Calculator
What are slow replies costing you?
Five numbers you already know, and the arithmetic in full view. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs in your browser.
- Leads not answered fast
- 36 a month
- Close-rate gap
- 23 points
- Extra jobs
- 8.3 a month
- ReplyThemAll at this volume
- $179 a month
36 slow leads × 23% close-rate gap × $450 = $3,726
This is arithmetic on your numbers, not a prediction. It assumes every slow lead could have been answered fast and that nothing else about your business changes — neither is entirely true. Treat it as the size of the problem, not a forecast of the fix.
Why there is no magic multiplier in here
Most calculators like this one quietly apply a conversion multiplier taken from a well-known study and present the output as your revenue. We do not, for a specific reason: the figures everyone quotes — a hundred times more likely to make contact, twenty one times more likely to qualify — come from B2B web-form leads collected between 2004 and 2007, and they are frequently attributed to Harvard Business Review, which did not produce them.
The direction that research points is well established and matches what every contractor already knows. The exact multipliers are not yours, so we ask you for the close-rate gap instead of inventing one. If your slow leads close nearly as well as your fast ones, put that in and the number drops — as it should.
The studies, with their limits
- Lead Response Management Study, Dr. James Oldroyd with InsideSales.com (2007)Three years of data (2004–2007), six companies, 15,000+ leads and 100,000+ call attempts. B2B web-form leads, not home-services marketplace leads — the direction is well established, the exact multipliers are not transferable.
- "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review (March 2011)Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington extended the pattern across 2,241 US companies. The widely-quoted "100x / 21x" figures come from the 2007 study above, not from this article — they get attached to the Harvard name in retelling.
Read the rest
How to measure your own response time honestly, and what to do about the after-hours gap.
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