Speed to lead
What a missed call actually costs an Australian trades or service business
A missed call costs you the job value multiplied by the odds you would have won it, for most Australian trades and service businesses, somewhere between $200 and $900 every time the phone rings out.
The arithmetic fits on the back of a docket. Take the calls you miss in a week, multiply by your average job value, then by the rate at which an enquiry normally becomes paid work. That is your weekly leak. Multiply by 48 working weeks for the annual figure, which is usually the number that changes someone’s mind.
42
hours
The average time businesses took to respond to an enquiry, among those that responded at all. Nearly a quarter never responded.
Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 US companies, 2011. The Short Life of Online Sales Leads →
That figure is the reason this post exists. Not because 42 hours is shocking on its own, but because almost every business that takes 42 hours believes it responds quickly. The gap between how fast operators think they reply and how fast they actually do is where the work goes.
Why does a missed call cost more than a missed email?
Someone who picks up the phone has already decided they want the problem gone. They are not researching, not comparing, not building a shortlist for next month. They have a burst pipe, a dead switchboard, or a job that needs quoting before Friday. That urgency is exactly what makes the call valuable, and exactly why it will not wait for you.
An email sits in an inbox. A call that rings out becomes the next number on the list.
21×
The odds of qualifying a lead dropped 21 times when contact was made at 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes. The odds of making contact at all dropped 100 times.
Source: Lead Response Management Study, Dr James Oldroyd, MIT Sloan School of Management with InsideSales.com, 2007, three years of data across six companies, 15,000+ leads and more than 100,000 call attempts. See the research →
The researchers behind the Harvard audit put the conclusion plainly: businesses, they wrote “should be responding at internet speed”. Fifteen years on, most still are not.
How do I work out my own number?
Three inputs, all of which you already know or can estimate closely. Average job value, enquiries per week, and the share of those enquiries you never actually speak to. Be honest about the third, most operators guess low, because a call you never answered leaves no trace in the diary.
Worked example, a two-van plumbing business
| Enquiries per week | 20 |
| Calls that ring out | 4 |
| Average job value | $620 |
| Enquiry-to-job conversion | 45% |
| Weekly leak | $1,116 |
| Annual leak (48 weeks) | $53,568 |
Illustrative figures, not a benchmark. Substitute your own, the point is the shape of the number, not this particular one.
Two things usually happen when an operator runs this for the first time. The weekly figure looks survivable. The annual figure does not. That gap is the whole reason missed calls stay unfixed for years, the damage arrives in instalments small enough to ignore.
You can run it on your own numbers in about thirty seconds with the lead leak calculator.
Don’t people just call back?
Some do. The ones with time, the ones referred to you specifically, the ones price-shopping who have you pencilled in anyway. But a caller with an urgent job works down a list until somebody answers, and if you are the third name they try and the first two picked up, you were never really in the running.
The Harvard audit found something more uncomfortable than slowness, incidentally: 23% of the companies tested never responded at all. Not late, never. Those enquiries were paid for, arrived, and vanished.
What actually fixes it?
Answering the phone, which is not a helpful answer when you are mid-job with both hands occupied. The practical version is making sure the call gets handled without requiring you to stop work. Two ways that happens:
- A call that rings out comes back as a text conversation within seconds, so the caller is in a conversation before they dial the next name.
- The call is answered outright, the caller is qualified, and the job is booked while they are still on the line.
Either way the measure that matters is the same: how long between someone reaching out and someone hearing back. That thread runs through speed to lead generally, and it is worth understanding before you spend money fixing it.
“Every operator I speak to underestimates the number. Not because they’re careless, because a call nobody answered leaves nothing behind to count.” Jared Theisinger, Founder & Director, Clearline AI
Common questions
- How do I work out what missed calls cost my business?
- Multiply the calls you miss each week by your average job value, then by the rate at which you normally convert an enquiry into work. That gives a weekly figure. Multiply by 48 working weeks for the annual cost. Most operators are surprised by the annual number rather than the weekly one.
- How long does the average business take to respond to an enquiry?
- Harvard Business Review audited 2,241 companies with test web enquiries and found an average response time of 42 hours among those that replied within 30 days. Almost a quarter never replied at all. That research measured web forms rather than phone calls, so treat it as the best available benchmark rather than a direct measure of missed calls.
- Do people call back if you miss them?
- Some do, but a caller with an urgent job usually works down a list until someone answers. If you are the third name they try and the first two picked up, you were never really in the running.
Next in this series: why calling them back doesn’t win the job back. Background reading: the guide to speed to lead for Australian trades and service businesses, and the response-time research behind the figures above.
References
- Oldroyd, J.B. McElheran, K. and Elkington, D. (2011) “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads.” Harvard Business Review, 89(3), March 2011. hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads
- Oldroyd, J.B. (2007) Lead Response Management Study. MIT Sloan School of Management with InsideSales.com. Summarised at /research/lead-response-time-stats/
Want the number for your business?
A short call, your actual figures, and an honest view of whether this is worth fixing.
Book a call →Last updated 30 July 2026