The lead you're proud of is the one that never closes.

There is a conversation happening in most companies that nobody scheduled. Marketing presents its numbers: leads up, cost per lead down, a chart that climbs. Sales, in a different meeting, mutters that the leads are useless. Both are telling the truth. The marketing team optimised the number it was measured on, and the number it was measured on was the wrong one.

A lead is not a unit of progress. It is a promise that a real human, with real money, might buy. Counting leads without weighing them is like counting the balls thrown at a dartboard and ignoring where they land. You can always generate more leads by lowering the bar: a cheaper offer, a broader audience, a form anyone will fill. The count goes up. The business does not move.

Volume is the easiest number to grow and the easiest one to hide behind.

The metric that flatters everyone

Cost per lead is comfortable precisely because it almost always improves when you try. It is a number that only ever climbs in the flattering direction, which should make you suspicious, not proud. The only numbers worth reporting are the ones that can get a channel killed: cost per qualified lead, and revenue you can actually trace. That is why serious performance work is measured on qualified pipeline and revenue, not on the count of names in a spreadsheet.

The gap is an org chart problem

Where does the junk-lead argument actually come from? Two teams, two definitions of success, and no shared one. Marketing is paid for volume, sales for closes, and nobody owns the handoff between them. The fix is not a better lead-scoring tool. It is one position both teams can recite, one shared definition of a good lead, and one number they both live or die by. When marketing is measured on what sales can actually close, the junk quietly disappears, because there is no longer any reward for making it.

So the next time a report says leads are up, ask the only question that matters: up, and then what? If nobody in the room can trace those leads to revenue, you are not looking at growth. You are looking at a number that feels like growth, which is a far more expensive thing to own.