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Nearly a quarter of companies never reply to a sales lead.
Not late. Never.
Harvard Business Review sent a test lead to 2,241 US companies and timed the response. 23% never answered, and the average reply among those that did took 42 hours. The companies that reached out inside an hour were nearly 7x as likely to qualify the lead as the ones that waited even one hour more.
You're probably not in the 23%.
You might be the founder answering at 11 pm or three days late, because you were on a demo, then a renewal, then a fire.
But there’s a way to change this.
The Follow-Up Leak
Here's the pattern I see on discovery calls every week. Inbound works.
But the founder is usually the best closer in the company, so you do the closing.
Which means you also end up being the person who replies, qualifies, books, reschedules, sends the recap, and chases the ones that went quiet.
None of that gets dropped on purpose. It just gets done late. And late is the one thing a warm lead won't forgive.
When any of that slips, the lead doesn't say no.
It goes cold. That's the Follow-Up Leak: revenue you already paid to generate, lost to silence.
What it actually costs
A founder we spoke to last week runs a software company with eight to ten inbound leads a week. They close about 50%.
Strong.
Then came the line I keep thinking about: it could be 60 or 70%, "just because there's not enough follow up happening."
Twenty points of close rate on the same volume, no new marketing spend.
They aren't shopping for more leads. They're shopping for someone to own the ones already arriving.
"Nobody can sell this like I can"
Probably true, and it isn't the job.
You're losing those deals on absence, not skill. Whoever fills the seat needs to answer inside the hour, qualify against your criteria, follow up five times without being asked, and hand you the deals that deserve you.
That's a full-cycle account executive on your clock. In the US, The Bridge Group puts median on-target earnings for a SaaS AE at $190K, roughly $100K of it base.
Our client above is budgeting $2,200 to $3,500 a month for the same seat in Latin America, working US hours, with commission on top.
That's the difference between "we'll hire when we're bigger" and hiring next month.
What the other side looks like
Every lead gets a same-day reply.
Smaller deals get closed by someone whose whole job is closing them.
You take the calls that need a founder, and only those.
Close rate moves because follow-up moved.
We source from four distinct regions across the U.S., South Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, so you meet people who are already selling, not just applying. (You get to save up to 70% in payroll with our international placements).
And every hire carries a 120-day replacement guarantee.
If your inbound is fine and your follow-up isn't, reply to this email or book a discovery call below.
Bring last month's lead count and close rate, and we'll work out what the leak is costing you.
To your growth,
The Go Carpathian Team
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