For anyone who gets more enquiries than they can chase
Somebody raised their hand.
Then the week happened.
Follow-up is not a discipline problem. It is a memory problem — and memory is the thing software is actually good at.
The short answer
Speed is the whole thing, and it is one of the few claims in this category with real evidence behind it. In an audit of 2,241 companies, 23% never responded to a web enquiry at all. Among those that did, firms making contact within an hour were nearly seven times likelier to actually qualify the lead than those who waited just an hour longer.
Worth knowing what that evidence is not: it measures B2B web forms, not somebody phoning a plumber. The mechanism carries over, but anyone quoting it at you as gospel has not read it.
- In an audit of 2,241 US companies, 23% never responded to a web enquiry at all.
- The widely-quoted “42 hour average response” is the average among only the firms that did respond.
- Contacting within an hour made a firm nearly 7× likelier to qualify the lead.
- The study everyone calls “the MIT study” is a six-company dataset from a sales-software vendor, presented by an MIT Sloan faculty fellow.
The half-life
Every enquiry has a half-life
The enquiry arrives
Interest is at its absolute peak. They are ready now.
An hour later
Still warm. A reply here almost always wins.
Next day
Now competing with everything else in their life.
Next week
They solved it another way.
Your follow-up arrives here, if at all
Not because you did not care. Because Tuesday happened.
They cannot tell the difference
How it reads
Silence reads as disinterest
A customer cannot distinguish “busy” from “not interested in my money”. The business that replies first usually wins, largely independent of price.
What runs instead
Acknowledge immediately, then get out of the way
An immediate acknowledgement goes out
Even a holding reply converts far better than an eventual perfect one.
The enquiry is recorded with what they actually asked for
One place, not three notebooks.
A short sequence runs on a schedule you set
A few well-spaced touches, never a barrage.
Any reply stops the automation
It exists to get to the conversation, not to have it.
Nothing is closed until a person decides it is
Automation that keeps emailing someone who already replied does more damage than none.
Status
Where this currently stands
The follow-up mechanism is built. Wiring it to your real capture points is part of the engagement.
Booking and the phone agent, which are usually where the enquiries come from in the first place.
Who does this
What SidRatnam.com does about getting back to people
SidRatnam.com makes sure every enquiry gets an immediate response, keeps following up on a schedule the owner sets, and hands the conversation to a person the moment someone replies. Every enquiry ends up in one place rather than across a phone, an inbox and a notebook.
What that includes: immediate acknowledgement of new enquiries, a follow-up sequence that stops on reply, hand-off to a human, and a single record of who is still waiting.
What it contributes to: winning work that would otherwise go to whoever answered first.
Ready to switch on
Evidence
What the research actually says
Every figure carries its source, date, the population it was measured across, and whether it is an observation or a projection.
An audit of 2,241 US companies found 23% never responded to a web enquiry at all. The often-quoted “42 hour average response” is the average among only those firms that did respond. Separately, across 1.25 million leads, firms contacting a customer within an hour were nearly seven times likelier to qualify the lead than those waiting an hour longer.
observed Harvard Business Review, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads”
March 2011 · 2,241 US companies audited with test leads; second study 1.25M leads across 42 companies · audited 2011
Across 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts, the odds of reaching a lead fell roughly a hundredfold between calling at five minutes and calling at thirty. Widely called “the MIT study”, it is actually a six-company dataset from a sales-software vendor, presented by an MIT Sloan faculty fellow.
observed Oldroyd, “Lead Response Management Study” (InsideSales.com)
October 2007 · six companies, B2B-weighted, vendor platform data · three years of data
Asked to rate their lead sources, 66% of small and medium businesses rated phone calls “good or excellent” — higher than any other category. The lead most often dropped is the one owners themselves rate highest.
estimated BIA/Kelsey, “Phone Calls Are the New Click” (Local Commerce Monitor, Wave 17)
April 2014 · US small and medium businesses surveyed in Q3 2013 · surveyed 2013
In a survey of 3,000 smartphone users, local services was the category people were most likely to phone (69%), 47% said they would look elsewhere if a business had no phone number in its search result, and 51% called in order to book an appointment.
estimated Google / Ipsos, “The Role of Click to Call in the Path to Purchase”
September 2013 · 3,000 smartphone users who had purchased in the category · surveyed July 2013
Connected problems
These turn out to be the same conversation
How do I stop losing jobs to missed calls?
How do I bring past customers back?
How do I stop playing phone tag to book appointments?
This sits under get more customers and keep more customers.
Find out how many enquiries go quiet
The free analysis looks at where your enquiries arrive and what happens to them afterwards.