. Fill in your own web form from a personal phone, once at a quiet time and once after hours. Note when you sent it and when the first reply arrived.
  2. Text and call your business number the same way. See whether a person, a recording or nothing answers.
  3. Send a message through your site chat and your social inboxes, if you have them.
  4. Write down the slowest result. That is your real response time, because a lead only needs one slow experience to go somewhere else.

What to do about it

That is what we build and run. Our system answers every new lead in under 5 seconds, qualifies them and books the serious ones on your calendar. Test it yourself, or run your own numbers.

Test us now Missed lead calculator

Sources