01 / Growth · Field notes · 4 min read
Why More Leads Won’t Fix a Broken Sales Process
Before increasing acquisition, look at what happens to the opportunities you already have.
When growth slows, the first instinct is to buy more of it. More ads, more traffic, more leads. Sometimes that is the right move. Often it is the most expensive way to avoid looking at what happens after someone raises their hand.
Start after the click
Map the path from inquiry to conversation to customer. Write down who answers a new lead, how long it takes, what the customer hears first, and what is supposed to happen next. Most businesses have never seen this path drawn out end to end.
Look for three things: unclear ownership, unanswered questions, and missing next steps. A lead that belongs to everyone belongs to no one. A question that goes unanswered becomes a reason to call a competitor. A conversation with no next step ends on its own.
Give every lead a next step
Start the fix at the handoff. Decide who responds, what they need to know before they reply, and how the next action gets recorded. Then make the first reply fast and useful, even when nobody is at a desk.
Then buy more attention
Once the handoff works, more leads become more customers instead of more waste. That is when acquisition starts to compound, and every dollar of spend has somewhere useful to land.