More than half of leads given to sales teams are never contacted by a sales representative or are are contacted only once, according to recent research from InsideSales.com.

The report was based on InsideSales.com data for 8,742 companies in the United States and the United Kingdom. The data set included 14,331 cadences (outreaches to individual leads) and 144,976 total events.

On average, leads were contacted four times by sales teams, the researchers found.

However, 39% of the leads examined were never contacted by a sales representative at all, and 18% were contacted only once.

Sales representatives attempted to engage leads included in the data set over the span of five days, on average (leads not contacted at all were excluded from this part of the analysis).

Leads were contacted most often the day following the initial outreach. There was then a steady decline in engagement, with slight peaks at weekly intervals (after seven days, 14 days, etc.).

Some 57% of the lead contacts were conducted via email; 29.5% were phone calls with the rep leaving voicemails, and 13.5% were phone calls with the rep not leaving voicemails.

The median word count for the lead contact messages examined was 362 words.

About the research: The report was based on InsideSales.com data for 8,742 companies in the United States and the United Kingdom. The data set included 14,331 cadences (outreaches to individual leads) and 144,976 total events.