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Lead generation KPIs connect inquiry volume to qualified leads, opportunities, customers, and acquisition costs. Follow a US company example, reconcile the source exports, and see what changes when one campaign cost falls.
Lead generation KPIs track how many valid prospects enter your process, how many qualify and become customers, and what those outcomes cost. Compare sources across the full lead cohort rather than choosing a winner from inquiry volume or cost per lead alone. Keep the acquisition period, follow-up window, and cost scope visible beside the figures.
The reporting unit comes first. A business selling to companies might track unique buying accounts; another team might track individual contacts. Either can work, but a person count divided by an account-level customer count is difficult to interpret.
Use separate dates for entry and progression. A July lead cohort contains leads first acquired in July, even when an opportunity appears later. A July activity report instead counts events that happened during July. Those reports answer different questions.
Salesforce's lead generation guidance distinguishes new, working, nurturing, unqualified, and qualified leads. Use your own documented stage requirements when preparing the export. A new inquiry is evidence of contact, not proof that the prospect meets your qualification criteria.
If your review starts after marketing qualification, use the separate MQL KPI method for handoff acceptance and pipeline quality. Here the starting point is the wider acquisition cohort. A KPI belongs on this scorecard when it changes a spending, qualification, or follow-up decision.
Bring an inquiry export, a campaign cost report, and a lead or account export with dated stage changes and customer outcomes. Use these fields:
| File | Minimum fields | Check before calculating |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiries | Submission ID, account ID, received date, recorded source | Identify repeats and invalid inquiries |
| Lead and account records | Stable ID, first valid lead date, qualification date, opportunity ID and date | Preserve one reporting unit and dated progression |
| Customer outcomes | Account ID, first closed-won date | Exclude existing customers from new-customer counts |
| Campaign costs | Acquisition period, source, cost category, amount, currency | Reconcile included costs to the approved cost report |
Freeze the source on first valid acquisition for this analysis. Keep unknown sources as an explicit group instead of dropping them. A missing source should not make a lead or its cost disappear.
Paid-channel conversion exports also need care. Google's conversion reporting documentation explains that the conversion actions included and the counting setting affect the reported total. Its primary conversion reporting can also use the interaction date rather than the conversion date. Those settings can prevent a direct tie to unique leads acquired on your chosen dates. Covirage is not affiliated with Salesforce or Google.
Ridgeway Warehouse Services is a fictional Indiana business selling commercial warehouse support contracts. It compares accounts first acquired during July 2026 and gives each account a full 60-day follow-up window. The completed cohort report is frozen after September 30, 2026.
The lead unit is a unique buying account. Repeat submissions from the same account are removed before qualification. Invalid inquiries are spam or records outside the company's documented lead definition. Exclusions are mutually exclusive: a record goes into the duplicate or invalid bucket, never both.
| Recorded source | Raw inquiries | Duplicate exclusions | Invalid exclusions | Valid unique lead accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | 650 | 100 | 50 | 500 |
| Trade show | 350 | 30 | 20 | 300 |
| Partner referral | 230 | 20 | 10 | 200 |
| Total | 1,230 | 150 | 80 | 1,000 |
The first reconciliation is 1,230 - 150 - 80 = 1,000. Each source must pass the same check: paid search, for example, is 650 - 100 - 50 = 500 valid lead accounts.
The next table follows those accounts through their individual windows. Qualified accounts include accounts that subsequently advance. Every opportunity account qualified first, and every new customer had an opportunity. The example permits only one credited first opportunity and one first customer outcome per account.
| Source | Valid leads | Qualified accounts | Opportunity accounts | New customers | Campaign acquisition cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | 500 | 150 | 60 | 12 | 30,000 |
| Trade show | 300 | 120 | 60 | 18 | 27,000 |
| Partner referral | 200 | 100 | 50 | 20 | 10,000 |
| Total | 1,000 | 370 | 170 | 50 | 67,000 |
Costs are the company's source-specific July campaign costs under a fixed internal allocation policy. They exclude general sales salaries and overhead. The resulting customer cost is therefore campaign cost per acquired customer, not fully loaded customer acquisition cost.
