The published research on response time and lead outcomes, with the sample sizes, and what it means for how fast a broker actually needs to call.
Figures in this article describe the wider market and are drawn from the third-party sources listed at the end. They are not Lead Foundry results, and nothing here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve.
Response time is the most studied variable in lead handling and the least acted on. This summarises what the primary research actually found, with sample sizes, so the numbers can be checked rather than repeated.
A note on sourcing. Most articles quoting these figures cite other articles, usually published by companies selling dialler software. Both underlying studies are freely available and are cited directly here.
The Lead Response Management study was run by Dr James Oldroyd at MIT Sloan School of Management in partnership with InsideSales.com. It analysed three years of data from six companies, covering more than 15,000 leads and over 100,000 call attempts.
Two findings are quoted most: the odds of contacting a lead called at five minutes versus thirty minutes drop by a factor of 100, and the odds of qualifying a lead across the same interval drop by a factor of 21.
The interval is the finding: The collapse happens inside twenty five minutes. Most brokers reading this will assume the relevant comparison is same-day against next-day. It is not.
HBR audited 1.25 million sales leads received by 29 B2C and 13 B2B companies. Firms attempting contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker as those attempting an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as firms waiting 24 hours or more.
The behavioural findings are the more useful half.
| Responded within 1 hour | 37% |
|---|---|
| Responded in 1 to 24 hours | 16% |
| Took more than 24 hours | 24% |
| Never responded at all | 23% |
Average first response across the audit was 42 hours. Nearly a quarter never responded at all. The gap between the recommended benchmark and normal practice is the opportunity.
Source: Harvard Business Review, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads
Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later.
Harvard Business Review, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads
Response time decides whether the first attempt works. Attempt count decides everything after it. The Velocify research, derived from close to 3.5 million leads, found 93% of leads that convert are reached by the sixth call attempt, that six calls scheduled across a 15 day period improved contact rates by 110%, and that leads requiring more than seven calls are 45% less likely to convert.
It also found that 50% of leads are never called a second time. Salesforce reports 44% of reps stop after one attempt while 80% of sales require five or more follow-ups.
| Converted leads reached by the 6th call | 93% |
|---|---|
| Leads never called a second time | 50% |
| Leads that never receive one email | 59% |
| Reps who stop after a single attempt | 44% |
Speed and persistence are separate levers and both are largely unexploited. The first bar is achievable; the other three describe normal practice.
Source: Velocify contact-strategy research and Salesforce State of Sales
The studies are not about insurance or mortgage broking specifically, and that is worth stating plainly. What transfers is the mechanism rather than the exact multiplier: a consumer submitted a form because they were thinking about something, attention decays, and other firms are calling.
Two features of broking make the effect stronger rather than weaker. Enquiries are often shared across several brokers, which turns delay into a lost race rather than a slower conversation. And the underlying decisions are triggered by dated events, so a consumer who resolves the trigger elsewhere is gone permanently rather than temporarily.
The MIT Sloan lead response study, covering more than 15,000 leads and over 100,000 call attempts, found contact odds fall by a factor of 100 between a five minute and a thirty minute response, and qualification odds by a factor of 21. Harvard Business Review, auditing 1.25 million leads across 42 companies, found firms responding within an hour were 60 times more likely to have a meaningful conversation than those waiting more than a day.
Dr James Oldroyd at MIT Sloan School of Management, in partnership with InsideSales.com. It analysed three years of data from six companies covering more than 15,000 leads and over 100,000 call attempts, and is published as the Lead Response Management study.
Six. Research across close to 3.5 million leads found 93% of leads that convert are reached by the sixth call attempt, that six calls across a 15 day period improved contact rates by 110%, and that leads needing more than seven calls are 45% less likely to convert.
The studies are cross-industry rather than broking-specific, so the mechanism transfers more reliably than the exact multiplier. Two features of broking amplify it: enquiries are frequently shared between brokers, turning delay into a lost race, and the underlying decisions are triggered by dated events that resolve with or without you.