How fast should I respond to a new lead?
Short answer
Five minutes if you want to win them. After an hour, your close rate falls off a cliff.
The data
Studies across thousands of inbound leads show response inside five minutes closes roughly nine times more than response at an hour. The lead called three other shops too. Whoever answers wins.
How to actually do it
A simple auto-text on missed calls. A shared inbox the team monitors. Or one person whose only morning job is calling overnight leads before 9 AM. The mechanism matters less than the speed.
Ask your version of this question
This is one business owner-tested take. Your shop size, trade, and team change the answer. Ask the exact version inside Ask a Shop Owner and get a response grounded in how owners like you actually handled it.
Now run it against your numbers.
This answer is written for shops in general. Inside Ask a Shop Owner it becomes your answer: your revenue, your crew, your market, your history. Ask "How fast should I respond to a new lead" and get the version that accounts for what you already told us.
Was this helpful?
One click. It tells us which answers to deepen and which questions we still owe you.
Not ready for a trial? Take the scripts with you.
Leave your email and we send three short notes over the next week showing how owners used answers like this one on a real decision. No newsletter, no drip forever.
Three emails, then it stops. Unsubscribe in one click. We never sell your email address.