Definition
Also written: lead response time
Speed to lead is the elapsed time between an inbound enquiry arriving and a human making genuine contact. It is one of the few operational metrics where the direction of the effect is not seriously disputed — contact rates fall sharply as the interval grows.
Measure it from the prospect’s action, not from when the record appeared in the CRM. Integration lag is part of the delay the prospect experiences.
Median is the wrong summary. A good median hides a long tail of enquiries that waited days, and the tail is where the loss is.
The usual error
Where this goes wrong in practice
Counting an automated acknowledgement email as the response. It is not contact, and it can suppress the follow-up urgency that would have produced contact.
Related terms
Lead routing
Lead routing is the logic that decides which person or team receives an inbound lead, based on territory, product, company size, source or availability. It runs automatically in most CRMs, and the rules tend to outlive the organisational structure that justified them.
DefinitionRevenue operations (RevOps)
Revenue operations is the function that aligns marketing, sales and customer success around one set of definitions, one data model and one measurement system. Its work is mostly at the seams — handoffs, routing rules, stage definitions, field hygiene and reporting that all three teams accept.
DefinitionLead scoring
Lead scoring assigns a numeric value to a lead based on fit attributes (industry, size, role) and behaviour (pages viewed, emails opened, forms submitted), to prioritise follow-up. Its accuracy depends entirely on whether the model was built from outcomes rather than assumptions.
DefinitionPipeline velocity
Pipeline velocity estimates how quickly revenue moves through a sales process, combining the number of qualified opportunities, average deal value, win rate and average cycle length into a single rate-of-revenue figure.
Definition