Leads Tracking Sheet

One example runs through every step. A two-van plumbing company, one month, three channels: 130 leads, a $900 average invoiced job, a 35% gross margin, $9,500 of overhead before any marketing. Watch the channel that wins in step 3 change its verdict by step 7.

Step 1: Stamp a source on every lead as it arrives

Everything downstream is arithmetic. This is the only step that can be wrong in a way arithmetic cannot fix. So build eight columns: date in, name, channel, sub-source (campaign, keyword group, list segment), quoted $, status, invoiced $, close date.

Do not fill the channel column by asking the customer. "How did you hear about us?" returns "Google" from the caller who clicked a $28 ad and from the caller who found your map listing for free. Give each channel its own capture instead: a tracking number for paid search, UTM parameters in a hidden form field for organic and email, a separate number for van decals and yard signs. Put a phone-number QR code on the truck panel and that number becomes one tap, so sign-readers stop searching your name and arriving through the ad you already pay for.

Source gets written when the lead is created. Never edited afterwards. Backfilling from memory at month end is where lead sheets die. Revenue is the invoiced figure (create yours with the free invoice generator), not the quote, and it books to the month the lead arrived.

Step 2: Cost per lead, fully loaded

Cost per lead is channel spend divided by that channel's leads. Spend means every dollar that would stop if the channel stopped: media, retainers, software, staff hours at a real rate.

Paid search and SEO both delivered leads at $50. They are not equivalent. Close rate does the work: at 25% against 40%, that same $50 lead costs either $200 or $125 to turn into a job. CPL only diagnoses the top of the funnel. Budget decisions run on cost per closed job.

Step 3: Convert revenue to gross profit before computing any ROI

A return quoted on revenue is a vanity number. Spend $1,000, book $4,000, call it 4:1, feel good about the month. Now put the margin in:

At a 25% margin, a 4:1 revenue return is exactly break-even. Every dollar went to materials, tech labor and the ad bill. The business ends where it started, minus a month. The hurdle moves entirely with margin:

Step 4: Paid: the management fee sits outside the ad platform

Google divides revenue by media spend. The $800 you pay a manager never touches the account, so the platform reports $18,000 / $3,200 = 5.63:1. Looks superb.

The real hurdle on media is 3.57:1. Not the 2.86:1 that margin alone implies, and nothing like 5.63:1. Put $3,200 in spend and the $800 fee in "other costs" in the PPC ROI Calculator, so a renegotiated fee shows up separately from a bid change. And paid degrades as it scales. The next $1,000 buys broader keywords and colder clicks, so 57.5% leaves little room before the added budget goes under water. Test one increment before committing the rest.

Step 5: SEO: spend and return sit in different months

Cost is incurred now. Leads arrive later. A 30-day window on SEO therefore guarantees a wrong answer. Here is the same $1,500 retainer across six months:

All three numbers are true at the same time.

Judged in month one it is a disaster and gets cancelled. Judged cumulatively it returned 12%, barely worth doing. Judged on run rate it is the strongest channel in the business. Decide on the marginal figure. It is the only one estimating what the next $1,500 earns.

Step 6: Email: no marginal cost, real labor, hard ceiling

Sending to 200 more people costs nothing. Writing the campaign costs five hours of someone who has other work. Count only the $49 platform fee and the return reads ($3,150 - $49) / $49 = 6,329%. Count the labor and it reads 1,483%. Both numbers are so large that the percentage stops telling you anything.

Run it in the Email Marketing ROI Calculator with labor included, then ignore the percentage and look at the ceiling. The list is 1,400 past customers, and you cannot buy more of them. No budget shift turns $3,150 of gross profit into $6,000. So email never competes with paid for money. It competes for calendar time, and the instruction it gives you is "segment better, send more often", never "move the ad budget here". The list was built by leads the other channels paid for anyway.

Step 7: How many closed jobs cover the overhead

Channel ROI tells you whether a channel earns its keep. It says nothing about whether the business is solvent. For that, marketing joins the fixed costs and you ask how many jobs clear the pile.

Three levers. A $1,050 ticket lifts contribution to $367.50 and drops break-even to 41.4 jobs, which is the 42 they already did. Taking paid's close rate from 25% to 32% adds 5.6 jobs, worth $1,764 of gross profit at zero extra spend. Cutting media removes the cost and the 20 jobs it bought, so the shortfall widens. That is the move most owners reach for first.

Step 8: What the monthly review changes

Judge each channel against its own break-even, not the others

Email always wins on percentage, and it is always capped. Paid always looks worst, and it is the only channel you can scale on demand. Rank them against each other and you get the wrong instruction every time.

Fix the close rate before touching bids

Paid converts at 25%, the email list at 50%. Some of that gap is intent. Much of it is usually response time, and a $50 lead sitting four hours for a callback is mostly wasted. Log the gap between date in and first contact for a month and you will know which.