The short answer.
Reply to a real B2B enquiry within the hour if you can and the same business day at the latest, with a personal note that repeats the buyer’s problem in their own words, says exactly what happens next and by when, and asks one easy question. Leave out the price, the sales sequence and the calendar link until you have given them something useful.
Speed matters, but the research behind the famous numbers is older and narrower than most people quoting it realise. What a buyer remembers is whether the first reply came from someone who had read what they wrote. Our guide to why a website isn’t generating leads covers the thank-you page and the confirmation email; this one starts where that guide stops, at the first human reply.
What the response-time research actually says.
Almost every article on lead response time quotes the same few figures: reply within five minutes and you are 100 times more likely to reach the lead, reply within an hour and you are seven times more likely to qualify them. Both come from real work by the same researcher, James Oldroyd, with InsideSales.com. They are not the same study, and neither is recent.
| Study | What was measured | Headline finding | What to bear in mind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead Response Management Study, InsideSales.com with James Oldroyd (then at MIT Sloan), presented 16 October 2007 | Three years of call data from six companies: over 15,000 web leads and over 100,000 call attempts | The odds of contacting a lead called within 5 minutes, rather than 30, were 100 times higher; the odds of qualifying it, 21 times higher | A conference presentation of one vendor’s platform data, not a peer-reviewed paper. It measured phone calls, and it did not look at closed sales |
| “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads”, Harvard Business Review, March 2011 | Test web enquiries sent to 2,241 US companies; a separate analysis of 1.25 million leads at 29 B2C and 13 B2B US companies | 37% replied within an hour, 23% never replied, and the average reply took 42 hours. Firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as those that waited even an hour longer | Fifteen years old, US only, and a mix of consumer and business companies. “Qualify” meant a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker |
So the honest reading is this. Two pieces of data, from 2007 and 2011, both show that interest fades fast and that most companies are slow. Neither proves that a five-minute reply wins a six-month B2B deal, and neither was measuring email. We still act on them, because a same-day reply costs almost nothing and a slow one can cost the enquiry. But we would not promise anyone a multiplier.
What to take from it this week
Measure your own number before you chase anyone else’s. Take your last twenty real enquiries, note the time each arrived and the time the first human reply went out, and work out the median. If it is more than one business day, that is the first thing to fix, and it costs nothing but a rule about who replies.
The first 24 hours, step by step.
The work after a form is sent is a short chain of steps, each with an owner and a deadline. When one link is missing, the buyer feels it as silence. This is the chain we run for every enquiry on our own site.
- 0 minForm sentThank-you page says what happens next
- 1 minConfirmation email arrivesFrom an address a person reads
- 1 hourTriaged by a personBuyer, pitch or spam; owner named
- Same dayPersonal reply sentTheir words, one question, no price
- 24 hoursFree report deliveredThe useful thing, as promised
- Day 3One useful follow-upOnly if they have not replied
Prolinkage’s own enquiry process, November 2026. Times run from the moment the form is sent.
Two of these steps happen without a person: the thank-you page and the confirmation email. Our nine-leak audit treats those as leaks 4 and 8 and explains how to fix them. Everything from the triage onwards needs a human, and that is where most businesses lose the enquiry: it reaches a shared inbox, everyone assumes someone else has it, and the reply goes out on day three.
The fix is a single rule written down: who reads new enquiries, by what time, and who covers when they are away. If that rule does not exist, write it today.
Triage: a real buyer, a pitch or spam?
Before anyone writes a reply, someone has to decide whether the message deserves one. On our own site, when we classified every form submission between 15 September and 5 November 2026 by hand, most were tests, spam, vendor pitches or impersonation attempts. Replying to all of them at the same speed would have slowed the replies to the few people who wanted to buy.
Our triage takes a few minutes per entry. We read the whole message, then check four things.
- Does the problem sound like theirs? A buyer names a business problem in their own words. A pitch describes what the sender can do for you.
- Do the email, the website and the message belong together? A work address on the same domain as a real company website, writing about that company, is a good sign. A free-mail address claiming to be a director of a large firm is not.
- Is there a link to someone else’s calendar? Buyers rarely send you their booking link in a first enquiry. Sellers often do.
