First touch

First touch is the first recorded sales activity on a captured lead, such as a call, an email, or a sequence enrollment, and the moment that stops its follow-up clock.

It marks the point where your event lead becomes sales work. Until it lands, the lead is a name on a list, and each day it waits, your rep forgets more of what the buyer said at the booth.

How do you measure it?

Record 2 timestamps per lead: when your rep captured it, and when the first activity landed on the lead’s own record. The gap between them is follow-up latency. A lead with no first touch counts as unworked.

3 measures build on it:

• The follow-up SLA sets the deadline a first touch has to beat.
• Attempt rate is the share of leads with a first touch inside that window.
• The unworked-lead queue lists the leads still waiting for one.

Where do you find it in FieldXM?

In FieldXM’s follow-up workflow, the first-touch clock starts as soon as a rep saves a lead, with an owner and a next step on it. The unworked-lead queue lists, by rep, the leads still waiting on that first touch, and FieldXM reports how many got one on time.

How does it relate to first-touch attribution?

The 2 terms share words and measure different things. First-touch attribution credits a deal to the earliest recorded interaction with the buyer. First touch in follow-up is the first sales activity after capture, and the guide to trade show lead follow-up builds on its timestamp.