How fast do you really reply to a new enquiry?

Test 1: time a real enquiry

Ask a mate to send an enquiry to your business the way a customer would: your form, your Facebook ad, or a text to your work number. Don't warn whoever answers your phone.

Test 2: your last five enquiries

Open your messages or lead app and work out how many minutes each of your last five enquiries waited before they first heard from you. Two hours is 120.

What your time means

• Under 5 minutes. You're getting back to people while they're still on their phone and still thinking about the job. Keep it that way when you're busy.
• 5 minutes to an hour. Not bad, but someone who sent the same enquiry to two firms may already be talking to the other one.
• A few hours or more. By now plenty of people have moved on, rung someone else or decided to leave it. These are the enquiries that quietly go nowhere.

Slow replies are rarely laziness. You're up a ladder, driving, or on someone else's job. That's the problem to solve: in the Lead Wave lead reviews that counted it exactly, 72 of 236 real enquiries (31%) never replied to anything, and in every review someone was left waiting after sending their details.

How to get faster without answering the phone on a roof

1. Let a text go first. A text in your name that goes out the moment someone enquires means nobody waits, even when you can't pick up.
2. Block out two short slots a day to ring back everyone who's replied, rather than trying to answer every message as it lands.
3. Chase the quiet ones. Plenty of people don't reply to the first message. A second and third try gives them more chances.

Then see what the slow ones cost you with the missed enquiry calculator.