Lead Response Time: The Metric Dealerships Ignore Until It's Too Late

An internet lead comes in. It sits in a queue. A BDC rep gets to it when they get to it.

Two hours later, someone finally responds.

By then, the customer has already talked to three other dealerships. They might have already scheduled a test drive somewhere else.

This happens dozens of times a day at dealerships across the country. And most don't even realize it's killing them.

The brutal math

Industry data is clear: 78% of buyers purchase from the first dealership to respond.

Not the dealership with the best price. Not the one with the nicest showroom. The one that answered first.

Speed is the differentiator. Everything else is secondary.

Yet the average dealership response time is measured in hours, not minutes. Some leads wait a full day. Others never get touched at all.

Why dealerships are slow

It's not laziness. It's systems.

Leads come from everywhere. Website forms, third-party sites, Facebook, manufacturer programs - all landing in different queues with different processes.

Manual assignment. A BDC manager looks at the queue, picks leads, assigns them to reps. This happens when the manager has time, not when the lead has patience.

No visibility. Leadership doesn't see response times in real-time. They find out about problems in monthly reports, weeks after the deals were lost.

No accountability. Which leads fell through? Who's fast and who's slow? Without tracking, there's no way to improve.

What fast looks like

The dealerships winning at lead response share a few patterns:

Automated first touch. The moment a lead comes in, an automated response goes out. This buys time while a human follows up - but the customer knows someone's paying attention.

Instant routing. Leads get assigned in seconds, not hours. The system matches based on availability, expertise, and performance - no waiting for a manager to manually distribute.

Escalation rules. If a lead isn't touched in 15 minutes, it automatically escalates. Nothing sits. Nothing gets forgotten.

Real-time dashboards. Leadership sees response times as they happen. Problems get fixed today, not next month.

The objections

"We don't have the staff." - You don't need more staff. You need the same staff not wasting time on manual routing and chasing cold leads.

"Quality matters more than speed." - Quality and speed aren't tradeoffs. A fast, personalized response beats a slow, perfect one. And it definitely beats no response.

"Our process is different." - Every dealership says this. Every dealership that fixes response time sees the same improvement in conversion.

The bottom line

Lead response time is the highest-leverage metric most dealerships ignore.

It doesn't require new inventory. It doesn't require more advertising spend. It doesn't require hiring.

It requires systems that route leads instantly, track response times, and hold people accountable.

The dealerships that figure this out close more deals with the same resources. The ones that don't keep wondering why their advertising isn't working.

The ads are fine. The leads are fine. The follow-up is broken.