{"id":1241,"slug":"mit-lead-response-study-2007","title":"MIT / InsideSales.com Lead Response Management Study 2007 (Oldroyd) — odds of contact drop ~100× from 5min to 30min; commonly misattributed to Harvard","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["forms-conversion","citation-practices","conversion-rate","speed-to-lead"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** The foundational lead-response dataset is the **2007 MIT / InsideSales.com Lead Response Management Study** by Dr. James Oldroyd: ~3 years of data, 6 companies, 15,000+ leads, 100,000+ call attempts. Headline findings:\n\n- \"The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times.\"\n- \"The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times.\"\n\n**Source:** Oldroyd 2007, MIT / InsideSales.com; widely reproduced.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified for the original study.\n\n**Caveats:**\n- The comparator is **5-vs-30 minutes**, not 5-vs-10 minutes — citation drift has produced shorter versions of this claim.\n- The study is **routinely misattributed to Harvard** (\"HBR study\"). This is the same citation-drift pattern that plagues the whole interactive-content topic — see [[cmi-2x-interactive-content-misattribution]].\n- A widely circulated \"47-minute average insurance-agency response time\" figure originates with US Tech Automations https://ustechautomations.com/resources/blog/best-lead-management-software-insurance-agencies-2026 — single-source.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** Settles the operational precondition for *any* lead-capture tool: if there is no 5-minute follow-up SOP, the calculator is wasted infrastructure. See [[rule-pair-calculator-with-five-minute-followup]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"cmi-2x-interactive-content-misattribution","title":"The \"2× engagement / conversion\" interactive-content stat is widely (mis)attributed to \"Content Marketing Institute\" — no original CMI dataset producing it exists","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-customer-facing-calculators-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: customer-facing calculators & tools for SMBs — the honest case (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-default-to-directional-range-ungated","title":"R2 — Default to a directional range, ungated, with a loud \"this is a ballpark\" — not a precise gated quote","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"rule-pair-calculator-with-five-minute-followup","title":"R6 — A lead-capturing calculator is wasted infrastructure without a 5-minute follow-up SLA; build the SLA first","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-20T16:50:09.593Z","updated_at":"2026-06-20T16:50:09.593Z"}