R6 — A lead-capturing calculator is wasted infrastructure without a 5-minute follow-up SLA; build the SLA first

Rule: Do not recommend a lead-capturing calculator (any gated tool) unless the client has — or is about to build — an operational 5-minute follow-up SLA. The SLA is the precondition, not a follow-on improvement.

Why: Oldroyd 2007 (MIT / InsideSales.com Lead Response Management Study 2007 (Oldroyd) — odds of contact drop ~100× from 5min to 30min; commonly misattributed to Harvard): odds of contacting a lead drop ~100× between a 5-minute and a 30-minute response; odds of qualifying drop ~21×. A calculator that fills an inbox you check on Mondays converts to almost nothing — the lead quality decays past usefulness inside an hour.

How to apply:

• Before recommending a gated calculator, ask: who picks up the lead, on what schedule, with what tooling.
• If the answer is "we check the inbox a few times a day," default to R2 — Default to a directional range, ungated, with a loud "this is a ballpark" — not a precise gated quote instead.
• If building toward the SLA, document the rollout sequence (SLA → operational practice → then gate the calculator).