Is ‘Lead Follow-Up’ the most broken part of most businesses?

Hey everyone,

Been having a lot of conversations with agency owners, coaches, and consultants lately, and a fascinating (and frustrating) pattern keeps emerging.

They are experts at what they do. They can:

Run incredible ad campaigns.
Generate a flood of inbound leads.
Build amazing products and services.

But then the “leaky bucket” problem hits. A lead fills out a form or calls in, and…

The business owner is too busy to respond instantly.
The follow-up is slow or inconsistent.
The lead, who was red-hot 5 minutes ago, goes cold.

It feels like so many businesses are spending a fortune to fill a bucket with holes in it. The bottleneck isn’t lead generation, it’s lead management and conversion.

We’ve been exploring ways to solve this with a hybrid approach—using AI for the initial 24/7 engagement and then looping in real humans when a conversation needs that personal touch. It’s also shocking how much revenue is sitting dormant in old CRM databases just waiting to be reactivated.

My question for the group is: What are you seeing?

How are you (or your clients) solving this follow-up problem right now?