What are slow replies costing you? Work it out in 30 seconds
Use the calculator below to estimate what slow replies cost your business each year. Enter how many enquiries you get a week, what an average job is worth, and how quickly you usually reply. The estimate is based on a simple, published assumption set: the faster the first reply, the more of your winnable enquiries stay with you instead of going to whoever answered first.
How the estimate works
The calculator uses deliberately simple, visible assumptions. It assumes about 3 in 10 enquiries are winnable jobs for a typical local business. Replying within minutes keeps those winnable jobs in play. Replying within an hour keeps roughly 8 in 10 of them, within a few hours just over half, and next-day replies keep about a third. Your real numbers will differ, so treat the result as a rough size of the leak, not an accounting figure.
The direction, though, is not in doubt: study after study on lead response finds that the first business to respond wins a large share of the work, and that the odds of contacting a lead collapse within hours. The exact percentages vary by industry. The pattern never does.
Was your number uncomfortable?
- That figure is not a marketing problem, it is a reply-speed problem
- You do not need more enquiries to earn more, you need to keep the ones arriving
- The fix is a one-off setup, not more hours at the phone
The free guide walks through the exact instant-reply and follow-up setup, in plain English, in under an hour of setup time.
Get the free follow-up guide
A short, plain-English guide that shows exactly how to stop enquiries slipping away: the messages to set up, the reminders that work, and the first steps in the right order.
Get the free guideHow businesses close the gap
You cannot personally reply in two minutes from a ladder or mid-treatment. The businesses that win on speed use an instant automatic first reply, one inbox so nothing gets buried, and a reminder that brings the human follow-up back at a realistic time. That is a follow-up system, and replying faster is its first job. Tools like GoHighLevel run the whole loop.
Want to see it running?
GoHighLevel is the tool we use for all of this in our own business. You can try everything on the 14-day free trial and judge it on results.
See how GoHighLevel worksReferral link. We earn a commission if you sign up through it, at no extra cost to you. We use the platform ourselves.
Common questions
How accurate is this calculator?
It is a rough estimate built on simple stated assumptions, not a prediction. Its job is to show the size of the leak in your numbers. Even if your real loss is half the figure shown, it usually dwarfs the cost of fixing it.
Where do the reply-speed assumptions come from?
They reflect the consistent finding of lead response research: contact rates collapse as minutes turn into hours, and the first responder wins a disproportionate share. We keep the model simple and visible rather than pretending false precision.
What counts as an enquiry?
Any inbound contact from a potential customer: a call, a website form, a Facebook or Instagram message, a WhatsApp, or an email asking about price or availability.
What is the fastest way to improve my number?
An instant automatic first reply on every channel, including missed-call text-back. It moves you into the within-minutes band immediately, and it is a one-off setup covered in the free guide.