Speed to lead: the five-minute window that decides the sale

Someone fills in your quote form at 8:40pm. If your process is 'the office picks it up in the morning', you have handed that lead to whoever answers first. Almost nobody sends one enquiry — they send four, and the first useful reply usually wins. This is the entire game in real estate, at a car dealership, and in recruiting.

The sequence

1. 01Instantly — acknowledge. Automated, within seconds of the form submission. Names your business, confirms what they asked about, sets a real expectation.
2. 02Within business hours — a human. An actual person, referencing an actual detail from the enquiry. This is the message that converts.
3. 03Next day — one follow-up. If there was no reply. One. Not a sequence.

export const templates = {
  // Fires from the form webhook. Never delayed, never batched.
  ack: (c: Ctx) =>
    `Hi ${c.firstName} — it's ${c.business}. Got your enquiry about ` +
    `${c.serviceRequested}. ${c.isBusinessHours
        ? "One of us will reply within the hour."
        : "We'll come back to you first thing tomorrow."}`,
 
  human: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.staffName} here from ${c.business}. For ${c.serviceRequested} ` +
    `at ${c.suburb} we'd usually be looking at ${c.ballpark}. ` +
    `Want me to book a time to take a proper look?`,
 
  followUp: (c: Ctx) =>
    `Hi ${c.firstName} — ${c.staffName} from ${c.business} again. ` +
    `Still want a hand with ${c.serviceRequested}? Happy either way.`,
};

Why the acknowledgement is not enough on its own

An auto-reply buys you time; it does not buy you the job. Its only purpose is to stop the customer contacting three competitors in the next ten minutes. The human message is where the sale happens, and it must reference something specific from the enquiry — the suburb, the service, the timing — or it reads as another automation.

One follow-up, then stop

The difference between persistent and irritating is roughly one message. Send one follow-up, make it easy to say no, and then leave them alone. 'Happy either way' converts better than urgency, because it removes the pressure that makes people ghost.

One caution: an inbound enquiry is consent to reply about that enquiry. It is not consent to add them to a marketing list. Keep the scopes separate — consent.