Short answer: 5 Minutes. Yes, your odds of contacting a lead drop by 100x if you wait 30 minutes instead of responding within 5 minutes, and even slipping from 5 minutes to 10 minutes cuts contact odds by 5x.
The MIT Lead Response Management Study analyzed 3 years of data, 15,000 leads, and more than 100,000 call attempts. Its core finding was blunt.
To add insult to injury, the observed average response time is 42 hours!
Lead response time is even more important in private aviation as you're dealing with time sensitive prospects, who probably would've already "price-shopped" with 4 or 5 other brokers before they even got you.
The critical concept behind all of this is called "Speed to Lead", and private aviation is the prime application.
The 5-Minute Window
I have observed this issue first-hand with salespeople and brokers in training, and the response to the question "How fast you think we should get back to prospects?" were always met with these answers:
-1 Hour
-2 Hours
-4 Hours
-24 Hours
Only 1 in 20 rep/broker would go below the 1 hour mark, and even then, they'd proudly be talking about 30 minutes thinking they're being very aggressive compared to the rest of the group.
Once I reveal the expected SLA of 2 minutes, they would stand there motionless, looking at me with googly eyes like I just came out
The study shows that lead response is not about effort or intention. It is about speed inside a very short decision window.
The first five minutes matter because buyer attention decays fast. By thirty minutes, you are often no longer competing on the quality of your service. You are competing from behind against whoever answered first and sounded credible.
That matters even more in charter because inventory is perishable. Aircraft availability, crew legality, positioning, and pricing can all move quickly. If you are third or fourth to respond, the option you hoped to present may already be gone, leaving you with weaker alternatives and a harder sales conversation.
Is it because clients are impatient?
With the way everyone views private aviation, it's easy to assume that clients are all millionaires and billionaires who are used to getting their way. It could be, but in most cases, they won't be.
As a private jet broker, your clients know that you're not the only one out there, and are simply very likely to reach out to 3 to 5 brokers or brokerages for the same request.
What they're doing is very simple: they're "shopping around" for the best deals. I mean it's understandable when you consider the fact that most of them will be spending tens of thousands of dollars.
By the time you receive their request, they just might have received a quote from someone else.
Let's imagine that the average private jet client will reach out to 4 different brokerages for a quote. By the time you receive the request, there's a chance you just might be the 4th person they contact, and by the time they found you, hours could've passed, which means that second it hits your inbox, cards are already stacked against you because someone else already got the request before you and had a head start.
So can you counter that as a broker?
Here's the good news and secret nobody tells you
Most brokers who receive the request fail at one critical step: Qualification.
What most of the brokers do is to start sourcing for the jet, and hours email the prospect with the juicy quote they think they have, only to have to suffer through the waiting game it usually turns into.
What I have my brokers do is to call the prospect within 1 minute. Yes, 60 seconds. That does sound crazy, but is actually far easier than it sounds.
The goal here is not to quote and close the deal on the phone, but to simply introduce yourself, and reassure the prospect that this is how quick and reactive you are.
How do you set that up though?
Excellent question! First thing you need to have is a CRM. You don't have to spend a ton of money on the fanciest one, as there some free options out there such as ZohoCRM and Monday.com that can get you started.
The key is to set up triggers and automations so that when a prospect fills out a form or search request on your website, you would receive an automated notification on your phone with all client and flight details. I have an IT expert with me who helps set up all the events via N8N. If a broker needs help in setting up such system, you're free to reach out.
Don't let those leads simmer in your inbox though!
What you do next is simply in nature. You take a second to review the details, and tap the phone number to automatically dial the number.
Remember, the goal here isn't to close the deal, but to simply show that you're very reactive, validate the prospect is real, and to confirm their travel details. Finish it off with a "I'm the consultant who will be taking care of you today".
Now you go ahead and source.
The AI Suspicion
To be fair this method will surprise a few, especially in this "Agentic AI" age we're getting into.
One interaction I recently had with a prospect after I called within 1 minute was quite unexpected.
The prospect said "Are you an AI?" to which I of course replied "No surely I'm not".
Because he didn't believe why or how someone could be this quick to call, he asked to tell him a "Knock Knock Joke". I froze for 2 seconds, after which I simply replied "Ah shoot I'm not good at jokes, and I don't have any. But doesn't that in and of itself prove I'm not an AI".
We laughed it off for a minute, and I just explained to him that I have a system in place which allows me to be generally very responsive, and that I have a very high standard of communication.
If you're wondering, we didn't have a deal right that day, but we did work together on a flight a few weeks later, and he actually mentioned that my reaction time made me stand out. We still work together to this day!