How fast should you respond to a new lead?

What the research found

A widely quoted study found that calling a web lead within 5 minutes, rather than 30, gave far better odds of reaching and qualifying that lead. It is the Lead Response Management study run by InsideSales.com with Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT and presented in 2007^[1].

• Method. It examined 3 years of data across six companies that respond to web leads, covering over fifteen thousand leads and over one hundred thousand call attempts^[1].
• Contact. The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes dropped 100 times^[1].
• Qualification. The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes dropped 21 times^[1].
• The first hour. The odds of contacting a lead decreased by over 10 times in the first hour^[1].

A later article by the same researcher in Harvard Business Review opens with the finding that most companies are not responding nearly fast enough^[2].

How much weight to put on those numbers

Put weight on the direction and less on the exact multiples. The study is from 2007, it covered six companies, it measured phone calls to web leads, and it was run with a company that sells lead response software^[1]. Its definition of a qualified lead also varied, because each company had its own way to mark one^[1].

None of that makes it wrong. It makes it a strong signal from a narrow sample. A homeowner asking for a roof quote in 2026 is not the same buyer as a web lead called by one of six unnamed companies in 2007, and texting did not play the part it plays now.

What the study does support, plainly, is this: the first few minutes after a request are worth more than any other few minutes. Build your process around that, then check it against your own numbers.

A response plan by channel

Each channel needs its own first response, because a caller, a form filler and a texter expect different things. Write the plan down so it does not depend on who is in the office.

• Phone calls. Answer live when you can. When you cannot, a short automatic text keeps the caller from moving on; see missed call text back.
• Website forms. Send an automatic confirmation that says who will follow up and when, then have a person call or text within minutes during business hours.
• Texts. Reply in the same channel. A person who texted does not always want a call back; ask before you ring them.
• Messages from your Google Business Profile or social pages. Treat them like texts. They are leads, not comments.

Industry guidance expects a business to get a consumer's consent before texting and to give them a way to revoke it^[3], and says standardized "STOP" wording should be used for opt-out instructions^[3]. Rules vary by state and situation, and your own counsel has the final word.

What to do after hours

After hours, send an honest automatic reply that says when a person will respond, and keep that promise. A fast "we will call you at 8" beats silence until noon, and it beats a promise nobody keeps.

1. Decide your after-hours promise: first thing next morning, or a set time.
2. Put that promise in the automatic reply to forms, texts and missed calls.
3. Start each morning with the overnight leads, oldest first, before anything else.
4. Keep a separate path for urgent jobs that cannot wait until morning.

Be plain in the reply about what happens next. If a person will not see the message until morning, say morning. People forgive a wait they were told about far more readily than one that surprises them, and a broken promise costs more than an honest delay.

Set up an instant notification

An instant notification puts every new lead in front of the person who will call it, the moment it arrives. Without one, a form sits in an inbox until someone checks.

In GoHighLevel, the internal notification action in a workflow can alert the right people by email, in-app notification, SMS or WhatsApp^[4]. It can target individual users, user roles or specific teams^[4]. A simple version: when a form is submitted, notify the person on call with the lead's name, phone number and what they asked about.

Keep it to one alert per lead to one owner. When five people get every alert, each assumes someone else called.

Measure your own response time

Measure the minutes between a lead arriving and the first human reply, every week. That one number tells you whether the plan is working.

Pull ten recent leads. For each, note when it arrived and when a person first replied. The median tells you more than the average, because one lead left over a weekend can swamp the rest.

If you want this built for you, our Conversation pillar is about every inquiry getting an answer, and the owner's dashboard in our Intelligence pillar shows response time alongside leads and bookings.

Related

• Conversation: respond
• Missed call text back: what it is and what to send.

Sources

1. Dr. James Oldroyd and InsideSales.com, copy hosted by Mortech, The InsideSales.com/MIT Lead Response Management Study (2007). https://www.mortech.com/hs-fs/hub/25649/file-13535879-pdf/docs/mit_study.pdf, accessed November 1, 2026.
2. Harvard Business Review, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (March 2011). https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads, accessed November 1, 2026.
3. CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices (May 2023). https://api.ctia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/230523-CTIA-Messaging-Principles-and-Best-Practices-FINAL.pdf, accessed November 1, 2026.
4. HighLevel Support Portal, Workflow Action: Internal Notification. https://help.gohighlevel.com/support/solutions/articles/155000003202, accessed November 1, 2026.

Researched and drafted with AI from the sources listed. Reviewed and approved by Marcus Barber before publishing.

Digital Solomon runs GoHighLevel, Pabbly Connect and Ranked.ai in its own work. They are the only tools these guides name. This page has no affiliate links.

Digital Solomon also builds client systems on GoHighLevel.