Many CEOs see a frustrating pattern: marketing produces more contacts, sales activity is visibly higher, yet revenue and margin remain difficult to predict. The consequences are familiar: overloaded teams, optimistic forecasts and arguments about which channel is at fault. The underlying issue usually sits deeper. A lead is a possible signal, not evidence of demand, buying intent or economic value. Predictable growth only emerges when target accounts, handovers, qualification, sales work and feedback from won and lost business are managed as one accountable value stream. In this article, I set out the decisions leadership must make, how to establish a reliable baseline and why quality after verification matters more than sheer volume at the point of entry.
The convenient metric conceals the management task
Lead volume is attractive because it is visible early and easy to increase. A campaign can generate more form submissions, an event can bring in more contacts and a download can add more names to the CRM. For the leadership team, however, none of this answers the central question: does it reliably create profitable new business with the customers that fit the company?
When an organisation manages to lead volume, it can confuse activity with progress. The sales team then works through many contacts whose origin, need or decision-making capacity has not been adequately established. Marketing optimises for an early response. Sales prioritises on experience or time pressure. Finance sees a margin later on that is difficult to trace back to the original source. No one is acting wrongly within their own function. The system still fails to produce a reliable commercial flow.
I would therefore reverse the question. Not, “How do we generate more leads?” but, “Which verified contacts have a realistic prospect of becoming suitable customers with a sustainable contribution margin and who owns each stage?” This is not a semantic refinement. It turns a marketing metric into a leadership responsibility.
Where the value stream usually breaks
In growing companies, the causes rarely lie with one campaign or one individual. They arise at the handovers. The target customer profile remains too broad. An initial contact is passed to sales without context. A conversation is treated as an opportunity even though the problem, decision maker, timing or economic fit remains unclear. The CRM records activity but not the quality of the next decision. Reasons for lost business are fed back in categories that are too broad or not at all.
Buyers also do not behave in line with an organisation’s own structure. McKinsey surveyed nearly 4,000 B2B decision makers across 13 countries and 34 sectors. Respondents reported an average of ten channels in their buying journey and more than half wanted to move seamlessly between channels.1 This is not a universal conversion rule, nor a causal claim for every company. It is, however, a credible indication of a management responsibility: context must not be lost when the channel changes.
As a self-reported B2B sample, it does not establish an outcome for a particular company or industry. The increasing degree to which buyers inform themselves also changes the division of work. In Gartner’s survey of 646 B2B buyers, conducted in August and September 2025, 67% said they preferred a rep-free experience; 45% used AI in their most recent purchase. Gartner also stresses the importance of value clarity in the buyer’s specific context.2 This does not mean that complex selling works without people, nor does it indicate conversion in any particular funnel. On the contrary, when interested parties do speak with a company later in the process, the conversation must create orientation, clarify open risks and enable a relevant decision. A fast call back without prepared context is not a strength.
The common misjudgement is therefore to pay for more lead generation before existing enquiries are being guided through a sound process. This first increases workload and can later erode margin. Growth becomes less stable, not more predictable.
The CEO must decide the commercial definitions
Predictability does not begin with a dashboard. It begins with a small number of binding definitions. What is a target customer? What counts as a qualified contact? At what point does an opportunity exist? When is business considered won or lost? And which margin serves as the economic test?
These questions are not operational detail. They determine whether marketing, sales and finance are talking about the same reality. A definition need not be theoretically perfect. It must be usable in everyday work, documented and reviewable. The distinction between interest and verification is particularly important. A contact may fit the market segment well and still not be an opportunity. An opportunity exists only once the next step has been agreed by both sides and the key criteria around the problem, fit and decision path are sufficiently robust.
The following logic is not a universal funnel or a benchmark. It is a decision exhibit through which a leadership team can examine its own path from first contact to margin. The specific criteria should be adapted to the business model, sales cycle and risk profile.
| Stage | Working definition | Minimum evidence | Primary owner | Review question |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial contact | An identifiable person or organisation responds to a relevant prompt. | Source, consent where required and initial context. | Marketing | Is the contact real, attributable and recorded in a data-protection-compliant manner? |
| Verified lead | The contact broadly fits the defined target customer profile. | Industry, role, company characteristic and exclusion criterion checked. | Marketing with Sales Operations | What fit is evidenced and which assumption remains open? |
| Qualified conversation | An exchange about a specific commercial issue has been arranged or held. | Trigger, conversation objective, contact and next step recorded in the CRM. | Sales | Is there a relevant problem or only general interest? |
| Opportunity | The prospect meets the agreed criteria for problem, fit, decision path and timing. | Documented criteria, contact plan and accountability. | Sales lead | Is a real buying process visible or is activity being recorded as an opportunity? |
| Proposal and decision | A proposed solution is assessed against agreed requirements. | Value assumption, scope of work, risks and decision date. | Sales with functional lead | Is the proposal economically sound and operationally deliverable? |
| Realised margin | Won business is assessed for its economic quality. | Revenue, direct effort, agreed delivery assumptions and variances. | Finance with Sales Leadership | Does the contribution margin match the assumption and what do we learn from it? |
The table exposes a trade-off. Tighter verification may initially reduce the number of leads passed on. That is not failure, provided the conversations that follow are clearer and the organisation spends less time on contacts that are plainly unsuitable. Equally, a high threshold must not be used to exclude new market segments too early. The CEO is therefore not deciding for the highest or lowest rate, but for a definition that can learn and has understandable exceptions.
The baseline matters more than the next channel test
Before a company expands its lead sources, it needs a baseline. It will not answer everything, but it prevents arguments about symptoms. I recommend recording the data that actually exists across the six stages for a defined period. This is not a perfection project. It is an honest starting point.
The baseline includes the number and origin of initial contacts, the share of verified leads, the time between handovers, the number of qualified conversations, the opportunities that meet the organisation’s own definition, proposals, won and lost business and the realised contribution margin where it can be attributed to the business. Data gaps matter just as much. If source, decision path or reason for loss is not reliably documented, that is itself a finding, not an inconvenience to be removed from the report.
Each metric needs an owner and a fixed review. Marketing cannot be solely responsible for lead quality if sales never feeds back on the criteria. Sales cannot assess attribution alone if the contact’s origin is recorded inconsistently. Finance should not enter the process only after signature if economic quality is a management measure. In practice, a short shared commercial review works well, involving one person from marketing, sales and finance, together with a clearly named decision owner from the leadership team.
This review is not for the justification of individual functions. It tests four questions: where are we losing suitable contacts? Where are we investing time without verified progress? Where does expected economic quality diverge from the outcome? And which rule, handover or data requirement will we change before the next meeting? A review without a decision record remains reporting. A review with an owner, a date and a testable action becomes management.