Speed to Lead
Definition
Speed to lead is the time between a prospect's enquiry and your first meaningful reply. In coliving it is one of the strongest conversion levers: prospects often enquire with several operators at once, and the first credible response frequently wins the tour.
The formula
Speed to lead = Median minutes from enquiry received to first human-quality reply
- Median
- not the mean — one weekend enquiry answered on Monday distorts an average beyond usefulness
- Human-quality reply
- a response that answers the question asked or offers a specific viewing slot; an automated acknowledgement does not count
Worked example
Our worked example: 210 enquiries in a month. 150 arrive in office hours and are answered in a median of 22 minutes. 60 arrive evenings and weekends and are answered in a median of 14 hours.
- 01Reported median across all enquiries = around 45 minutes, because the median sits inside the office-hours block.
- 02The out-of-hours group is 29% of all enquiries and waits over half a day.
- 03If those 60 convert at half the rate of the fast group, the loss is roughly 30 enquiries' worth of conversion a month.
- 04At a 6.7% baseline conversion, that is about two signed leases a month left on the table.
The headline median looks healthy and hides the entire problem. Segmenting by arrival time is what makes the cost visible — and in most coliving businesses the out-of-hours segment is the largest single conversion leak.
The structural reason speed matters more in coliving than in conventional lettings is that enquiries are rarely exclusive. A resident searching a city sends the same message to four or five operators within a few minutes, and the reply that arrives first usually gets the viewing — not because it is better, but because it arrives while they are still looking at their phone. Everyone after that is competing against a booked slot.
Relocations amplify this. A large share of coliving enquiries come from people moving between cities or countries, often across time zones and often on a compressed timeline. For them a next-day reply is not slightly worse than a same-hour reply; it can arrive after the decision has been made.
The fix is usually structural rather than motivational. Templated first responses that answer the three questions every enquiry contains — is it available, what is the all-in price, when can I see it — plus an online booking link that lets the enquirer take a slot without waiting for you, will move this number further than asking the team to be faster. Measure it weekly, segment it by arrival hour, and treat the out-of-hours median as the real one.
The common mistake
Counting the autoresponder as the response
An automated acknowledgement measured as first response produces a speed-to-lead figure of seconds and no improvement in bookings whatsoever. The enquirer is comparing operators on whether their actual question was answered, so the clock should stop at the first reply a person would recognise as an answer. Any other definition measures your email configuration rather than your responsiveness.
Frequently asked
What is a good speed to lead for coliving?+
Faster than the operators the same person also messaged, which is the only benchmark that decides anything. Practically that means minutes rather than hours during the day, and a self-service booking path covering the times nobody is at a desk. Publishing a target number without the out-of-hours segment behind it is how this metric gets gamed.
Does an instant chatbot reply count?+
Only if it genuinely answers — availability, price, and a bookable slot. A chatbot that collects contact details and promises a human will follow up has not stopped the clock, because the enquirer still has an unanswered question and four other operators to hear from.
Is speed to lead more important than lead volume?+
In most of the buildings we look at, yes, and it is cheaper to fix. Doubling enquiry volume costs marketing budget every month; halving response time costs a process change once. The order of operations is to fix conversion first and buy volume second.
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