The 5-Minute Follow-Up System

How to use these scripts

Lead-response speed is the highest-leverage variable in small business sales. The MIT/InsideSales 15,000-lead study found you're 100× more likely to make contact if you respond inside five minutes versus thirty — and a Workato 2023 study of 114 B2B companies found zero called back inside the five-minute window. Most of your competitors aren't slow because they're bad. They're slow because they don't have a system. These scripts are the manual version of that system.

When to use them

Send the matching script the moment a lead arrives — before you finish the job you're on, before you check email, before you "circle back later." Five minutes is the cliff: after that, your odds halve every hour. Pick the script by scenario, paste it into your messaging app, and send.

Personalising the brackets

Anything in [square brackets] is meant to be replaced. [Name] is the lead's first name. [Your name] and [Business] are yours. [Service] or [Trade] is the specific job (kitchen remodel, electrical fault, hedge trim — not "your needs"). Generic placeholders are why follow-ups feel like spam. Three seconds of personalisation per script is the difference between a reply and an ignore.

What to do when they reply

Two outcomes you're driving for: a phone call booked or a quote requested. Don't try to close in the first message — get a yes to a phone call within 24 hours. If they've replied to the SMS, you've already won the speed game. The rest is conversation. If they don't reply, send the next script in the sequence at day 3, then day 7, then a final close-out at day 14. Five touches across two channels lifts response rates dramatically over a single try.

What these scripts won't do

They won't fix a lead source that's bringing you the wrong customers. They won't sell jobs you can't deliver on. They won't replace a real conversation. What they will do is keep leads warm long enough that the conversation can happen — which, for most owner-operators, is the entire problem. RelayNow automates this whole flow if you'd rather not paste anything.