What the research says about speed, from first inquiry to signed contract
The short version
- Speed is how buyers judge care. Before they hire you, they can’t see your work, your people, or your standards. They can see how long you took to get back to them.
- A slow reply costs more than most people assume. In a 2026 study of 11.6 million buyer and seller exchanges, a 1-hour delay in replying cut the chance of being hired by 46%. A 1-day delay cut it by about 90%.
- Buyers won’t tell you. They say a same-day reply is fine. Then they hire whoever answered first.
- Easy beats impressive. Across 75,000+ customers, how easy a company was to deal with predicted loyalty better than going above and beyond.
- Most companies are slow. In an audit of 2,241 companies, the average reply to a website inquiry took 42 hours. 23% never replied at all.
- This is a revenue problem, not a customer service problem. Every step between first inquiry and signed contract is a place where new business stalls.
You already know this, because you’re a buyer too
Think about the last time you needed a vendor. A roofer, an accountant, an IT company, an attorney.
You probably contacted two or three. One called back within the hour. One called back the next afternoon. One never called back.
Who got the job?
You didn’t decide that the slow one was bad at their work. You didn’t know anything about their work yet. But the fast one told you something: they’ll pay attention to me. That was enough to move them to the front of the line.
Your prospects are making the same judgment about you, and now there’s research that measures it.
The study
“Speed Is a Signal: When Faster Replies Increase Hiring Likelihood”
Hart, VanEpps, Sezer, and Amir. Management Science, June 2026.
Researchers from George Mason University, Vanderbilt, Cornell, and UC San Diego.
What they studied:
- 11.6 million message exchanges on Fiverr, a marketplace where buyers contact providers and then decide who to hire.
- Experiments with more than 8,000 participants to find out why speed mattered.
What they found:
| Reply delay | Effect on chance of being hired |
|---|---|
| 5 to 10 minutes | Measurable drop |
| 1 hour | 46% lower |
| 1 day | About 90% lower |
Why it works:
- Fast responders were rated as warmer, more competent, and more responsive.
- The effect held even when buyers could see the provider’s ratings and the content of the reply.
- Buyers treat the first reply as a preview of what working with you will be like. As co-author Einav Hart told UC San Diego, speed is “a sign that you’ll be attentive to their needs in the future, not just right now.”
The finding that matters most:
- When asked, participants said a same-day reply was perfectly acceptable.
- When they actually chose, they picked the faster responder.
- What buyers say they expect and what they reward are different.
A fair caveat: Fiverr is freelance work, and hiring a firm for a six-figure engagement is a bigger decision. But first contact works the same way in both. At that point, the buyer has almost nothing else to judge you on.
Why this is a revenue problem
Most companies treat response time as a customer service issue. Something to be polite about.
It’s a revenue issue. Every inquiry that goes cold is a job, a client, or a contract you paid to attract and then didn’t win. It doesn’t show up as a loss on any report. It just never shows up as revenue.
Run the math on your own business:
| Question | Your number |
|---|---|
| How many new inquiries do you get in a month? | ___ |
| What’s a new client worth to you in the first year? | $___ |
| How many inquiries a month go cold because nobody followed up fast enough? | ___ |
| Cost per year (clients lost × value × 12) | $___ |
An example, for illustration only: A company gets 10 inquiries a month. A new client is worth $40,000 in the first year. If slow replies cost them just one of those a month, that’s $480,000 a year in revenue that never shows up.
Most companies can’t fill in the third row, because they don’t measure it. That’s usually the first finding.
The four places new business stalls
Between “someone reached out” and “they signed,” there are four gaps where the buyer is waiting on you. Each one has research behind it.
- The first reply. From inquiry to a real response.
- The first conversation. From reply to a real discussion of their problem.
- The proposal. From that conversation to a written recommendation.
- The signature. From proposal to signed agreement.
Gap 1: The first reply
The short answer: reply within the hour, from a real person, to what they actually asked.
