How fast should you reply to a pharma franchise enquiry?

How fast should you reply?

Within minutes. A first reply inside five minutes, a phone call the same day, and never an enquiry left overnight without any response. People who send a franchise enquiry are usually comparing several pharma companies at once, and their attention is highest in the first hour. The company that replies first and usefully usually earns the next conversation.

This is not just a pharma habit. A widely cited Harvard Business Review study of online sales leads found that firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited even one hour longer, and many times more likely than firms that waited a day or more (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, HBR, 2011).

In PCD franchise sales the effect is sharper, because the same enquirer is often contacted by several companies. Portals themselves tell member companies that a lead may be shared with five to seven others, and in our experience one enquirer often hears from around ten.

This article is part of our complete guide to PCD pharma lead management.

Why does reply speed matter so much in PCD?

Because the enquirer’s interest fades fast and competitors are one message away. A franchise enquiry is often sent on impulse: after seeing an ad, while browsing a portal, or late at night after work. By the next afternoon the person may have spoken to two companies, received two product lists and agreed to a call with one of them.

Fast replies also signal how you will behave as a partner. A distributor choosing a company is choosing who will answer when an order is late or a product is short. A company that answers an enquiry in minutes looks like a company that answers problems in minutes.

What should the first reply say?

Keep the first reply short: greet them by name, thank them, and ask one or two easy questions that move the conversation forward. The aim of the first message is not to sell; it is to start a conversation that a rep can pick up. Long first messages, catalogues and price lists sent before you know what they want are rarely read.

A good first reply does four things:

1. Greets them by name and names your company.
2. Acknowledges what they asked (“for your derma range”, “for franchise in your area”).
3. Asks one or two easy questions: their city or district, and their current business.
4. Promises the next step: “I’ll send the product list for your range”, or “our team will call you today”.

Example first replies (Hinglish)

Namaste Rakesh ji, {Company} mein franchise ke liye enquiry karne ke liye dhanyavaad. Aap kis city/district se hain aur abhi kya kaam karte hain, medical store, agency ya MR?

Hello Priya ji, thank you for your interest in our derma range. Which district are you looking at, and do you already have a drug licence? I’ll share the derma product list right away.

If the enquiry already tells you their city or business, skip that question. Asking what someone has just told you is one of the quickest ways to lose them.

How do you reply at night and on Sundays?

Decide in advance who or what replies outside office hours, because that is when many franchise enquiries arrive. There are three practical options, and many companies combine them.

Option	How it works	Good for	Watch out for
Rota	One person owns the WhatsApp number after hours, by turns	Small teams, low volume	Hard to keep up; replies vary in quality
Saved first message	A standard greeting and first questions anyone can send	Any team	Still needs someone to see the enquiry
Automated WhatsApp reply	A WhatsApp bot replies instantly, asks your questions and sends the right list	Steady volume, enquiries from ads	The bot must use your real terms and hand over to a person when needed

Whatever you choose, the next morning a rep should see the overnight enquiries with the conversation so far, call the warm ones first and follow up on the rest.

The WhatsApp 24-hour window

On the WhatsApp Business Platform you can send normal messages to a customer only within 24 hours of their last message. After that, you must use a template message approved by Meta to restart the conversation. If an enquiry sits unanswered for a day, your options narrow and the restart message is more formal than a natural reply.

In practice this means:

• Reply to every WhatsApp enquiry on the same day, ideally within minutes.
• Ask a question in your reply, so the enquirer answers and the window stays open.
• Keep a few approved template messages ready for follow-ups after the window closes.

How do you measure reply speed?

Measure “time to first reply”: the minutes between the enquiry arriving and your first message or call, for every lead, by source and by time of day. Then look at the average and the slowest ten percent. Averages hide the overnight and Sunday leads that wait the longest.

A simple monthly check:

1. Take every enquiry from the month.
2. Note when it arrived and when the first reply went out.
3. Split them into office hours, evenings, nights and Sundays.
4. Compare conversion for leads answered within five minutes, within an hour, and later.

Most companies that do this once find that their evening and Sunday leads wait many hours, and convert worse, which tells them exactly where to start.

Speed is the start, not the whole job

A fast reply wins the chance to talk; follow-up wins the partner. Most franchise decisions take several conversations over days or weeks. Combine a fast first reply with a clear owner for every lead and a fixed follow-up schedule, as described in why PCD franchise leads don’t convert.

Cerebyl’s WhatsApp AI bot is built for the first part: it replies to every enquiry within seconds, at any hour, asks your qualifying questions in the customer’s language and saves the answers in the lead CRM, so your rep starts the day with the conversation already moving.