Where the assumption came from
Marketing's dashboard ended at form submission. Sales' pipeline began at a manually created opportunity. Nothing joined the two, so the shared story was simply "more leads" — the only metric both sides could see.
← Engagement stories
B2B lead generationCommercial lending3-week diagnostic
More leads, fewer customers
When marketing is measured on leads and sales is measured on revenue, the two can both hit target while the business stalls.
- Scale
- £20m+ revenue, seven-figure marketing budget
- Engagement
- Growth Diagnostic
- Client
- Anonymised by default
Quantified movement
Each figure is a measured band against the pre-engagement baseline stated beside it. Ranges are used because the underlying numbers are real and anonymised, not rounded into a single headline claim.
Lead-to-opportunity rate
+34% to +41%
Baseline: Baseline 9% of marketing leads reaching opportunity
Two quarters post-engagement
Total lead volume
−26% (by design)
Baseline: Baseline monthly form volume including unserviceable segments
One quarter post-engagement
Median time to first contact
From 2–3 days to under 4 working hours
Baseline: Baseline response time on highest-value source
Six weeks post-engagement
Wasted paid spend removed
≈31% of paid lead budget
Baseline: Spend against segments the business could not commercially serve
At campaign restructure
- UK region
- London
- Company stage
- Established (£15m–£50m)
- Constraint found
- Lead quality and handover
Presented as
"We need more leads, and the ones we get are too expensive."
The real constraint
Enough qualified demand existed. Lead-to-opportunity conversion had fallen as volume rose, because the definition of a qualified lead had never been agreed between marketing and sales, and speed to first contact had drifted.
What the diagnostic looked at
Lead source through to closed revenue, stage conversion rates over time, time to first contact by source, the qualification criteria in use versus the criteria written down, and the content and campaign mix generating each source.
What it found
Roughly a third of paid lead volume came from campaigns targeting a segment the business could not commercially serve. Time to first contact on the highest-value source had slipped well beyond the window where contact rates hold. Two low-volume, unglamorous sources produced the best close rate and had no budget behind them.
What changed
A shared, written definition of a qualified lead was agreed and instrumented, routing and response-time service levels were set on the highest-value sources, unserviceable segments were excluded at campaign level, and budget was moved to the sources that closed rather than the ones that filled the form count.
Would the same diagnosis hold in your business?
The Growth Economics Snapshot takes a few minutes and shows where your biggest commercial lever sits before you commit to anything.