What the research says:
- A 2011 Harvard Business Review study (Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington) looked at 1.25 million inquiries across 42 companies.
- Companies that responded within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to have a real conversation with that prospect as companies that waited even one more hour.
- Compared to companies that waited 24 hours or more, they were more than 60 times as likely.
What it looks like at most companies:
- The same study submitted inquiries to 2,241 U.S. companies and timed the replies.
- 37% replied within an hour.
- The average reply took 42 hours.
- 23% never replied.
- A 2017 test of 433 B2B companies by Drift found only 7% replied within five minutes.
What good looks like:
- A named person replies, not a no-reply address.
- The reply responds to what they wrote, not a generic “thanks for reaching out.”
- There’s a clear next step: two specific times for a call, or a link to book one.
- If the full answer takes longer, the reply says when it’s coming. (“Good question on scope. I’ll have a real answer for you by Thursday.”)
- Someone owns the inbox. A form that goes to a shared address nobody checks is an easy way to end up in the 23%.
Gap 2: The first conversation
The short answer: show up knowing what they already told you, and answer the price question directly.
What the research says about repeating yourself:
- A 2010 HBR study by Dixon, Freeman, and Toman surveyed more than 75,000 customers.
- Going above and beyond made customers only marginally more loyal than simply meeting their needs.
- What mattered was how easy the company was to deal with:
- 94% of customers who had an easy experience planned to buy again.
- 88% planned to spend more.
- 81% of customers who had a hard experience planned to speak badly about the company.
- The things customers hated most:
- Having to contact the company more than once (62%)
- Getting passed from person to person (59%)
- Having to repeat information (57%)
How that happens in a first conversation:
- The prospect filled out a form explaining their situation.
- Someone else picks up the lead and opens with “So, tell me about your business.”
- The prospect now has to explain it all again, and learns that nobody read what they sent.
What the research says about hesitation:
- A 2021 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Ziano and Wang) ran 14 experiments with more than 7,500 people.
- Even a few seconds of hesitation before an answer made it seem less sincere.
- A 2022 study in PNAS (Templeton, Wheatley, and colleagues) found that faster back-and-forth made people feel more connected, even to outside listeners hearing the same conversation.
Where this matters most: “What does this cost?” A pause or a vague “it depends” sounds like you’re hiding something. A direct range, with honest caveats, sounds like someone who knows their business.
What good looks like:
- The first conversation happens within a day or two of the first reply, not a week out.
- Whoever runs it has read the form, the emails, and anything else the prospect sent.
- They open by confirming what they already know: “You mentioned X. Is that still the main issue?”
- They give a real price range on the first call.
Gap 3: The proposal
The short answer: send it within 24 hours, recommend one option, and make the decision easy.
What the research says about timing:
- Gong, a company that analyzes recorded sales calls, found that following up within 24 hours went with 14% higher close rates and 11% shorter time to close.
- Only about 1 in 3 deals got that follow-up within 24 hours.
- Note: this is Gong’s own data, not independent research.
What the research says about making it easy:
- Gartner found that 77% of B2B buyers described their latest purchase as “very complex or difficult.”
- Buyers who got information that made the purchase easier were 3 times as likely to choose the bigger option, and with less regret.
What the research says about indecision:
- For The JOLT Effect (2022), Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna analyzed 2.5 million recorded sales conversations.
- 40% to 60% of lost deals ended with no decision at all. The buyer didn’t choose a competitor. They just didn’t choose.
- Most of those were not buyers who preferred to keep things as they were. They were buyers afraid of making the wrong call.
- When indecision was high, only 6% of deals closed.
- What worked:
- A clear recommendation instead of a menu.
- Fewer options to compare.
- Taking risk off the table with honest expectations and a way out.
What this means: a proposal with three tiers, a dozen add-ons, and 20 pages of background can go out the same day as the call and still be slow. It hands the buyer a decision they now have to work out on their own.
