09/04/2026
5 minutes vs. 30 minutes. Sounds like nothing, right?
It's a 100x difference in whether you ever reach that lead at all. That's from a study of 15,000+ leads and 100,000+ call attempts.
So how fast is the average business? 42 hours. 23% never respond at all. And 57% take more than a WEEK.
Meanwhile, 77% of customers now expect an immediate response.
Here's the good news in all of this: almost nobody is doing it well. Which means a small business with a fast, simple follow-up system can consistently beat a competitor with a much bigger ad budget.
Speed is the cheapest competitive advantage available to you right now. 🏃
Full research here: https://makeitloud.net/research/the-cost-of-a-slow-lead-response/