Lead response time stats on LinkedIn are usually two papers glued into one bar chart, then labeled as a close-rate.
The 2007 Lead Response Management work is a 5-minute versus 30-minute comparison on contact and qualify odds. The 2011 Harvard Business Review audit is how slowly 2,241 US companies replied to a test web lead - including 23 percent that never replied. A third dataset in that HBR piece, 1.25 million leads, is where 7× and 60× come from.
Speed to lead is the brokerage clock. This page is the numbers: what was measured, what the qualifiers are, and which figures you should stop repeating.
The 2007 Lead Response Management study
James Oldroyd, then a faculty fellow at MIT Sloan, ran the Lead Response Management work with InsideSales.com. The dataset was more than 15,000 web leads and about 100,000 call attempts.
The comparison that survived into every sales deck: calling at 5 minutes versus 30 minutes was associated with about 100× higher odds of making contact and 21× higher odds of qualifying the lead.
Hold every word:
- The losing side is 30 minutes, not an hour, not “next day.”
- Outcomes are contact and qualify, not a funded deal, not a listing, not GCI.
- These were web leads across companies, not Premier Agent connections.
For a brokerage buying shared portal leads, the useful frame is still: first live attempt while they are on the listing. Do not paste 100× into a close-rate cell.
There is no public journal PDF with the same status as the later HBR article. Treat 2007 as the InsideSales / Oldroyd study everyone cites, and do not invent extra tables (hour-by-hour “after 5 minutes odds fall 80 percent”) unless you are looking at the original deck. Those extras are usually vendor remixes.
Odds ratios are also easy to misread. 100× higher odds is not “you will contact 100 percent of leads.” It is a comparison between two wait times in that dataset. A team with a 4 percent contact rate at 30 minutes is not promised a 400 percent contact rate at 5 minutes. Use the paper to justify the clock. Compute your own rates from your own file.
The 2011 HBR audit - response behavior
The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran, David Elkington, Harvard Business Review, March 2011) audited 2,241 US companies by sending each a web-generated test lead and timing the reply.
Among those companies:
| First response | Share of the 2,241 |
|---|---|
| Within 1 hour | 37% |
| 1 to 24 hours | 16% |
| More than 24 hours | 24% |
| Never responded | 23% |
The 42-hour average is among companies that responded within 30 days. Read that twice. The mean drops the worst tail - the 23 percent who never replied - out of the average. If you include them, there is no finite mean. That is why median time to first attempt on your file is the statistic to steal, not their 42 hours.
37 percent inside an hour sounds almost fine until you remember an hour is already the losing side of the 2007 qualify comparison, and portal leads are shared.
The 2011 HBR piece - the 1.25 million lead dataset
Same article, separate study: 1.25 million leads. Firms that responded within an hour were nearly 7× more likely to qualify the lead than those who waited one more hour, and more than 60× more likely than those who waited a day.
Again: qualify, not close. Hour vs next hour, and hour vs day. Not 5 vs 30 minutes. Do not add 7× to 21× and call it 28×.
Elkington was InsideSales.com’s CEO when this ran. The article is still the citable version of the audit. Use the HBR page, not a slideshow that “updates” the numbers.
What these stats are not
Not a Zillow conversion rate. Not Realtor.com. Not Follow Up Boss. Web leads, then a test-lead audit of companies.
Not closed sales. If someone on your team says “we close 100× more if we call in five minutes,” correct them.
Not proof that voice AI beats an ISA. They measure delay, not staffing.
Not “42 hours is normal so we are fine.” 42 hours is the indictment.
Not email. The useful brokerage definition of speed to lead is first live attempt. Reports that mix auto-email into “response time” inflate how fast you look.
NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers is a different kind of number: 52 percent found the home online, 70 percent searched on a phone, median search 10 weeks. Use it for how buyers behave. Do not mash it into Oldroyd’s odds ratios.
Which number should you put on the wall?
| Number | Use it for | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|
| 100× / 21× | Why 5 minutes vs 30 minutes matters | Close-rate, Zillow ROI |
| 37 / 16 / 24 / 23 | How common “never” and “next day” are | Your team’s median |
| 42 hours | Why “next business day” is a leak | A target |
| 7× / 60× | Hour vs next hour, hour vs day, qualify odds | Adding to 21× |
Your wall should be median minutes to first dial and percent never called. Those you can compute tomorrow.
What should you measure this week?
Do this afternoon. Export last month’s portal and website leads.
- Median minutes, created → first live attempt. Mean will lie.
- Share never called in 24 hours. That is your 23 percent.
- Qualify or viewing-booked rate for first attempt under 5 minutes vs after 30.
If you cannot compute (3) because notes are empty, you are missing the 2007 qualify column. Fix write-back. For Zillow specifically, Zillow lead conversion rate turns these columns into contacted, held, and cash per hold.
After-hours leads should be a separate median. A pretty weekday number can hide Sunday.
Common mistakes
One graphic, two studies, no dates.
Calling 100× a close-rate.
Using 42 hours as if it included the non-responders.
Citing “MIT” as if it were a peer-reviewed Zillow paper. Oldroyd was at MIT Sloan when he ran the 2007 work. The HBR piece lists SKK later. Be precise.
Inventing a 5-minute-by-5-minute decay table. If it is not in the paper, do not draw it.
Ignoring never-called. That was the loudest HBR finding.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good lead response time?
For paid portal leads: under 60 seconds if a system can dial, under 5 minutes if a person is watching. The studies’ losing buckets are 30 minutes, one more hour, and a day.
Is lead response time the same as speed to lead?
People use them interchangeably. Be precise: first live attempt, not first email.
Do these numbers apply to real estate?
They are not a portal panel. Shared, after-hours Zillow and Realtor.com leads are usually worse than a brand form. Use the decay, not the conversion rate.
Where can I read the original HBR article?
The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, March 2011. That is the audit and the 1.25 million-lead qualify odds.
Why is there no third “2024 Zillow study” here?
Because we will not invent one. Vendor blogs remix these two papers. If a new original study shows up, it gets its own citation.
Sources
- James Oldroyd with InsideSales.com, Lead Response Management study (2007). More than 15,000 web leads. Contact and qualify odds at 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.
- James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran, and David Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011. 2,241-company audit (37 / 16 / 24 / 23, 42-hour average among responders within 30 days). Separate 1.25 million-lead set (7×, 60× qualify odds).
- National Association of REALTORS®, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Buyer search behavior, not response-time odds.
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