Answers
How fast should you follow up with a new lead?
By Mike Olaski, Founder, rehabit · Last reviewed 2026-10-27
Within five minutes if you can, and within the hour at most. In the Lead Response Management study (MIT and InsideSales.com, 2007), the odds of reaching a lead fell 100-fold, and the odds of qualifying one 21-fold, when the first call came at 30 minutes instead of 5.
The figure is often credited to Harvard, but it comes from the 2007 MIT and InsideSales.com study, which analysed more than 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts across six companies. It measured contact and qualification, not closed sales, so treat it as a signal about attention: interest fades fast when nobody answers.
For a coaching business, the practical fix is an instant first response that sounds like you, plus a person who picks up the conversation once the lead is warm. That is what the Lead Pipeline is built to do. To see how your own follow-up speed scores, the AI Readiness Scorecard weights it from 96 for instant replies down to 18 for replies after 24 hours.