Franchise development teams should respond to new leads within 5 minutes — that's the industry best-practice benchmark. In reality, most brands fall far short: according to the FranFunnel Franchise Lead Response Time Study, Q1 2025 (500+ brands, 14 franchise categories), the average email response time was 8.8 hours, and 35% of franchise brands never responded to an inquiry at all.
Speed matters because franchise candidates are not exclusive to your pipeline. The moment someone submits an inquiry, they may have submitted to two or three other brands. The team that reaches them first — and with a real, personalized response — sets the frame for every conversation that follows. A candidate who hears from you in 60 seconds has a completely different impression than one who gets an email the next morning.
Text is the right channel for that first contact. The same study found that 73% of franchise brands never used SMS — which means most brands are still relying on the slowest, most ignorable channel while candidates are on their phones waiting. A first text in under 5 minutes dramatically outperforms an email at any response time. The teams hitting under 60 seconds — automatically, nights and weekends — are the ones converting leads into booked discovery calls before competitors even know the lead came in.
For the full benchmark data and a breakdown of where most franchise brands lose leads in the first hour, see speed-to-lead research.