Real time should mean the record is POSTed to your system the moment the merchant submits, with seconds between the form and your CRM. In practice the phrase also gets used for hourly batches, for CSV drops, and for records that were generated in real time and delivered later — so the question to ask is not whether it is real time but what the delivery mechanism is and what the median delay measures.
"Real time" is a claim about latency that almost nobody quantifies. Since the whole economic argument for exclusive leads rests on calling within five minutes, the latency is not a detail — it is most of the product.
| What is offered | Typical delay | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Webhook POST on submit | Seconds | Nothing — this is the standard |
| API poll every 15 minutes | Up to 15 minutes | The best window, partially |
| Hourly batch to email | Up to an hour | Most of the window |
| Daily CSV | Up to a day | The window entirely |
| Portal you log into | Whenever you look | Unpredictable, usually worst |
The useful question is "what is the median time between a merchant pressing submit and the record arriving in my CRM, measured over last month?" A vendor with webhook delivery can answer in seconds. A vendor who answers with an adjective is describing an intention.
The submission timestamp is the one to insist on. Without it you cannot measure your own time to first dial honestly, which means you cannot tell a slow vendor from a slow floor — and that is the single most common unresolved argument in this market.
That the record is POSTed to your system the moment the merchant submits, with seconds between the form and your CRM. The phrase is also used loosely for hourly batches and CSV drops, so ask about the mechanism rather than the adjective.
Seconds, by webhook. Ask for the median measured over the last month rather than a promise — a vendor with genuine webhook delivery can answer that precisely.
Because the argument for exclusive leads rests on calling within about five minutes. A fifteen-minute delivery delay does not shorten your window slightly, it removes most of it, and the contact rate difference is large.
The full contact record, the qualification answers, the attribution data, and the merchant’s own submission timestamp. That last field is what lets you measure your time to first dial honestly.
No. A lead delivered in two seconds into a CRM nobody is watching is a slow lead. Delivery speed only pays if an alert, an assignment and a dial follow it.
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