Calculator
What the enquiries nobody answered are costing you
Nearly a quarter of firms never answer a web enquiry at all. Enter three numbers and price that.
Enter what a normal month looks like, not a good one. The three defaults are placeholders rather than benchmarks — the result is not about your business until you have replaced them.
Missed lead revenue
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries a month | 100 | 100 |
| Never answered — at the measured 23% non-response rate | 100 × 0.23 | 23.0 |
| Of those, the ones who would have bought | 23.0 × 0.10 | 2.30 |
| What they were worth | 2.30 × $2,000 | $4,600 |
This assumes
-
will not count the enquiries that were answered, but answered long after the window in which a reply still changed the outcome
will count only the enquiries that received no reply at all, so the output covers one leak rather than the whole of response failure — which is the larger number
-
will not assume an unanswered enquiry is unrecoverable, because some of them call back and no honest figure exists for how many
will treat the result as an upper bound on this one leak rather than as a forecast of recoverable revenue
-
will not apply the higher close rate that a five-minute response produces, which would credit the calculator for a gain belonging to the system
will apply the close rate you entered, unchanged, to the enquiries that were never answered
-
will not pretend the multiplier was measured on leads, because it was not — it is the share of 2,241 firms that never answered a single test enquiry
will apply that per-firm rate to your own enquiry count, which is an approximation, and name it here rather than leave you to find it
Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review (March 2011) · 1.25M inbound leads across 2,241 US firms · verified
How to read this number.
The multiplier in step two is the only figure here that did not come from you, and it is worth knowing exactly what it is. Researchers sent one ordinary web enquiry to each of 2,241 US companies and recorded what came back. Twenty-three percent of them sent nothing — not a slow reply, not an automated acknowledgement, nothing. Everything else on this page is arithmetic performed on figures you supplied about your own business.
That figure was measured across firms rather than across leads, which matters when it is applied to your enquiry count. A business that answers nine enquiries in ten is not the business the 23% describes; a business with one unwatched channel probably is. The assumption is listed under the instrument rather than buried, because a calculator that invites you to check its arithmetic has to be equally open about its inputs.
Read the output as a ceiling on one specific failure, not as recoverable revenue. Some proportion of unanswered enquiries contact the business again, or buy anyway, or were never going to buy from anyone. No defensible figure exists for how large that proportion is, so the calculator does not invent one and does not discount for it. What it does instead is stay narrow: it prices the enquiries that got nothing, and says so.
The narrowness cuts the other way too, and it is the more useful direction. The population this ignores — enquiries that did get a reply, but hours or days after arrival — is larger than the population it counts. In most businesses the answered-too-late group is several times the never-answered group. If the number above is uncomfortable, the total is worse, and the audit is what measures it rather than estimating it.
The close rate matters more than either of the other inputs, and it is the one people guess at. If you do not know it, the honest move is to lower the figure until it is one you could defend to your accountant, then read the output as the floor it becomes. A calculator run on a flattering close rate produces a flattering answer, and the point of showing the arithmetic is that you can see exactly which input did the work.
Questions this raises.
Why does it not show an annual figure?
Because multiplying by twelve is the oldest way to make a monthly leak look like a crisis. The monthly figure is the one you can check against a real month, and anyone who wants the annual number can do that arithmetic themselves.
Our enquiries all get answered. Does this apply?
Then the calculator returns a number you should ignore, and the useful question becomes how long the answers take. That is a different measurement and it is the one the audit starts with, because almost every business that believes it answers everything has one channel nobody is watching.
Where does the no-reply figure come from?
Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington in Harvard Business Review — 1.25 million inbound leads across 2,241 US firms, with the full citation and its verified date printed under the instrument. It replaced a thirty-eight-percent figure this site used to carry, which was attributed to a multi-study aggregate and could not be traced to any primary source. The smaller number is the one with working behind it.
The systems behind the number.
- AI follow-upA written sequence of specific, useful contacts across email, text and call reminders, spaced at intervals your own history supports, personalised from what the person actually asked, and stopped the moment they reply, book or say no.
- AI operationsThe repetitive internal steps between an event and its outcome — data entry, assignment, chasing, reminding, reporting — are moved into systems that run whether or not anyone is at a desk, with a person left on every step that contains a judgement.
- Lead qualificationEvery inbound is scored on what it actually said and where it came from, before anyone reads it. High-intent enquiries route to a person with a deadline; the rest enter a sequence that keeps them warm without spending anybody's morning. The rules are written in plain English and versioned when they change.
- Lead recoveryEvery inbound — form, call, chat, portal — lands in one queue with a timestamp on it, receives an immediate acknowledgement that names what was asked, and is routed to a named person with a deadline attached. Nothing is marked handled until a reply exists.
- Marketing automationThe material a buyer needs in order to decide is published where they are already looking, delivered on request, and the request is recorded against the person. The automation's job is delivery and memory, not pursuit.
The other calculators.
- What does one employee cost you in federal payroll tax?Employer payroll tax floor
- What running it yourself already costs you each monthRetainer vs DIY stack
- What a business your size typically spends on marketingMarketing budget benchmark
An estimate built from your own guesses is a starting position, not a baseline. The audit measures the same figures in your business instead of asking you for them.
METHOD
Every figure below carries its source and the date it was verified. Nothing on this page is asserted.
The numbers on this page.
| What | Value | Specific to |
|---|---|---|
| Firms that never responded to a web enquiry at all | 23% | This page |
| Customers who buy from the first responder | 78% | This page |
| Close rate — response under 5 minutes vs over 24 hours | 32% vs 12% | Category-wide |
| Teams responding to an inbound lead within 5 minutes | 7% | Category-wide |
Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review (March 2011) · 1.25M inbound leads across 2,241 US firms · verified
Multi-study aggregate · verified
Optifai speed-to-lead benchmark · n=939 companies · Q2 2025–Q1 2026 · verified
2026 speed-to-lead benchmark · range ~5% FinTech to ~15% RevOps · verified
Start with the measurement.
Reading about a benchmark is not the same as knowing your own number. The audit produces yours, measured rather than estimated.
$497 · delivered in 5 business days · credited against month one