Tradie Lead Response Benchmark 2026

Every figure on this page comes from publicly accessible research, linked to its original source below. This page benchmarks how fast Australian tradies respond to new leads and what response speed is worth. The headline number: leads contacted within 5 minutes are roughly 21× more likely to be qualified than leads contacted after 30 minutes (a 2007 US B2B study). Australian platform data shows a median tradie response of 11.2 minutes (Service.com.au, 2026) and roughly double the win rate for sub-hour responses (ServiceSeeking, 2024).

The headline numbers

Metric2026 figure
Qualification lift, <5 min vs >30 min response~21×
Lead cost inflation, 2024 → 2025+21%
Conversion rate change, 2024 → 2025−12%
Healthy cost-per-lead band$40–140
Marketplace cost per booked job$87–375

Why response speed is the whole game

A lead is a perishable asset. Every minute it sits unanswered, the customer is getting a quote from someone else. The research is unambiguous: the tradie who answers in minutes wins the job, the one who answers tomorrow pays for the lead and loses the work. Video leads compress this further - you see the job before you drive out, so an informed quote can go out in minutes.

What we measure

The benchmark tracks response time, win rate, and job value by trade, drawing entirely on publicly accessible research. Every figure on this page links to its original source in the methodology note below, so you can check the data yourself.

Get the data

Every headline figure on this page is drawn from publicly accessible research, and each one links to its original source in the methodology note below. The key datasets: the 2007 MIT/InsideSales.com lead-response study, Service.com.au's Australian response-time data, ServiceSeeking's 2024 win-rate research, and the ServiceScale and made4tradies lead-cost analyses.

Methodology. All figures on this page come from publicly accessible sources, linked directly: the 2007 MIT/InsideSales.com Lead Response Management study by James Oldroyd (MIT Sloan) (21x qualification lift for sub-5-minute response, measured on US B2B leads from 2004-07; the study measured qualification, not close rates); Service.com.au platform data (median tradie response 11.2 minutes, 2026); ServiceSeeking (sub-hour responders win roughly 2x as often, 2024; platform claim without published methodology); and the 2025-26 lead-cost estimates from ServiceScale, a marketing agency for Australian tradies (+21% lead costs, -12% conversion, 2024 to 2025; agency estimates without a published dataset) and made4tradies (illustrative cost-per-booked-job figures, 2026).

Tradsiee's own research

Tradsiee is running its own research on lead response times across Australian trades - a survey of tradies, plus response-time data from the Tradsiee platform. It starts with Tradsiee's own users and grows with the platform: as more tradies join, the dataset gets bigger and this benchmark gets more precise. Results will be published on this page as they reach publication size.