Speed to Lead for Contractors: Answer the Call, Book the Job
Speed to lead is how fast your company answers or calls back a new lead, and it decides who books the job. Across 7 contractor accounts we manage, Google LSA calls answered for 30 seconds or more were marked booked 30.5% of the time. Missed calls were marked booked 7.7% of the time.
Legacy Plumbing Group: From 15 Google LSA leads a month to 49 to 64. See the numbers
30.5% vs 7.7%
LSA calls marked booked, answered vs missed
Nov 2025 to Oct 16, 2026, 7 accounts
46.3%
weekend LSA calls answered
vs 78.6% on weekdays 8am to 5pm
66% to 83%
LSA calls connected at Legacy Plumbing Group
August vs September 2026
Source: Google Ads API LSA data and Legacy Plumbing Group's September 2026 report, DG Agency.
How fast do I need to answer LSA calls?
Answer live, every time. In our LSA data from November 2025 to mid-October 2026, across 7 contractor accounts, calls answered for 30 seconds or more were marked booked 30.5% of the time. Missed calls were marked booked 7.7% of the time. Message leads, which someone has to reply to, were marked booked 30.0% of the time.
| Lead | Leads | Marked booked | Booked rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calls answered 30 seconds or more | 1,013 | 309 | 30.5% |
| Calls not answered | 338 | 26 | 7.7% |
| Message leads | 247 | 74 | 30.0% |
Leads from November 1, 2025 to October 16, 2026, 7 contractor accounts. Booked means the contractor marked the lead booked in the LSA inbox, which undercounts because not every lead gets marked. The largest account is 72.4% of all leads, so the totals lean toward it.
Source: Google Ads API LSA lead data, DG Agency.
How we know: The full breakdown is in our 2026 Google LSA statistics.
When do contractors miss the most calls?
Weekends and after hours. In our LSA data, weekend calls were answered 46.3% of the time, against 78.6% on weekdays from 8am to 5pm. Weekday calls before 8am or after 5pm were answered 65.3% of the time. The booked rate drops right along with the answer rate.
Saturday calls were answered 47.8% of the time and Sunday calls 41.4%. Monday is the busiest day, with 23.9% of all leads. If your phones are only covered Monday to Friday, weekend callers have to wait until then, and some of them won't.
| When the call came in | Phone leads | Answered 30s+ | Booked rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekdays 8am to 5pm | 1,158 | 78.6% | 27.2% |
| Weekdays before 8am or after 5pm | 72 | 65.3% | 19.3% |
| Weekends | 121 | 46.3% | 17.4% |
Leads from November 1, 2025 to October 16, 2026, 7 accounts. Booked rate is leads marked booked divided by all leads in that block, calls and messages.
Source: Google Ads API LSA lead data, DG Agency.
What time of day do contractor leads come in?
Mostly mid-morning. In our LSA data, 82.7% of leads arrived on weekdays between 8am and 5pm, and 10am alone brought 13.1% of them. The weak spot is late afternoon. Calls were answered 82.7% of the time at 9am, then 69.5% at 3pm, 61.5% at 4pm and 48.4% at 5pm.
Late afternoon is when crews are finishing jobs and the office is closing out the day. That's the window to cover first, with a second person on the phones or a missed-call text back that goes out the moment a call rings out.
| Hour | Share of all leads | Phone leads | Answered 30s+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9am | 10.2% | 139 | 82.7% |
| 10am | 13.1% | 181 | 71.3% |
| 1pm | 10.7% | 144 | 78.5% |
| 3pm | 9.9% | 141 | 69.5% |
| 4pm | 6.2% | 91 | 61.5% |
| 5pm | 2.4% | 31 | 48.4% |
Leads from November 1, 2025 to October 16, 2026, 7 contractor accounts, all on Pacific time.
Source: Google Ads API LSA lead data, DG Agency.
What do the famous speed to lead statistics actually say?
They all point the same way, but most come from sales teams answering web forms, not contractors answering phones. The ones you see quoted most are a Harvard Business Review study on response within an hour, a Velocify finding on replies within a minute, and surveys showing businesses take hours or days to respond.
For contractors, the call matters more than the form. 84.6% of the LSA leads in our data were phone calls. That's why our own numbers measure answered calls, not reply minutes, and why the first fix is almost always the phones.
| Statistic | Original source named | Quoted by |
|---|---|---|
| Odds of qualifying a lead fall 60x when response goes from within an hour to 24 hours or longer | Linked to a Harvard Business Review study | Workato |
| Responding within one minute increases conversion rates by 391% | Velocify | LeadAngel |
| Businesses take 47 hours on average to respond to leads | Not named in the text | LeadAngel |
| 53% of consumers hired the first business that responded, even if another cost less | Linked, not named in the text | Convoso |
These are other companies' numbers, mostly from B2B sales and online forms. We list them so you know where they come from.
