Glossary
What is Speed to lead?
How fast you answer a new inquiry. The first business to respond usually wins the client, so minutes matter more than polish.
Also written as lead response time.
Speed to lead is the time between someone raising their hand (a form, a call, a message) and getting a real response. A widely cited Harvard Business Review study found that companies that responded within an hour were several times more likely to qualify the lead than those that waited even one hour longer, and most companies took far longer than that.
Why it decides so much
People contact more than one provider and tend to go with the first one that responds helpfully. Answering in two minutes with a useful reply beats answering tomorrow with a perfect one.
How to get it to seconds
An instant automatic reply that asks one good question, a missed call text back, and an AI agent or voice agent that answers and books around the clock, all logging into your CRM.
