22 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
What happens in the first ten minutes after an enquiry decides whether you win it
Two businesses with identical advertising, identical pricing and identical quality will produce very different results if one answers in five minutes and the other in five hours. It is the least glamorous factor in lead generation and among the most decisive.
What the customer is doing while you wait
They filled in three forms, not one. Whoever responds first is the one they speak to while the problem is still front of mind.
By the time a second firm calls back the following morning, the conversation has usually moved on — and the caller now has a quote to compare yours against rather than an open question.
It matters most exactly where trades are weakest
The enquiries that reward speed most are the urgent ones — leaks, faults, blockages, lockouts. Those are also the ones that arrive while you are on the tools with your hands full.
That conflict is the real problem, and it is not solved by wanting to answer faster.
What actually fixes it
Something between the enquiry and you, so nothing waits.
- An automatic text acknowledging the enquiry and saying when you will ring — cheap, and it buys an hour of goodwill
- A call-answering service for the hours you are genuinely unreachable, which costs far less than the leads currently going unanswered
- WhatsApp as an option, because a great many people would rather type than ring and will answer a message at eight in the evening
Measure it before you spend more
Take one month and record the gap between every enquiry arriving and somebody making contact. Most trades are surprised, and not pleasantly.
If the average is hours, no increase in advertising budget will help. You would simply be buying more of what you are already failing to answer.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.