What good looks like:
- It goes out within 24 hours, or the buyer knows exactly when to expect it.
- It leads with one recommendation and says why.
- It repeats their problem and goal in their own words.
- It answers the risk questions before they’re asked. What if it doesn’t work? What if we need to stop?
- It can be read in one sitting.
Gap 4: The signature
The short answer: remove every step between “yes” and signed.
What the research says:
- Ebsta analyzed 3.2 million sales opportunities across 364 companies (2023).
- Deals still open after twice the normal length of the sales process had a 3% chance of closing.
- Forrester (2024) found that 86% of B2B purchases stall at some point.
- Proposify analyzed 742,137 proposals (2026):
- Proposals with e-signature closed 15% more often and 60% faster.
- Proposals signed by the seller before sending closed 65% more often and 25% faster.
- Note: Ebsta and Proposify are vendor data. The pre-signed finding is a correlation. Companies that pre-sign may simply be more organized. But the logic holds: when you’ve already signed, the buyer’s signature is the last step.
What good looks like:
- Your side is signed before it goes out.
- They can sign online in under a minute.
- If they go quiet, the follow-up contains something useful: an answer to a question they haven’t asked yet, or the plan for the first 30 days so they can picture starting.
- They know what happens the day after they sign.
Between every gap: the wait itself
The short answer: silence is what makes a wait feel long. A specific date makes it feel handled.
What the research says:
- Shirley Taylor, Journal of Marketing (1994): delays hurt how customers rated a service through two feelings, uncertainty and anger. It was worse when customers thought the company could have prevented the delay.
- Hui and Tse, Journal of Marketing (1996): for moderate waits, telling people how long they would wait made the wait more acceptable and improved how they rated the service.
What this means: you can’t always send a full proposal the same day. You can always send two lines that say what’s happening and when they’ll have it. Then hit that date.
“My business runs on referrals”
This is the most common reason companies don’t take response time seriously. Referral business feels different. The prospect already trusts you.
That makes speed more important, not less. (This part is our reasoning, not a study.)
- A referred prospect arrives expecting the experience their friend described.
- A slow reply doesn’t just cost you the job. It makes the person who referred you look bad.
- Referral sources notice. They send the next one somewhere else, and they don’t tell you why.
- Referral-driven companies often have the least structured intake, because they never needed one. Inquiries go to whoever the referrer happened to know.
Test your own company this week
You don’t need software to find out how you’re doing. You need a colleague’s email address and a stopwatch.
The secret-shopper test:
- Fill out your own contact form on a weekday afternoon, using a personal email address. Time the reply.
- Call your main number after 3pm. Does a person answer? If not, how long until someone calls back?
- Email your general inbox on a Friday. When does the reply come?
- Read the replies you get. Do they respond to what you wrote, or send a template?
The pipeline test:
Pull your last 10 prospects, both the ones you won and the ones you lost. For each, write down:
| Gap | Won | Lost |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiry to first reply | ||
| First reply to first conversation | ||
| Conversation to proposal | ||
| Proposal to signature |
What you’re looking for: in most companies, the difference between won and lost deals shows up in these numbers before it shows up anywhere else.
