Best time to call a lead back: what one study found, and its limits

Where the "best time to call" charts come from

The source is the Lead Response Management study, presented in October 2007 by Dave Elkington of InsideSales.com and Dr. James Oldroyd, then at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Its summary says it examined three years of data across six companies, covering over fifteen thousand leads and over one hundred thousand call attempts.

Two things to keep in mind as you read the numbers. InsideSales.com sold software for calling leads, and every lead in the study came from a web form. We covered the study's findings on speed, and its limits, in how fast a business should respond to a new lead. This guide is about its other findings: day and hour.

What it found about the day of the week

The study measured two things: reaching a live person ("contact") and that person agreeing to enter the sales process ("qualify").

• Reaching people: Wednesday and Thursday were best. Thursday was 49.7% better than the worst day, which was Tuesday.
• Qualifying people: Wednesday was the top day, 24.9% better than the worst day, Friday.
• Reaching someone who then qualified: Thursday was best, 19.1% better than Friday.

The authors also noted that Monday was poor in every category, and that Friday was fine for reaching people but weak for getting a commitment. They guessed, with a "perhaps," that people avoid committing just before a weekend. That is their guess, not a finding. For what a missed connection costs in money, use your own figures in what a missed call really costs.

What it found about the time of day

• Reaching people: 4 to 6 pm was best, 114% better than the hour before lunch.
• Qualifying people: 8 to 9 am and 4 to 5 pm were best. The 8 to 9 am hour was 164% better than 1 to 2 pm, right after lunch.
• Reaching someone who then qualified: 4 to 5 pm, 109% better than late morning.

The study left out early morning and evening on purpose: it did not treat 7 to 8 am or after 6 pm as standard working hours. So it says nothing about evenings, which is when many homeowners are free. If your customers call you at night, the choices for covering that are in after-hours calls.

The finding that outweighs both

After reporting days and hours, the study's summary says that the effect of response time "dwarfed them both."

Its numbers: the odds of reaching a lead fell by over 10 times within the first hour, and by 100 times between 5 minutes and 30 minutes. Set beside those, a 50% or 114% edge from picking a good day or hour is small.

One more finding is easy to miss. The study reported that after 20 hours, each extra call attempt actually lowered the chance of making contact that led anywhere. The authors said plainly that they did not know why. It is still a useful warning against calling the same person again and again for days. The response time quiz gives a quick read on your own speed.

How much weight to give it

Less than the charts suggest. Be clear on what this study was not.

• It was six companies, all customers of one vendor, which the write-up says were concentrated in mortgage and insurance.
• It was business-style calling in office hours. A homeowner with a leak is not a mortgage shopper at a desk.
• It is from before 2007. People answered unknown numbers more readily then.
• The percentages compare best against worst. "49.7% better than the worst day" sounds bigger than the gap between two ordinary days.
• It stops at "qualified." It does not report sales.

The vendor's own 2009 article repeats these figures as rules, and even has a slip in it, describing Thursday as better "than on Thursday." That is a fair picture of how numbers drift once they leave the study. We link the originals under Sources so you can read them yourself.

How to find your own best times

Two weeks of your own call-backs are worth more than any study. Keep a simple tally:

1. For every call-back, note three things: the day, the hour, and whether a person answered.
2. After two weeks, group by hour. Early morning, late morning, lunch, afternoon, late afternoon, evening.
3. Work out the share answered in each group. Ten calls with six answered is 60%.
4. Move your second tries into the best group. Keep first tries immediate.
5. Check again next quarter. Seasons change when people are home.

If two weeks is too few calls to see a pattern, keep going until each group has at least ten. Small counts mislead. The missed-call audit sheet has room for the day and hour of each call.

A simple call-back routine

• First try: right away, whatever the hour of the working day.
• Second try: the same day, in late afternoon if the first was earlier.
• Third try: the next morning, early.
• Then stop calling and leave one clear message with your name, number and when you can be reached.

Keep calls inside reasonable hours. For telephone solicitations the federal rule sets the limits at 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the called person's local time; that is general information, not legal advice. And write each try down, so nobody on your team calls a fourth time. NewFrontDesk's lead inbox keeps a note and a status on each enquiry for exactly that reason. To talk it through, call (346) 913-7215 or request setup.

Sources

• Lead Response Management study summary, Oldroyd and InsideSales.com, 2007 (PDF copy hosted by Mortech)
• InsideSales: the vendor's own 2009 article on when to call
• Harvard Business Review: The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (March 2011; introduction is public)
• 47 CFR 64.1200, paragraph (c)(1): calling hours (Cornell Legal Information Institute copy)

Sources read on October 9, 2026. The 2007 figures are quoted from the study's own summary; we have not seen its raw data. The call-back routine is our own suggestion, not a research finding. General information, not legal advice.