# Speed to lead statistics: what the studies actually show _By Luka Brzin, Senior Product Marketing Manager_ Speed to lead is the time between a lead arriving and your first reply, and the research says the first minutes matter most. The famous numbers come from two studies led by the same researcher. A 2007 InsideSales.com and MIT analysis of six companies' call logs found the odds of reaching a web lead by phone were 100 times lower at 30 minutes than at 5. A 2011 Harvard Business Review study of 1.25 million leads found that firms that tried within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify a lead as firms that tried an hour later. Neither study measured closed deals, and most pages that quote them get at least one detail wrong. Below is what each study measured, when, with what sample, and what it does not show. ## Key takeaways - The 100x and 21x figures come from a 2007 InsideSales.com and MIT study of six companies. They compare the odds of reaching and qualifying a lead called within 5 minutes with one called at 30 minutes. They are not conversion rates. - The 2011 Harvard Business Review study found firms that tried within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify a lead as firms that tried an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or more. - In the same study's audit of 2,241 US companies, 23% never replied to a web lead. Those that replied within 30 days took 42 hours on average, not the 47 hours often quoted. - The 391% figure traces to a 2010 post by Leads360 (later renamed Velocify) that never says what the improvement was measured against. - No study here measured revenue. They agree on direction: a lead you hear about within a minute is worth more than one you find tomorrow. ## The numbers at a glance Each figure links to its original source. All were checked in October 2026. Statistic What was actually measured Source 100x Odds of reaching a lead by phone when called within 5 minutes vs at 30 minutes [InsideSales.com and MIT, 2007](https://www.mortech.com/hs-fs/hub/25649/file-13535879-pdf/docs/mit_study.pdf) 21x Odds of qualifying the lead, same comparison [InsideSales.com and MIT, 2007](https://www.mortech.com/hs-fs/hub/25649/file-13535879-pdf/docs/mit_study.pdf) 10x and 6x Fall in the odds of contact (10x) and of qualifying (6x) over the first hour [InsideSales.com and MIT, 2007](https://www.mortech.com/hs-fs/hub/25649/file-13535879-pdf/docs/mit_study.pdf) Nearly 7x Firms that tried within an hour vs an hour later: likelihood of a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker [Harvard Business Review, 2011](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads) More than 60x The same, vs firms that waited 24 hours or longer [Harvard Business Review, 2011](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads) 23% Share of 2,241 US companies that never replied to a test lead [Harvard Business Review, 2011](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads) 42 hours Average first reply among the companies that replied within 30 days [Harvard Business Review, 2011](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads) 391% "Improvement" for leads answered within one minute; no baseline given [Leads360, 2010](https://www.claimsjournal.com/services/newswire/2010/04/29/109332.htm) 1 of 114 B2B companies that sent a personal email within 5 minutes of a demo request [Workato, 2026](https://www.workato.com/the-connector/lead-response-time-study/) ## The lead response management study (InsideSales.com and MIT, 2007) **Who and when.** Dr. James Oldroyd, then at MIT's Sloan School of Management, analysed data from the InsideSales.com sales system with the company's CEO, Dave Elkington. They presented it on October 16, 2007, at MarketingSherpa's B2B Demand Generation Summit. The original study page survives as a [2008 printout](https://www.mortech.com/hs-fs/hub/25649/file-13535879-pdf/docs/mit_study.pdf); the current Lead Response Management website carries a rewritten version. **Sample.** Three years of data from six companies that generate and respond to web leads: more than 15,000 leads and more than 100,000 call attempts. **Definitions.** A contact was a call that reached a live person and lasted a set time, between 2 and 6 minutes depending on the company. A qualified lead followed each company's own definition, in some cases a lead that booked an appointment with a sales rep. **What it found.** - The odds of contacting a lead called within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. Between 5 and 10 minutes alone, they drop 5 times. - The odds of qualifying a lead drop 21 times between 5 and 30 minutes, and 4 times between 5 and 10 minutes. - Over the first hour, the odds of contact fall more than 10 times and the odds of qualifying more than 6 times. - Wednesday and Thursday were the best days to call. 4 to 6pm was the best time to reach someone; 8 to 9am and 4 to 5pm were the best times to qualify. - After about 20 hours, extra call attempts went with lower, not higher, chances of qualifying the lead. **What it does not show.** Revenue. The study says it "did not address close ratios." So "leads called within 5 minutes are 100 times more likely to convert", the most common retelling, is wrong twice: the 100x is about reaching someone, not buying, and it compares 5 minutes with 30, not with "later". The sample is six companies using InsideSales.com's software, not a cross-section of businesses. It shows what happened to leads called at different times, not that speed alone caused the difference: leads called within minutes may differ from leads called later. It was presented at a marketing conference and published on a vendor's site, not in a journal. And it is not the Harvard study, though it is often credited to Harvard. ## The Harvard Business Review study (2011) **Who and when.** "[The Short Life of Online Sales Leads](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads)" by James B. Oldroyd (Brigham Young University), Kristina McElheran (Harvard Business School) and David Elkington (InsideSales.com), in the March 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review. The full article needs a subscription. Same lead author as the 2007 study, different data. **An audit of 2,241 US companies.** The authors sent each company a web-generated test lead and timed the reply. 37% replied within an hour, 16% within 1 to 24 hours, 24% took more than 24 hours, and 23% never replied. Among the companies that replied within 30 days, the average first reply took 42 hours. **An analysis of 1.25 million leads.** The leads were received by 42 US companies, 29 selling to consumers and 13 to businesses. Firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as firms that tried an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or longer. Qualifying meant having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker. **What it does not show.