The Ledger, Issue No. 4 · September 9, 2026
42 hours is the average. Beat it by 41.
Speed is the cheapest advantage left.
The stat
The audit behind Harvard Business Review's "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads" (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, March 2011) tracked 2,241 companies and found the average one took 42 hours to respond to a new inquiry, while 23 percent never responded at all. Firms that made contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a real conversation with a decision maker as firms that waited just one hour longer. Two caveats we will say out loud: it measured web-form leads handled by sales teams, so read it as evidence about response speed in general, and the data is from 2011.
The idea
When someone calls about a Friday reservation or a quote and you're elbow-deep in the dinner rush, they don't wait. They call the next place on the list. Most missed calls are missed revenue, and the fix is rarely more staff. It's an automatic text that answers in seconds: "Sorry we missed you, how can we help?"
Try this week
Call your own business at your busiest hour and let it ring. Listen to what a new customer hears. If the answer is voicemail or nothing, that's the leak; a missed-call text-back plugs it the same day it's set up.