How long does B2B buyer intent last?
Intent is perishable, but be skeptical of anyone citing a precise expires-in-N-days number, because there is no primary study behind it. What is well-established: the winning shortlist forms early, often 6 to 9 months before a seller is engaged, and buyers pick from that original list about 85% of the time. Practically, a signal you act on within days is worth far more than the same signal weeks later.
Last reviewed: July 2026
Why intent decays
Attention and context are perishable. The moment right after someone shows interest is when your outreach is most relevant and most welcome. Wait too long and the person has moved on, the shared context is stale, and you are just another stranger. That much is intuitive and well supported by the speed-to-lead research: responding within the first hour makes you about 7x more likely to qualify a lead than waiting one more hour (HBR, 2011).
What we can and cannot say about freshness windows
Here is the honest part. You will see confident claims that "intent expires in 24 to 48 hours" or "in a week." We looked, and those specific numbers do not trace to a primary, methodology-backed study. They are vendor rules of thumb. So we will not repeat a precise figure we cannot stand behind.
The cost of waiting
What the data does show is that the decisive window is early. Buyers lock most of their shortlist during early research, often 6 to 9 months before they engage a seller, and buy from that original shortlist about 85% of the time (6sense, 2025). In that light, being late is often the same as being excluded. A signal acted on within days is worth far more than the same signal acted on weeks later.
Building a fresh-signal habit
The practical takeaway is a habit, not a countdown. Work the freshest signals first, aim to act within a day or two while the context is still live, and do not let warm signals sit in a queue going cold. Freshness is the whole advantage.
Slingapult's read: freshness is the product. A stale lead list is just a cold list with extra steps. (In time, our own anonymized data will let us put real numbers on how fast engagement intent actually cools.)