The "78% buy from the first responder" stat: where it came from and what to cite instead

The claim

The sentence varies slightly by site: "78% of customers buy from the first responder," "78% of buyers choose the vendor that responds first," "78% of homeowners go with whoever responds first." The number is always 78, and the source is almost always missing. When a source is given, it is "Lead Connect" or "a Lead Connect survey."

The trail

We tried to find the survey. We could not establish who or what "Lead Connect" is, and the figure circulates in sales blogs going back years. No PDF, no press release, no methodology page and no date has surfaced in any of the citations we checked. Every reference points to another blog that points to another blog. Carly, a software vendor that audited speed-to-lead statistics in 2025, reached the same dead end and flagged the figure as unverifiable.

Source on the attribution problem: Carly, speed to lead statistics audit.

That does not mean the number is false. It means nobody can tell you what it measured, who was asked, or when. A statistic you cannot trace is an opinion with a percent sign.

Who uses it

Podium's home-services site states that "78% of homeowners go with whoever responds first." It is presented as a fact, without a citation we could find. Podium is a reputable company and may have internal data behind it; we simply cannot see it. The correct way to cite it is "Podium reports that 78% of homeowners go with whoever responds first," which is a statement about Podium, not about homeowners.

Source: Podium, home services communications.

We use Podium's other figure on this site, that 40% of service calls come in after hours, with the same "Podium reports" framing, for the same reason.

What to cite instead

Harvard Business Review, 2011

An audit of 2,241 US companies. Firms that contacted a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times more likely to qualify it than firms that waited even one hour more, and more than 60 times more likely than firms that waited a day. Average response time among responders: 42 hours. 23% never responded. This is the most defensible speed-to-lead citation that exists.

Source: Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads," HBR, March 2011.

The Lead Response Management study, 2007

Three years of data, six companies, more than 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts, analyzed by InsideSales.com with James Oldroyd. Contact odds were 100 times higher when the first call came within 5 minutes versus 30, and qualification odds 21 times higher. It is vendor data and it is often mislabeled an MIT study; cite it by its real name with that caveat and it is still a strong number.

Source: leadresponsemanagement.org.

Velocify, 3.5 million leads

Calling within one minute produced a 391% lift in conversion. Vendor data, large sample, clearly described method.

Source: Velocify, The Ultimate Contact Strategy.

6sense, 2025

If you want a "first vendor wins" statistic, 6sense's 2025 buyer research found that the vendor who makes first contact wins the deal roughly 80% of the time. It is B2B research, not homeowner research, and it is also vendor-published, but it has a named source and a year, which puts it ahead of the 78% claim.

Source: 6sense 2025 buyer research, as summarized by Carly. Check the original 6sense report before quoting the exact figure.

Other numbers in the same family

The 78% stat travels with a few companions that deserve the same scrutiny before they go on a slide.

• "62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered." This traces to a sample of 85 businesses by 411 Locals. It may be directionally right, but it is a small sample. Invoca's analysis of 70 million tracked calls, which found 44% unanswered, is the stronger citation.
• "98% text open rate versus 20% for email." Widely repeated, rarely sourced. Verse publishes a version (98% versus 38% for email) as its own vendor data. An open rate is also not a reply rate or a booked appointment.
• "Leads contacted within 5 minutes are 9x more likely to convert." A garbled version of the Lead Response Management study's 21x qualification figure, from a different data set. Use the original.

Sources: Invoca and 411 Locals figures via JustCall, missed call statistics; Verse texting figures at verse.ai (vendor-reported).

How to write the slide

Weak: "78% of customers buy from the first responder."
Strong: "Companies that respond within an hour are about 7x more likely to qualify the lead (HBR, 2011). The average company takes 42 hours."

The second version is more specific, more credible, and more alarming. It also survives the one prospect in the room who asks "says who?"

Why we care

Our product's entire pitch is that answering a lead in about a minute beats answering it in a day. We would be the obvious company to repeat the 78% number. We would rather be the company that explains why we do not. Every statistic on this site carries its source and date, and when the source is a vendor, we say so. All the response-time statistics we consider citable. What speed to lead means.