How to measure your speed to lead

Speed to lead is the time between a client’s first message and your first real reply. It’s the single number most worth knowing about your intake.

Pick your last 20 enquiries from every channel: web form, email, WhatsApp, phone and social. For each one, note the time it arrived and the time someone replied. Ignore automatic acknowledgements; count the first human or genuinely useful reply.

Work out the median, not the average, so one very slow reply doesn’t distort the picture. Then split the list into business hours and after hours. Most practices find the after-hours number is the problem.

Write the numbers down and measure again in a month. Whatever you change, this is how you’ll know whether it worked.