What Is Speed to Lead?
Speed to lead is the elapsed time between a prospect's first hand-raise — a form fill, demo request, or high-intent website visit — and your first meaningful response. It's measured in minutes because lead value decays in minutes: contact and qualification odds fall off a cliff within the first half hour.
Why it matters
The verified decay curve: qualification odds are 21x higher when a web lead is called within 5 minutes versus 30 (Oldroyd/InsideSales, 2007), and conversion is 8x higher inside 5 minutes versus 6+ (XANT, 2021, 5.7M leads). Meanwhile the average first response among companies that respond at all is 42 hours (Harvard Business Review, 2011).
Typical B2B team vs 5-minute SLA
| Typical B2B team | 5-minute SLA | |
|---|---|---|
| First call attempt | Median 3h 8m; average 61 hours | Under 5 minutes |
| Share achieving it | <1% of first attempts are within 5 min | Top ~7% of tested companies |
| Qualification odds | Baseline | Up to 21x higher (5 vs 30 min) |
| Leads never responded to | 23–47% in audits | Zero by design |
| After-hours coverage | Next business day | Always on |
A real example
In Drift's test of 433 B2B SaaS companies, only 7% responded within 5 minutes and 55% didn't respond within 5 business days — holding a 5-minute SLA alone puts you ahead of roughly 93% of your competitive set (Drift, 2017).
Frequently asked questions
Is the "5-minute rule" really from an MIT study?
Almost — it's from a 2007 Lead Response Management study of InsideSales.com data analyzed by Dr. James Oldroyd, then a research fellow at MIT Sloan. It found 100x higher contact odds and 21x higher qualification odds at 5 minutes vs 30. The peer-credible companion is HBR's 2011 "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads."
Does responding fast really matter more than call timing?
Yes — the original study found immediacy "far overshadows" both time of day and day of week. Optimize the response window first; optimize call scheduling for the second touch.
Is it true 78% of buyers purchase from the first responder?
Treat that one as folklore — it's attributed everywhere to a survey no one can produce. Use the verified numbers instead: 8x conversion within 5 minutes (XANT), ~7x qualification within the first hour (HBR).
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