The research at a glance
| Finding | Source | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 1-hour reply delay cut hiring likelihood 46%. 1-day delay cut it ~90% | Hart, VanEpps, Sezer, Amir, Management Science, 2026 | Peer-reviewed |
| Buyers say same-day is fine, then pick the faster responder | Hart et al., 2026 | Peer-reviewed |
| Replying within 1 hour: ~7x more likely to reach a real conversation than 1 hour later, 60x+ more likely than 24 hours later | Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington, HBR, 2011 | Published study |
| Average reply to a web inquiry: 42 hours. 23% never replied | Oldroyd et al., 2011 | Published study |
| 7% of B2B companies replied within 5 minutes | Drift, 2017 | Vendor test |
| 94% of customers with an easy experience planned to buy again. Repeating information was a top frustration (57%) | Dixon, Freeman, Toman, HBR, 2010 | Published study |
| A few seconds of hesitation made answers seem less sincere | Ziano & Wang, JPSP, 2021 | Peer-reviewed |
| Faster back-and-forth made people feel more connected | Templeton, Wheatley et al., PNAS, 2022 | Peer-reviewed |
| Following up within 24 hours: 14% higher close rates | Gong, 2022 | Vendor data |
| Buyers who got help making the decision easier were 3x as likely to buy the bigger option | Gartner, 2019 | Analyst research |
| 40% to 60% of lost deals ended with no decision | Dixon & McKenna, The JOLT Effect, 2022 | Book, 2.5M conversations |
| Pre-signed proposals closed 65% more often | Proposify, 2026 | Vendor data |
| Deals open twice the normal length had a 3% chance of closing | Ebsta, 2023 | Vendor data |
| 86% of B2B purchases stall at some point | Forrester, 2024 | Analyst research |
| Uncertainty and anger drive the damage from delays | Taylor, Journal of Marketing, 1994 | Peer-reviewed |
| Telling people how long a wait will be makes it more acceptable | Hui & Tse, Journal of Marketing, 1996 | Peer-reviewed |
Numbers to stop repeating
Response time is full of statistics that get passed around without a source. If you’ve seen these, here’s what’s behind them:
- “78% of customers buy from the company that responds first.”
- Usually credited to a “Lead Connect” survey.
- No original study has been found. Every citation leads back to other articles.
- “The MIT study: reply in 5 minutes instead of 30 and you’re 21 times more likely to qualify a lead.”
- From a 2007 analysis of one software company’s data, presented at an industry conference.
- Not an MIT study. Not peer-reviewed. It measured whether the company reached the prospect, not whether it won the business.
- The 2011 HBR study above is the better source.
- “Send a proposal within 24 hours and your win rate goes up 25%.”
- Traces back to a vendor blog with no methodology.
- Gong’s follow-up data is the closest real number.
The bottom line
- Buyers can’t see your values before they hire you.
- They can see how fast you reply, whether you remember what they told you, whether your proposal makes the decision easy, and whether signing takes one step or four.
- Each of those is small. Together, they’re most of what a buyer has to go on.
Sources
- UC San Diego. (2026). Looking for Work? Don’t Worry About Seeming Too Eager.
- Hart, E., VanEpps, E. M., Sezer, O., & Amir, O. (2026). Speed Is a Signal: When Faster Replies Increase Hiring Likelihood. Management Science.
- Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K., & Elkington, D. (2011). The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. Harvard Business Review.
- Dixon, M., Freeman, K., & Toman, N. (2010). Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers. Harvard Business Review.
- Ziano, I., & Wang, D. (2021). Slow lies: Response delays promote perceptions of insincerity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Templeton, E. M., Wheatley, T., et al. (2022). Fast response times signal social connection in conversation. PNAS.
- Taylor, S. (1994). Waiting for Service: The Relationship between Delays and Evaluations of Service. Journal of Marketing.
- Hui, M. K., & Tse, D. K. (1996). What to Tell Consumers in Waits of Different Lengths. Journal of Marketing.
- Dixon, M., & McKenna, T. (2022). The JOLT Effect. Research summary.
- Gong. (2022). Press release on follow-up timing.
- Gartner. (2019). 77% of B2B buyers say their latest purchase was very complex or difficult (Gartner CSO Update, via secondary source).
- Gartner. (2019). Gartner Says Marketers Must Focus on Helping Customers.
- Proposify. (2026). Sales Closing Statistics.
- Ebsta. (2023). B2B Sales Benchmark Report.
- Forrester. (2024). The State of Business Buying.
- Drift (2017) and InsideSales (2007) figures via Expertise AI’s verified speed-to-lead statistics.