Qualification rate = Qualified accounts / Valid lead accounts
Lead-to-customer conversion = New customers / Valid lead accounts
Cost per lead = Included campaign acquisition cost / Valid lead accounts
Campaign cost per acquired customer = Included campaign acquisition cost / New customers
The source scorecard follows directly. Rates are rounded to one decimal place; the cost figures shown here divide exactly to whole dollars.
| Source | Qualification calculation | Lead-to-customer calculation | Cost per lead calculation (USD) | Cost per acquired customer calculation (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | 150 / 500 = 30.0% | 12 / 500 = 2.4% | 30,000 / 500 = 60 | 30,000 / 12 = 2,500 |
| Trade show | 120 / 300 = 40.0% | 18 / 300 = 6.0% | 27,000 / 300 = 90 | 27,000 / 18 = 1,500 |
| Partner referral | 100 / 200 = 50.0% | 20 / 200 = 10.0% | 10,000 / 200 = 50 | 10,000 / 20 = 500 |
| Total | 370 / 1,000 = 37.0% | 50 / 1,000 = 5.0% | 67,000 / 1,000 = 67 | 67,000 / 50 = 1,340 |
Trade-show leads cost more individually than paid-search leads, but their observed campaign cost per acquired customer is lower. Partner referrals lead both measures in this cohort. That comparison supports an investigation of available volume, customer fit, and margins before reallocating spending.
Opportunity conversion provides another check: 60 / 150 = 40.0% of qualified paid-search accounts produce an opportunity, against 60 / 120 = 50.0% for trade shows and 50 / 100 = 50.0% for referrals. The total is 170 / 370 = 45.9%, calculated from totals rather than the average of source percentages.
Suppose the included paid-search campaign cost changes from $30,000 to $24,000, with every lead and outcome count unchanged. This is a sensitivity calculation, not a prediction that reducing spending preserves volume.
| Measure | Original calculation | Revised calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Paid-search cost per lead (USD) | 30,000 / 500 = 60 | 24,000 / 500 = 48 |
| Paid-search cost per acquired customer (USD) | 30,000 / 12 = 2,500 | 24,000 / 12 = 2,000 |
| Total included cost (USD) | 30,000 + 27,000 + 10,000 = 67,000 | 24,000 + 27,000 + 10,000 = 61,000 |
| Total cost per lead (USD) | 67,000 / 1,000 = 67 | 61,000 / 1,000 = 61 |
| Total cost per acquired customer (USD) | 67,000 / 50 = 1,340 | 61,000 / 50 = 1,220 |
The cost pool falls by 30,000 - 24,000 = $6,000. With customer counts fixed, the company customer-cost measure falls by 1,340 - 1,220 = $120. Qualification and conversion rates stay unchanged because no count changed.
Tie the source counts to the distinct account register, the 50 new customers to first closed-won records, and $67,000 to the included campaign cost report. The cumulative counts must follow 1,000 leads >= 370 qualified accounts >= 170 opportunity accounts >= 50 customers. The stages overlap; adding them would double count progression.
Marketing operations should own acquisition records, sales operations the dated outcomes, and finance the cost scope. Agree their reconciliation before choosing dashboard software.
Bring your campaign cost export and lead records with dated qualification and customer outcomes. Covirage maps the columns, and its tools compute and check the source comparisons; the external AI model explains the results with every figure traced to its rows. Create a free Covirage account, which takes about a minute, then set up your business and bring a sample of your own data.
See how Covirage supports sales insights from the files your team already uses.
Start with valid unique leads, qualification rate, opportunity conversion, lead-to-customer conversion, and cost per acquired customer. Add cost per lead to explain spending efficiency. Keep the set small enough that each measure has an owner and a clear response when it changes.
No. Cost per lead divides a defined cost pool by valid leads. Customer acquisition cost divides acquisition costs by new customers and may include sales labor, commissions, and other costs. A campaign-only cost per acquired customer should be labeled with that narrower scope.
Repeated submissions can measure activity, but they should not automatically become new leads. Choose a person or account as the reporting unit, retain a stable ID, and apply one deduplication policy across sources before calculating qualification and customer conversion.
No. A source report assigns credit using recorded source fields and a stated attribution rule. It does not establish what would have happened without the campaign. Use it to compare reported outcomes consistently, and keep causal claims separate from the scorecard.