According to reports, sales-focused start-up RevenueHero has raised a $5.1 million in seed funding round.

The problem, RevenueHero co-founder Sudharshan Karthik suggests, is that companies take far too long to process to sales inquiries – and therefore far too long to respond to these potential customers.

“The sales team is sitting there ready to receive leads, but they have to wait far too long. It’s a technology problem – for any given lead, it’s time-consuming to identify the right sales representative to allocate them to, and then to book a time with that agent,” says Karthik.

Research from the customer experience specialist Zendesk confirms Karthik’s analysis. Just seven percent of companies respond within five minutes of receiving a sales lead – and 50 percent fail to respond within five days, it says. The cost of that delay is enormous because 35 to 50 percent of sales go to the company that responds first, Zendesk adds.

“Many businesses are effectively making life impossible for their sales teams. By the time the sales agent is given the customer’s details, the customer has already gone to one of the businesses' rivals,” says Karthik.

RevenueHero’s solution to this issue is deceptively simply. Its technology sits behind the form that a business asks potential sales leads to complete; the tool analyses the lead in order to understand which sales agent is best-placed to help – by geography, size of customer or product required. The customer is then able to book a slot with the right agent on the spot, rather than having to wait for someone to come back to them.