Where does the five-minute rule come from?
From a study presented on 16 October 2007 at a marketing conference, by Dave Elkington, then chief executive of the sales-software company InsideSales.com, and James Oldroyd, then at MIT1. Its executive summary says calling a web lead within 5 minutes instead of 30 makes the odds of reaching them 100 times better, and the odds of qualifying them 21 times better. Contact odds fell more than 10 times within the first hour1.
The study's own page describes the data: three years of records from six companies, more than fifteen thousand leads and more than a hundred thousand call attempts2. It repeats the 21-fold drop in qualifying a lead between 5 and 30 minutes2. Oddly, it does not show the 100-times figure that most blogs quote.
Notice what was measured. These were salespeople phoning people who had filled in a web form1. The study did not measure chat replies, emails or small businesses answering a quote request. It is still the best data most people quote, but it was vendor-led and never peer reviewed1.
What did the Harvard Business Review study find?
The same researchers published a second study in Harvard Business Review in 20113. They sent test web inquiries to 2,241 U.S. companies. 37% answered within an hour, 23% never answered at all, and those that did answer took 42 hours on average3. A separate look at 1.25 million leads at 42 companies found that contacting a lead within an hour made qualifying it nearly seven times as likely3.
Keep its limits in mind. The companies were mostly larger firms, the data is about fifteen years old, and the study observed what happened; it was not a controlled test3. It shows that fast replies and better results go together. It does not prove the speed alone caused them.
Which speed-to-lead numbers have no source?
Two figures show up on almost every speed-to-lead page: that 78% of customers buy from the first business to respond, and that 35% to 50% of sales go to the first vendor to respond. We searched for the study behind each one and found no published report, method, sample or date. Every copy we traced pointed to another blog or vendor page.
That does not prove they are wrong. It means nobody can check them, so we do not use them, and you should be wary of any pitch built on them. The table sorts the common figures by how far back we could trace them.
| Figure | Where it comes from | What was measured | Our verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Odds of reaching a lead drop 100 times between 5 and 30 minutes | InsideSales.com and James Oldroyd, 2007, executive summary | Phone call-backs to web leads at six companies | Traced, vendor-led, not peer reviewed |
| Odds of qualifying a lead drop 21 times between 5 and 30 minutes | Same study, executive summary and study page | Phone call-backs to web leads | Traced, vendor-led, not peer reviewed |
| 37% answer within an hour, 23% never answer, 42 hours on average | Harvard Business Review, 2011 | Test inquiries sent to 2,241 U.S. companies | Traced, observational, about fifteen years old |
| 78% of customers buy from the first to respond | No published study found | Unknown | Untraced |
| 35% to 50% of sales go to the first vendor to respond | No published study found | Unknown | Untraced |
What reply time should a small business aim for?
Aim to reply within the hour during business hours. Both studies point the same way. In 2011, most companies were far slower than that3. In the 2007 study the first five minutes mattered most1, and in 2011 the first hour did3. You do not need a five-minute promise to beat most of your competitors. You need a reply that arrives while the customer is still deciding.
Outside business hours, send an instant reply that answers what it can and says when a person will follow up. Then keep that promise. For a website inquiry the first reply does not have to be a phone call; it has to be useful. Check how long your own replies take each week by noting when each inquiry came in and when it got its first real answer.