"The first contractor to respond wins 78% of the jobs." You have seen it on vendor sites, in webinar slides and in a few trade-magazine columns. It gets attributed to Harvard Business Review, to InsideSales.com, or to "2018 research" with no name attached.
We looked for the source. We did not find one. This post lays out where the claim shows up, what real evidence exists on the question, and why the honest version of the argument is still a good reason to answer quickly.
Where the 78% claim comes from
We could not trace it. Here is what we checked.
- HBR. The Harvard Business Review article people usually mean is "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads" by Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington (March 2011). Its abstract says most companies are not responding nearly fast enough. As summarized by secondary sources, its figures concern how fast companies replied to test web leads and how that related to qualifying the lead. We could not open the full article, which sits behind HBR's paywall, but no summary of it that we found contains a 78% figure.
- InsideSales.com. The research it published with James Oldroyd is about the odds of contacting and qualifying a lead by minutes since submission (100 times and 21 times, five minutes versus 30). That page states no "first responder wins" percentage.
- Trade press. The Professional Remodeler write-up of the Valve+Meter study reports response rates and a drop-off pattern. It does not report who won the job.
A claim attributed to three sources that do not contain it, and to a fourth that is never named, is folklore.
This matters for a practical reason. If you tell your team or your partners "78% of jobs go to the first responder," someone will ask where that is from. You will not have an answer.
What evidence does exist
Four things are real, and each answers a slightly different question.
1. Consumers say they pick the first business to reply
A May 2026 survey by Moneypenny, reported in Contracting Business, asked 2,000 consumers and 500 construction and building trade companies. It reported that 83% of U.S. consumers choose the business that responds first to an inquiry, and that response speed was the top loyalty factor at 36%.
That is the closest real number to the myth, and it is a different kind of number. It is what people say in a survey, not what they did. The company running the survey sells answering services. Treat 83% as a statement of preference, and do not repeat it as "83% of jobs go to the first responder."
2. Contact odds fall quickly in the first minutes
The Lead Response Management study (Oldroyd with InsideSales.com, 2007 research) found much higher odds of reaching a web lead by phone within five minutes than after 30. It measured contact, not who got hired. It was run on sales teams in other industries, and the company that sponsored it sells software for fast lead calling. The odds multiplier does not translate into a share of jobs won.
3. Many companies never respond at all
Valve+Meter's secret shoppers submitted requests to 466 home services companies, per Professional Remodeler's December 2018 report. After five days, 60% had responded. A company that stayed silent for the first six hours had a 75% chance of never responding.
This is the most useful trade-specific finding for the "first to respond" question, and it is an indirect one. If four out of ten companies never reply, being among the ones who do puts you ahead before speed even enters the picture. It says nothing about whether the fastest of the repliers wins.
4. Booking rates are lower when calls come in at bad times
ServiceTitan's call data shows large shops booking 61% of calls at peak and 21% after 6 p.m. Small shops fell from 26% to 9%. It does not say the first responder wins. It shows that when and how a call is handled changes the outcome a great deal.
What nobody has measured
The direct test would be: for a given customer request sent to several contractors, did the one who replied first get hired more often, and by how much, controlling for price, reviews and availability? We found no public study that does that for home services.
Several things would get in the way if someone tried:
- Emergency and planned work behave differently. A homeowner with water on the floor will hire the first person who picks up. A homeowner collecting three quotes for a new roof may wait for all of them.
- Replying first is not the same as being chosen. Price, reviews, availability and how the call goes all matter.
- A fast but useless reply may not help. An auto-reply that says "we got your request" is a response. It may not count as one to the customer.
What to do with the honest version
The evidence supports a weaker claim than 78%, and it is still enough to act on.
Being fast is cheap insurance. Contact odds drop fast, consumers say speed matters, and a large share of your competitors never respond. Even if first responder does not win 78%, the cost of answering quickly is small compared with the value of a booked job.
Quality of response matters as much as the clock. If your fast reply is a form email, you have the speed and none of the substance. A text that asks one useful question ("Is the system running at all, or completely down?") and offers a time beats a generic acknowledgment.
Match the speed to the job. No-heat and burst-pipe calls need a person now. A bathroom remodel inquiry can tolerate a reply inside an hour. We set out a practical target by lead source in a companion post on response-time standards, out on December 3.
Measure your own. Pull 50 recent leads. Note which ones replied inside an hour and which booked. In your market, with your pricing, that comparison tells you more than any study. If you cannot pull it, that is the first thing to fix. Our guide to the research behind speed to lead walks through how to time your own response, and the Booked-Jobs Recovery System reports it weekly as booked jobs, not as clicks or call counts.
If your business runs a phone line that does not answer after hours, see after-hours lead capture. For a broader look at which numbers hold up and which do not, read missed call statistics for home services, sourced and graded.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 78% first responder statistic from Harvard Business Review?
We could not find it there. The HBR article "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads" (2011) is real, but summaries of it report figures about response times and lead qualification, and none that we found include a 78% first responder claim. We could not open the full text, so this is based on the abstract and secondary summaries.
Does the first contractor to respond actually win the job?
There is no public study that tests that directly for home services. Consumer surveys say most people choose the first business to respond, and contact odds fall quickly in the first minutes, but neither proves that the first responder wins any particular share of jobs.
How fast should I respond if I cannot prove the 78% number?
Fast enough to be in the conversation before the customer moves on. For web leads, aim for minutes. For emergency calls, answer live or call back immediately. We cover the details by lead source in a companion post.