Guide · Lead response
Where your leads leak
Most small businesses have more enquiries than they think, and the ones they win are the ones that get answered first. Here is where enquiries go quiet, and what catching every one of them looks like.
47%
of leads receive no response at all.
21×
A lead contacted within five minutes is 21 times more likely to qualify than one contacted at thirty minutes.
The five-minute rule
Speed works because of timing, not keenness. At five minutes they are still on your site with the problem in front of them, and by thirty they have two more tabs open and someone else has already replied in one of them.
The four places it leaks
- After hours. The enquiry lands at 8:40pm and the reply goes out at 9am, which leaves twelve hours between the moment they were ready to book and the moment they hear from you.
- The inbox nobody owns. The form emails a shared address and everyone assumes somebody else replied.
- The front doors. Instagram messages, the form, the phone, Google and word of mouth all bring work in, and with no single list behind them you are the thing joining them up.
- The second follow-up. The first message goes out reliably; the second one waits on you remembering it on a day you spent on site.
What catching them looks like
- An automatic reply that goes out in under five minutes at any hour, saying a real person will call and roughly when.
- A single place every lead lands, whichever door it came through.
- A follow-up sequence that runs whether or not anybody remembers it.
- An alert that reaches the person who can answer the question, instead of a shared inbox.
- A record of where each lead came from, so your budget follows the channel that brings the work.
Where the person comes in
Answering first is a job for software; answering properly is a job for a person. A five-minute reply is a short note saying you have seen them and someone is on the way, and the selling still happens in the conversation that follows.
Do this tonight
Send yourself an enquiry through your own form at 9pm and time the reply. That number is yours, measured by you in a single evening, and it is the one worth moving first.
Want to know which door is worth covering first?
Up to eleven questions, about three minutes. Somewhere in it is a question about what happens when a form comes in at 7pm, and your answer to that one usually points at the door to cover first.
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