The Lead Response Playbook
What to send in the first five minutes, five days and five weeks after an enquiry.
How to do it
- 01
Capture every route in
Forms, calls, missed calls, chat, social messages and referrals all create a record in one CRM. If a channel isn't captured, it will be the one that leaks.
- 02
Acknowledge in sixty seconds
An automated text and email confirming receipt, setting expectations, and offering a booking link.
- 03
Attempt human contact in five minutes
During working hours a person calls. Response speed matters more than polish.
- 04
Run a defined sequence
Day one, day two, day four, day seven, day fourteen, day thirty. Mixed channels, short messages, each with a single question.
- 05
Stop on reply
Every sequence halts the moment a human conversation starts. Nothing is worse than an automated nudge after a booking.
- 06
Move cold leads to nurture
Unconverted enquiries go to a monthly value email rather than being deleted. Many buy later.
Why speed outperforms polish
Most buyers contact more than one supplier and mentally commit to whoever engages first. A short, immediate reply beats a considered response sent three hours later, because by then the conversation is happening with someone else.
This is why the first message should be automated. Humans cannot be reliably fast; systems can.
What the first message should say
Confirm you received it, name the thing they asked about, say when a human will be in touch, and give them a way to book immediately if they'd rather not wait. Four sentences at most.
The follow-up nobody does
Most businesses stop after two attempts. A meaningful share of work is booked after the fourth or fifth contact, purely because everyone else gave up. The sequence doesn't need to be clever — it needs to exist and to run without anyone remembering it.
Measure the leak, then close it
Track time-to-first-response, contact rate, and enquiry-to-booked rate by source. Almost every business that measures this discovers the problem was never lead volume.