Source: Pages ranking for speed to lead on Google, read October 21, 2026.
Can my office actually get better at answering?
Yes, once someone is watching the number every week. Legacy Plumbing Group's office in Oak Harbor, WA connected on 66% of its LSA calls in August 2026 and 83% in September. TMC Roofing's office connected on 53% of LSA calls in January 2026 and 84% in September. Both are their own teams' work.
At Legacy, 60 of 91 calls connected in August and 52 of 63 in September. Missed calls went from 31 to 11, and leads marked booked in the LSA inbox went from 2 to 8. We tracked the answer rate every week and worked it with their office team. See how Legacy Plumbing Group went from 15 to 64 LSA leads a month.
At TMC Roofing, 55 of 103 LSA calls connected in January and 205 of 245 in September, in the same month Google charged them for 202 leads. Read the TMC Roofing case study.
How we know: Google's LSA account report (connected phone calls) and each client's September 2026 report.
What does DG Agency do for speed to lead?
We make the answer rate a number your office sees every week, and we help set up speed to lead inside the CRM you already use, like Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan or JobNimbus. That means instant text-back, lead routing, follow-up and reminders, plus a plan for nights and weekends.
- Answer rate from Google's LSA account report every week, with the missed calls listed so the office can call them back.
- Instant text-back, routing, follow-up and reminders set up inside your own CRM, so new form and message leads get a reply right away instead of waiting for someone to check the inbox.
- No new software to learn. The setup lives in the CRM your office already runs, and you own it.
- Lead alerts by text or Slack the moment a lead comes in.
- An after-hours plan you choose: your own on-call phone, an answering service, or an AI agent after hours only.
- A lead source on every call, so the call tracking and CRM matching can show which answered calls became paid jobs.
Does answering the phone help my Google LSA account?
It helps where it counts, in booked jobs. Google charged for 92.4% of the calls in our data that were answered for 30 seconds or more, and 30.5% of them were marked booked. Every missed call is a homeowner you paid to reach and didn't talk to. Fix answering before you raise the budget.
Raising LSA spend on a phone line that misses half its weekend calls buys more missed calls. That's why answer rate sits next to cost per lead in every report we send. More on how we run Google LSA for contractors, and on how fast roofers should respond to leads.
Questions owners ask us
What is speed to lead?
Speed to lead is the time between a homeowner reaching out and your company answering or calling back. For calls, a person should pick up. For forms and messages, someone should reply fast. In our LSA data, a call answered for 30 seconds or more was about four times as likely to be marked booked as a missed one.
How fast should a contractor respond to a lead?
Answer calls live during business hours, every time, and reply to forms and messages right away. We don't have clean callback-time data on form leads yet, so we won't quote you a minute count. What we can show is the gap between answered and missed calls: 30.5% marked booked against 7.7%, November 2025 to mid-October 2026.
Do missed LSA calls cost me money?
Mostly in lost jobs, not fees. In our data Google charged for 4.1% of calls nobody answered, against 92.4% of calls answered for 30 seconds or more. So a missed call usually isn't billed. It's still a homeowner who needed a contractor and called someone else, and that's the expensive part.
Should I use an answering service or an AI receptionist after hours?
Either can work if the office still owns business hours. Some owners want a person on every daytime call and an AI agent only after hours, and that's a sensible rule. Weekend calls in our data were answered 46.3% of the time, so whatever covers nights and weekends should at least capture the name, number and job.
How much does speed to lead cost?
Less than most owners expect, because the tools usually live in the CRM you already pay for. Text-back, routing and follow-up are features in Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, JobNimbus and similar systems. What costs money is people: someone to answer live, or an answering service after hours. Our setup is part of the retainer.
Is speed to lead part of the DG Agency retainer?
Yes. Speed-to-lead follow-up on every new lead is part of the retainer, alongside Google Local Services Ads, Google Business Profile, local SEO, Yelp, citations and reviews. Retainers start at $5,000 a month for contractors doing $1M or more. Ad spend is paid straight to Google and Yelp.
Find out how many calls you're missing
Book a 30-minute call with Daniel. He'll pull your LSA answer rate by day and hour with you and show where booked jobs are slipping away.