GuideThe numbers leadership asks about
CPQL (cost per qualified lead)
Definition
What it costs to produce a lead that sales agrees is worth working: cost per lead divided by the share of leads that qualify. The qualification bar lives inside the number, which is both the point and the weakness.
How it’s calculated
Cost per lead divided by qualification rate. At DKK 200 a lead with one in four qualifying, a qualified lead costs DKK 800, and the DKK 600 of distance between the two figures is the argument between marketing and sales expressed as money; it is the first number I look for in a lead account. What moves CPQL is only partly the media buying. It moves just as readily when the definition of qualified moves, so a falling CPQL is good news on the condition that the bar held still. And it is a mid-funnel price; read it beside CAC, because a qualified lead is only cheap if customers arrive from it at a cost you can carry.
What to watch for
CPQL improved in the same quarter the qualification criteria were rewritten, so the metric measured the rewrite. The team paid on CPQL also owns the definition of qualified, and the definition will drift toward the target. Two people asked what qualified means give two different answers, at which point every CPQL report is comparing unlike things. And CPQL falls while CAC holds or rises: more leads pass the bar while fewer become customers, which says the bar sits in the wrong place or the leads have changed underneath it.
The question you ask
“What counts as qualified, and when did that definition last change?”