- Does it answer the question the form asked? Spam ignores the form. Pitches answer a different question.
| Type | What happens next | By when |
|---|---|---|
| Real buyer | Named owner, personal reply, any promised work started | Same business day |
| Unclear | A short, polite reply asking one clarifying question | Same business day |
| Vendor pitch | Filed, not answered | No reply |
| Impersonation | Flagged; no links clicked, no work sent | No reply |
| Spam or test | Removed from the lead count | No reply |
The detail on spotting pitches and impersonation is in leak 7 of our enquiry-path audit. The point here is order: triage first, so the real buyer’s reply is never queued behind a stranger’s sales pitch.
What a first reply has to do.
A first reply has one job: to prove that a competent person read the enquiry, and to make the next step obvious. It is not a proposal and it is not a brochure. In our experience it works well when it is short enough to read on a phone without scrolling much, and it contains six things.
- Their problem, in their words. One sentence that plays back what they wrote. It proves you read it.
- What happens next, and when. A specific time, such as “by 10am tomorrow, UK time”, not “shortly”.
- One useful observation. Something you noticed in a few minutes on their website. It shows how you think, which is what they are really evaluating.
- Anything optional, with its alternative. If you would like access to something, say what you will do without it.
- One question. Easy to answer in a line. Several questions turn a reply into homework.
- A way to reply to a person. A real reply-to address and an invitation to add anything they forgot.
This is how we reply to requests for our free report: a personal note, the report within 24 hours, and an offer, never a condition, to add their own numbers if they share read-only access to their analytics. If they would rather not, we work from public data and say so in the report. Being responsive is noticed. A client wrote in a verified Clutch review on 3 July 2024 that “Prolinkage was very responsive and always ready to get on a call if necessary” (President, Leopard Project Controls).
An annotated first reply.
Here is a first reply built on those six parts. The company and the person are fictional; the structure is the one we use.
Subject: Your free report request: Halden Freight Software
Hi Maya,
Thanks for sending this through this morning. You said demo requests from organic search have been flat since the site moved to a new platform in the spring, and you want to know whether that is a traffic problem or a page problem. 1
We have started on the report and you will have it by 10am tomorrow, UK time. 2 One early observation: two of your pages, /pricing/ and /plans/, both appear in Google for “freight software pricing”, and they describe the plans differently. That is worth checking before anything else. 3
If you are happy to share read-only access to Google Analytics, we will add your own numbers. If not, we will work from public data and say so in the report. 4
One question: when you say demo requests are flat, is that from your analytics or from your CRM? 5
If you forgot to mention anything, just reply to this email. It comes straight to the team. 6
The Prolinkage team
- Plays back the problem. Her words, her timeline, her question.
- A specific deadline. A time she can hold you to. Then keep it.
- Something useful first. Found in five minutes; proves someone looked.
- Optional access, with the alternative. Nothing she must do to get what she asked for.
- One question. Answerable in a line, and useful for the call.
- A person to reply to. Not a no-reply address, not a ticket number.
Not in it: a price, a capabilities deck, a booking link, a list of services. Illustration only; not a real enquiry.
Notice the length: around 140 words. Notice also what the reply does not try to do. It does not sell. The report sells, if anything does, because it shows the work. The reply’s only aim is to make the buyer glad they asked.
What never goes in a first reply.
Most bad first replies are not rude. They are written for the seller’s convenience. These are the habits we see most often, and why each one costs you the conversation.
A price list or a package menu
The buyer has told you a problem, not asked for a quote. A price before any diagnosis turns your reply into a comparison with every other price they have seen, and you will be judged on the number alone. We never put a price in a first reply. We discuss scope and price on a call, once we understand what the work involves.
An automated sales sequence
Five scheduled emails that ignore whether the buyer replied tell them that no one is reading. If your CRM sends follow-ups automatically, make sure a real reply stops the sequence, and that the first message is written by a person.
A calendar link before anything useful
“Book a time here” as the opening move asks the buyer to give you thirty minutes before you have given them anything. Offer the call after you have sent something worth discussing, and let them choose the time by email. Some buyers prefer a booking link; let them ask for it.
A form within the form
Replying with a questionnaire, or asking again for details they already typed, tells them their enquiry was not read. Ask one question, and only one you could not have answered yourself from their website.
Qualify without interrogating.
Qualification means learning enough to decide whether you can help, and what a call should cover. It does not mean making the buyer pass an exam before you reply. Most of what you need you can find yourself, before you ask for anything.
| What you need to know | Where to get it | When |
|---|---|---|
| Who they are and what they sell | Their website and public profiles | Before the first reply |
| The problem, as they see it | Their form message | Already given |
| The one fact that changes your advice | Your single question in the reply | First reply |
| Their own performance data | Optional read-only access, if they choose | After the first reply |
| Budget, timing and who decides | A conversation | On the call |
The order matters. Budget is a fair question, but it belongs on a call, after you have shown that you understand the problem. A budget field on the form can stay, as long as it is optional; our own contact form keeps both service and budget as optional fields for that reason.
