Insights · 11 November 2026 · 5 min
Lead follow-up: why speed makes the difference
An enquiry through your site, a trade fair contact or an open quote: the longer you wait, the colder the contact. What research says and how to handle it in practice.
What the research showed
In 2011 Harvard Business Review published research by James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington. They sent test enquiries to 2,241 US companies and measured how quickly they responded.
- 37% responded within an hour.
- 24% took longer than 24 hours, and 23% never responded at all.
- The average response time was 42 hours.
- Companies that made contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that responded an hour later, and more than sixty times as likely as those that waited 24 hours or longer.
What it means for you
The research is American and not new, and your market is different. The lesson still holds: someone who just made an enquiry is thinking about the problem now. A day later that attention has moved on, to something else or to a supplier who did call.
This applies beyond web forms. Trade fair contacts, open quotes and people who downloaded a brochure all cool down as time passes.
Why follow-up gets left behind
- Salespeople are busy with customers who are about to sign.
- Enquiries arrive outside office hours or in busy weeks.
- Nobody owns the list of trade fair contacts.
- A quote has gone out, but nobody calls about it.
How to organise it
- Agree a maximum response time: within one working day, and within an hour during office hours where possible.
- Decide who calls which lead and what happens after the call.
- Call, do not only email: a conversation tells you more than a confirmation email.
- Record the outcome per contact, so nobody calls twice and nobody is forgotten.
- Review the open leads every week.
Outsourcing to a calling team
If your own team has no time for it, a calling team can take over follow-up: calling enquiries and open quotes, qualifying them and passing warm contacts to your salesperson with a note.
At Velora Connect this starts with a test campaign of 20 calling hours for €1,000 excluding VAT. Each week you see the outcome per contact.
Sources
- Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review, March 2011 (vol. 89, no. 3).
- The figures as summarised by SmartCompany, "Are you letting online leads go cold?" (July 2011).
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