The most expensive hour
in your company

Background and Methodology

1. The Audit

In 2011, a research team audited 2,241 US companies by submitting inquiries through each company’s own web form and timing the response. A related study analyzed more than a million contact attempts to determine how the delay before the first attempt affected the likelihood of a qualifying conversation. The two data sets together measure both how quickly companies actually respond and how much that speed is worth.

2. The Key Findings

• Seven Times Likelier: Contact made within the first hour was approximately seven times likelier to qualify the lead than contact made one hour later, and roughly 60 times likelier than contact made the following day.
• 42-Hour Average: Among companies that responded within a month, the average response time was 42 hours. Only about a third responded within the first hour.
• 23% Never Responded: Nearly a quarter of the audited companies never followed up on inquiries their own marketing had generated.

Why the Delay Occurs

The delay is rarely the result of a decision. It emerges from the structure of most organizations. Marketing typically considers its work complete when a form is submitted, and sales typically considers its work to begin once a meeting is scheduled. The hours in between belong to neither department, and in most companies no named individual is responsible for them. The task falls to whoever happens to notice.

During that interval, the buyer’s interest is at its peak. They have just asked a stranger for help with a problem they cannot solve alone, and that interest declines by the hour from the moment they press submit.

The Cost of a Late Response

The timing of the first conversation affects more than the odds of qualification. A company that reaches the buyer while the problem is still front of mind establishes the benchmark against which every subsequent conversation is compared. A company that reaches the same buyer two days later is one vendor among several following up on the same lead, and is competing under materially different conditions.

A Written Response Standard

The research suggests that response speed is a function of process rather than budget. A workable standard fits on a single page. Every inquiry, regardless of source, lands in one queue, and one named individual is responsible for each inquiry until a conversation has occurred or the lead has been formally closed. The first attempt is made within one hour during business hours, and by 9 a.m. the following morning for anything received overnight. Each lead receives five attempts over ten days, by phone and by email, before it is marked closed, and whoever closes it records the reason.

Each week, three figures are reported: inquiries received, first attempts made within the hour, and first attempts that became an actual conversation with the person who submitted the form. The gap between the first two figures and the third is then visible to everyone.

In Conclusion

The audit demonstrates that the interval immediately after a form submission is among the most valuable and least managed periods in the entire sales process. Because the fix requires process rather than spending, it is frequently deferred in favor of new campaigns. For most businesses, the practical conclusion is that a documented response standard, consistently applied, will outperform a larger advertising budget applied to the same leads.