The Follow Up That Never Came

By Keith Donoghue | Vancouver City News | August 18, 2026
Editor: Karalee Greer
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A Vancouver accounting firm receives a new enquiry on Tuesday afternoon. The owner intends to reply that day. Client work gets in the way, and the response goes out Thursday morning.

By then, the prospective client has already booked a call with another firm.

Research from Harvard Business Review and the MIT Lead Response Management Study found that the odds of qualifying a new lead can fall by 80 percent after the first five minutes. Yet average business response times have been reported at roughly 42 to 47 hours.

Those numbers expose a significant gap between when a prospect is most engaged and when many businesses actually respond.

InsideSales.com research found that 35 to 50 percent of sales are won by the vendor that responds first. In higher urgency service categories, that window can be measured in minutes rather than days.

Consider a Vancouver service business receiving 20 new enquiries each month. If it consistently responds 24 to 48 hours later, it may already be coming second or third in the prospect's decision process.

At 35 percent, seven of those monthly enquiries represent potential opportunities where response speed could influence who gets the first conversation. Across a year, that is 84 enquiries.

There is another problem. Research has also estimated that more than 30 percent of business leads are never contacted at all. They arrive in an inbox, are overlooked during a busy day, and quietly expire.

The fix is operational. An enquiry can be acknowledged immediately, routed to the right person, and flagged for follow-up without requiring an owner to constantly monitor their inbox.

The goal is not to automate the sales conversation. It is to make sure the conversation actually starts.

Why It Matters

This is not just about faster follow-up. It reflects a broader shift.

Service businesses increasingly compete on responsiveness as well as expertise.

A slow enquiry process can lose revenue before price, quality, or experience are ever considered.

Reducing that delay protects opportunities the business has already worked to generate.

Keith Donoghue | Vancouver City News Keith Donoghue is the founder of Highridge AI Consulting, helping Vancouver small businesses reduce manual work and run more efficient operations.

Website: Highridge AI Consulting
Email: keith@highridgeai.com
LinkedIn: keith-donoghue
Video Examples: Highridge AI Video Examples
Instagram: @highridgeaiconsulting
Facebook: Highridge AI Consulting

Tags: #Vancouver City News #Keith Donoghue #Vancouver Business #Small Business #AI Adoption #Automation #Productivity #Entrepreneurship