The situation
A B2B consulting firm was receiving 300 to 500 inbound inquiries per week across three channels: a website contact form, Facebook Lead Ads, and direct email referrals. Each inquiry required a sales rep to manually check their inbox, read the message, assess fit, update HubSpot, and send a personalised first reply.
The process worked at low volume. At 300+ inquiries per week, it broke down. Average response time had crept up to 4 hours. Conversion rate from lead to booked call sat at 12%. Three senior sales reps were spending roughly 29 hours per week on lead triage alone.
4 hours
Average lead response time before Nova
12%
Conversion rate from lead to booked call
87h/mo
Combined weekly hours spent on manual lead triage
The diagnosis
After completing the Converze intake, the AI analysis identified one root problem: the gap between lead arrival and first human contact. The firm was not losing leads because their offer was wrong or their pricing was off — they were losing leads because they were slow. A competitor with a weaker offer but faster response was winning the deals.
The intake also surfaced a secondary issue: lead qualification was inconsistent. Different reps were applying different criteria. Some high-value leads were being deprioritised. Some low-fit leads were getting lengthy personal attention. Nova was assigned. The scope: unify all inbound channels, apply consistent qualification logic, respond within 60 seconds, and update HubSpot automatically.
What Nova built
Unified intake engine
All three inbound channels (contact form, Facebook Lead Ads, Gmail) were connected to a single classification layer. The moment a lead arrives on any channel, Nova detects it.
GPT-4 qualification
Nova reads each message and scores it across four dimensions: urgency, budget signals, authority indicators, and fit with the firm's client profile. The entire process takes under 3 seconds.
Auto-routing and response
Qualified leads receive a personalised first reply within 60 seconds — written in the firm's voice, referencing what they asked about. HubSpot is updated: deal created, pipeline stage set, rep assigned. Low-fit leads enter a nurture sequence.
The results — 6 weeks after go-live
47s
Average response time
Down from 4 hours
31%
Conversion rate (lead to booked call)
Up from 12%
87h
Hours saved per month
Across 3 sales reps
3.2x
ROI
Within first 2 months
What the team said
"We went from losing deals because we couldn't respond fast enough, to having qualified leads booked into our calendar before we even saw the notification."
Key lessons from this deployment
- 1
Speed matters more than message quality at first contact
Getting a relevant reply out in 47 seconds outperforms a perfectly crafted reply sent 4 hours later. Speed signals responsiveness, which signals competence.
- 2
Consistent qualification improves the whole funnel
Once every lead is scored the same way, patterns emerge. The firm discovered that referral leads converted at 3x the rate of ad leads — information that immediately changed their acquisition strategy.
- 3
The agent surfaces what you did not know to measure
Before Nova, nobody was tracking response time by rep or by channel. The weekly reports made these gaps visible for the first time.