Lead Follow-up Leakage Calculator
Most lost deals were never rejected. They were answered too slowly or followed up twice and forgotten. This puts an illustrative number on that drag.
How much does slow lead response cost?
Response speed and follow-up persistence both have a well-documented directional effect on conversion: prospects are far more likely to engage with whoever replies first, and most deals require several contact attempts that many businesses never make. The size of the effect varies enormously by market, price point and buying process, so no honest calculator can tell you your exact number. What this tool does is apply published, clearly-labelled multipliers to your figures so you can see whether the leak is large enough to be worth fixing — and speed of response is almost always the cheapest thing to fix.
Methodology
How this is calculated
Published in full, so you can disagree with it. A tool that hides its model is a lead form.
- A response-time penalty is applied in bands: under 15 minutes 0%, under 1 hour 10%, under 4 hours 22%, under 24 hours 38%, beyond that 55%.
- A follow-up penalty is applied in bands: 6+ attempts 0%, 4–5 attempts 8%, 2–3 attempts 20%, 1 attempt 32%, none 45%.
- The two penalties are combined multiplicatively, not added, because they overlap.
- Recoverable deals are derived from your current close rate and the combined drag, then hard-capped at 25% of lead volume so the tool cannot produce an absurd number.
Assumptions and limits
- The penalty bands are illustrative planning figures drawn from widely-reported sales research. They are not measured from your business and we do not present them as fact about it.
- The model assumes your lead quality stays constant — recovering more leads does not mean recovering equally good ones.
- A close rate above roughly 50% usually indicates pre-qualified leads, where the model will overstate the opportunity.
- Deal value is treated as constant. In practice, faster-responding businesses often win the smaller, more urgent deals first.
Worked examples
120 leads, 12-hour response, 2 follow-ups
A meaningful combined drag, most of it from response time. Moving first response under an hour is usually a process change, not a technology project.
A business already responding in minutes with 6 follow-ups
The tool will show almost no leakage. The growth constraint is lead volume or pricing, not follow-up.
FAQ
Questions about this tool
If you want this built
Turn the number into a plan.
Send us the workflow behind your result. We will come back with how we would automate it, what stays human, and what it takes to build.