If you need a rule for the one question, choose the fact that would most change your advice. In the example above, whether “flat demo requests” came from analytics or the CRM decides whether the first job is tracking or traffic. Our guide on tracking website leads from first visit to CRM explains why that difference matters.
Follow-up when they go quiet.
Many good buyers do not reply to the first email. They are busy, they forwarded it to a colleague, or they are waiting for the thing you promised. Silence after one email is not a no. Silence after three emails that each added nothing is.
| When | What you send | What it must add |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | The personal first reply | Their problem in their words, a deadline, one question |
| Day 1 | The promised work, such as the free report | The useful thing, with the top three findings in the email body |
| Day 3 or 4 | One follow-up, only if there is no reply | A new finding, or the answer to the question they would ask next, and an offer of a short call arranged by email |
| Day 10 | A closing note | That you will not chase further, and that the door stays open |
That is four messages over ten days, and each one stands on its own. Never send “just checking in”. If you cannot think of something new to say, do not send the email. The closing note matters more than it seems: it leaves a good last impression if the buyer comes back months later, when the timing is right.
Track it simply. For each real enquiry, record the date of each message and whether they replied. Over a quarter, that tells you which step loses people. Our article on cost per lead versus cost per qualified opportunity shows how to turn those records into a number your finance team will trust.
Hand the context to whoever runs the call.
The worst moment for a buyer is the start of a call where they have to explain everything again. If the person who replied is not the person who takes the call, the context must travel with the lead. We prepare a short brief for every real enquiry before any call. It fits on one page.
- Who they are: company, role, website and what the company sells, from public sources.
- What they asked, in their words: the form message, quoted, not paraphrased.
- What we have sent, and when: the reply, the report and its main findings.
- What they told us since: the answer to our one question, and anything else they added.
- What we noticed: two or three observations worth testing on the call.
- Open questions: what we still need to learn, including budget, timing and who decides.
Keep the brief where the call owner will see it, and keep the buyer’s details private: share what the call needs and nothing more. AI can draft this brief well from the form entry and public pages, but a person should check every line before the call. Our article on what to automate first with AI explains how to decide where that review step sits.
The first-reply grader.
Paste a first reply you have sent, or are about to send, then tick what is true of it. The grader also scans your text for common warning signs. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type or tick is sent anywhere.
Paste a draft to scan it for prices, booking links and filler.
Your score: 0 / 8
Tick what is true of your reply. Each unticked line is worth fixing before you press send.
A score of seven or eight means the reply is ready. Below five, rewrite it using the annotated example in chapter 06 as a template, then grade it again.
Questions owners ask.
How fast should a B2B company reply to a website enquiry?
Within an hour if you can, and the same business day at the latest. The most-quoted research, from 2007 and 2011, found that interest fades within hours and that most companies reply far too slowly. Speed only helps if the reply is personal, so set a rule for who reads enquiries and by when.
Is the five-minute lead response rule still true?
It comes from a 2007 InsideSales.com presentation with researcher James Oldroyd, based on phone calls across six companies. It showed contact odds falling sharply after five minutes. It was never a peer-reviewed B2B email study, so treat it as a sign that speed matters, not as a rule.
What should I send after someone fills in a contact form?
An automatic confirmation within a minute, then a personal reply the same day. The reply should repeat their problem in their words, say what happens next and by when, offer one useful observation and ask one easy question. Leave out prices, decks and booking links.
Should the first reply include our prices?
No. A price before you understand the problem invites a comparison on cost alone and ends many conversations early. Give the buyer something useful first, then discuss scope and price on a call, once you know what the work involves.
How many times should we follow up if a lead goes quiet?
Two or three times over about ten days, and only when each message adds something new, such as a finding or an answer. End with a polite note saying you will not chase further. Never send a message that only says you are checking in.
Sources: Prolinkage’s own enquiry process and form entries, reviewed 6 November 2026; Clutch verified review, Leopard Project Controls, 3 July 2024. InsideSales.com and James Oldroyd, Lead Response Management Study, presented 16 October 2007; Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads”, Harvard Business Review, March 2011, figures as quoted by SmartCompany, July 2011.