What is one lead actually worth to your business? Enter your job value, close rate and lead volume to see the value of a lead and what one more per week is worth.
Most owners know what a job is worth. Far fewer know what a lead is worth, and that is the number that should drive marketing decisions. If you do not know it, every ad quote or agency proposal is a guess. Once you know it, the question becomes simple: does this bring in leads for less than they are worth?
The calculator multiplies three things: what a typical job brings in, how many leads turn into customers, and how much more a customer is worth over time through repeat work and referrals. A plumber with a $400 average ticket, a 40% close rate and customers who come back and refer friends may find each lead worth far more than the first invoice suggests.
Try raising your close rate by 5 points in the calculator and watch what happens. Most businesses lose leads not because the lead was bad, but because nobody answered, nobody called back for a day, or the quote showed up after a competitor's. Simple fixes like missed-call text-back, instant replies to form fills and automatic follow-up texts can lift close rates without spending a dollar more on ads. Our AI systems page covers the setups we use for this.
Take your lead value into the marketing budget calculator and see how many leads your budget needs to produce to pay for itself. If your website is the main source of leads, the website ROI calculator connects traffic to these same numbers. And if your lead count is the problem, our team can help with paid ads, SEO and AI search and content that brings more of the right people to you.
Multiply your average job value by your close rate, then by a repeat and referral multiplier. For example, a $1,000 job with a 25% close rate and a 1.5x multiplier means each lead is worth about $375 to the business.
It depends entirely on what a lead is worth to you. A common guideline is to keep cost per lead around 20–30% of the lead's value, which leaves room for the cost of doing the job and a profit.
It varies widely by industry and lead source. Referrals and urgent service calls close at much higher rates than cold ad leads. The most useful benchmark is your own close rate over time, and whether it goes up as follow-up gets faster.
Because the first job is rarely the full value of a customer. Repeat work, maintenance plans, upsells and referrals mean a customer is often worth more than the first invoice. Ignoring that makes good marketing look more expensive than it is.
Get in touch for a free strategy call. We will show you where your next leads are most likely to come from.