What is speed to lead?

Why it matters

A new enquiry is at its warmest in the first few minutes. Many buyers contact two or three businesses at once, and the first useful reply often wins the conversation. When the first reply takes hours, the lead has usually moved on.

How to measure it

• Start the clock when the lead is created: a form is submitted, an ad lead arrives or a first WhatsApp message comes in.
• Stop it at the first reply sent by a person: a call, a WhatsApp message or an email.
• Report the median, not the average. A few very slow replies pull an average up and hide how most leads are treated.
• Split it by lead source and by salesperson, and keep working hours apart from nights and weekends.

Our lead response time calculator does the sums for you. Paste each lead's arrival and first-reply times to get your median, your slowest 10% and your share within target.

Five ways to make it shorter

1. Assign every new lead the moment it arrives, so nobody waits for someone to forward it.
2. Alert the owner where they already work, such as their phone.
3. Prepare a first reply for each lead source, so the first message takes seconds to send.
4. Outside working hours, send an acknowledgement that says when a person will reply, then keep that promise.
5. Review the slowest replies every week, by source and by salesperson.

Speed to lead in Superlane

In Superlane, a lead from your website goes to the next salesperson whose turn it is, arrives with its source attached, and sits in one pipeline where a deal with no next step stands out. See how lead capture works.