** Closed deals or revenue. Anything about 5 minutes: the 21x figure belongs to the 2007 study, not this one. The 42-hour average leaves out the 23% who never replied, so a typical lead waited longer than that. And like the 2007 study, it compares what fast and slow firms achieved; it doesn't prove that speed alone made the difference. ## Where the 391% figure comes from The earliest source we could find is a sponsored post by Leads360, a lead management software company, on [Claims Journal's newswire on April 29, 2010](https://www.claimsjournal.com/services/newswire/2010/04/29/109332.htm). After analysing "several million leads", it says companies that responded within one minute achieved a "391% improvement". It doesn't say what improved or compared with what, and the whitepaper behind it is no longer online. Leads360 [renamed itself Velocify in June 2013](https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/leads360-rebrands-as-velocify), which is why the figure is usually credited to Velocify, often with a later date. Treat 391% as a vendor's claim with no published baseline. The same company's [April 2010 post on call attempts](https://www.insurancejournal.com/services/newswire/2010/04/14/108873.htm), based on more than 15 million leads, is more specific: a second call raised the chance of reaching a lead by 87% over a single call, half of all leads were never called twice, and six attempts was the best number. ## How long companies actually take to reply The best-documented figure is the Harvard audit's 42 hours, among companies that replied at all within 30 days. The "47 hours" on many lists is InsideSales.com's own number. A [September 2012 press release](https://www.insidesales.com/new-research-released-at-salesforce-comaes-dreamforce-2012-shows-companies-responding-faster-to-leads/) gives 46 hours and 53 minutes as the average response time across more than a dozen of its studies over five years, covering over 10,000 companies. It is not from the Harvard study. The same release says companies had made only 1.3 attempts on average before giving up, a figure some lists credit to Velocify. A more recent test points the same way. [Workato filled in demo requests at 114 B2B companies](https://www.workato.com/the-connector/lead-response-time-study/) (the page is dated March 2026). Only 1 of the 114 sent a personal email within 5 minutes, and none called within 5 minutes. Personal emails took 11 hours and 54 minutes on average, and nearly 1 in 5 companies never replied by email. Only 31% called at all, after 14 hours and 29 minutes on average. Workato sells lead-routing automation and 114 companies is a small sample, but the pattern matches the 2011 audit. ## Statistics we left out, and why - **"After 5 minutes, the odds of qualifying a lead drop 80%."** Not in either study. The 2007 study says the odds of qualifying fall 4 times between 5 and 10 minutes. - **Drift's lead response report.** It is widely quoted for the share of B2B companies that reply within five minutes. Drift's report pages now redirect to Salesloft, so we couldn't check its method or numbers, and retellings disagree even on its year. - **"78% of customers buy from the company that responds first."** Usually credited to a "Lead Connect" survey. We found no original report, date or sample. - **A 67% form completion rate credited to Formstack.** We found no Formstack report with that figure. For visitors who start your form and leave, see our guide to [form abandonment](/guides/form-abandonment). - **"The worst times to call are Friday afternoon and Monday morning."** Close, but not what the 2007 study says. It found Tuesday the worst day to reach someone and Friday the worst day to qualify, with Monday poor throughout. The worst hour to qualify was 1 to 2pm. ## What to do with these numbers Read the multipliers as direction, not forecast. Every study here points the same way: the odds of reaching and qualifying a lead fall fastest in the first minutes and keep falling for a day. None tells you how much revenue a faster reply will add for your business. The part most lists skip is that the clock starts when the visitor presses send, not when you see the lead. If your form's email lands in spam or a serverless function fails quietly, you can't reply in five minutes to a lead you don't know exists. Three steps, in this order: 1. **Store every lead the moment it arrives,** somewhere other than an inbox, so a failed email costs you minutes, not the lead. Our guide to a [contact form not sending email](/blog/contact-form-not-sending-email) covers the usual failures. 2. **Get an alert you'll see within a minute:** a Slack or Discord message or a phone notification, not a shared inbox checked once a day. 3. **Reply as a person,** by email or phone, while they're still thinking about it. OllieLeads does the first two for the form you already have: it stores every lead your form sends and alerts you by email, Slack or Discord within a minute, free for your first 500 leads ([pricing](/pricing)). If you'd rather compare options or build it yourself, our guide to [form backends for static sites](/guides/form-backend-for-static-sites) covers both. ## FAQ ### What is the 5-minute rule for leads? It's the advice to contact a new inbound lead within five minutes. It comes from the 2007 InsideSales.com and MIT study, which found the odds of reaching a lead by phone were 100 times lower at 30 minutes than at 5, and the odds of qualifying it 21 times lower. The study covered six companies and did not measure closed deals. ### Are leads called within 5 minutes 100 times more likely to convert? No. The 100x figure is about contact: the odds that a call reaches a live person and becomes a conversation of a set length. The study says it did not look at close rates. Its nearest figure to conversion is 21x for qualifying, which still isn't a sale. ### Where does the 391% statistic come from? From Leads360, the company later renamed Velocify, in a sponsored newswire post in April 2010. It says companies that responded within one minute saw a 391% improvement, without saying what was measured or against what. It isn't from Harvard Business Review or MIT. ### What is the average lead response time? The best-documented figure is 42 hours: the average first reply among the US companies in the 2011 Harvard Business Review audit that replied within 30 days, while 23% never replied. The often-quoted 47 hours is InsideSales.com's average across its own audits up to 2012. Workato's 2026 test of 114 B2B companies found personal emails took nearly 12 hours on average. ### Do 78% of customers buy from the first company to respond? We couldn't find a source for it. It's usually credited to a "Lead Connect" survey, but we found no report, date or sample to check, so we leave it out. Published with [SuperDuperSEO](https://superduperseo.com/published-by)