Fewer than 15 of the 200 founders I've asked knew this number

Every founder I meet asks me how to get more leads.

Almost nobody asks the question sitting underneath it: how many leads does it actually take us to close one deal?

I've been asking that in first meetings for about three years. Maybe two hundred of them. Fewer than fifteen people could tell me.

Sounds like a small thing. It isn't.

If it takes you 50 qualified leads to close a deal, and you want four deals this quarter, you need 200 qualified leads. Now you have something you can staff, budget and hold someone to.

Without that number, every growth conversation is really a conversation about mood. How's the pipeline looking? Bit slow. Should we spend more on ads? Probably.

A manufacturing client of ours added a second SDR last year because the pipeline "needed more top of funnel." Six months later they had twice the leads and the same three closures. Cost per deal was up 70%.

The SDR did nothing wrong. The hire was just answering the wrong question.

Fixing it took one afternoon. We pulled twelve months of their data and worked out two ratios. 61% of the leads their team had marked qualified had never had a budget conversation. Not a vague one, not a bad one. None at all.

They didn't need more leads. They needed a gate.

The next quarter they ran 40% fewer conversations and closed five deals instead of three.

I'm not telling you lead generation is a waste. We sell it. But I've watched too many founders approve a bigger top-of-funnel budget to fix a problem sitting two stages lower, and that bill always arrives two quarters later, when the money is gone and the number hasn't moved.

So before you sign off on anything: go find your number. Twelve months of data, ninety minutes, a spreadsheet.

If you already know it, you're ahead of most of the market. If you don't, that's probably the most useful ninety minutes you'll spend this month.

Two sales engines, one partner: bookmysales.com

Sources: Salesforce State of Sales, Landbase Lead Qualification Statistics