The question every client asked me this month...

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Fri(yay) - and that means it’s time for your Revenue Play - an issue where I share some real stories from my work.

I don’t have a specific story this week, but rather real conversations. This week, I shared how the marketing budgets are shifting across companies, moving from acquisition to retention and account growth.

And to be honest, I’m not surprised.

Every client call this month has had some version of the same conversation, usually starting with "Is this normal?" and ending with someone staring at their CAC dashboard like it personally wronged them. And yes, acquisition is becoming very expensive.

Let’s dive in.

Across almost every account on my roster this month, the conversation has been the same. Clients want to know if rising cost per acquisition is just the market right now, whether the AI and DIY wave is quietly tanking lead quality, and what growth looks like when the old playbook stops working.

Nobody's panicking, but everyone's asking.

They are running the numbers, comparing them to closed-won deals, and possibly wondering how to get strategic about growth.

The growth question is interesting because we always assume that growth comes down to acquiring new leads. But growth also comes from our existing relationships - and it’s way easier to grow existing relationships where the trust and results are already present than to spend money starting over.

So, what I’ve been doing is looking at lifecycle stage data across the client base and found a pattern that explains a lot. Roughly 80% of contacts are parked in MQL, SQL, or Lead, mostly crowded into MQL and Lead, and less than 3% ever move into an active deal.

The lead quality question wasn't a feeling. It was sitting in the CRM the whole time. We just forgot they were there, because they didn’t keep pushing themselves to do business.

A few of my clients have pushed on the email side to get things going again. And I happen to agree - the fix starts with a redirect, not more spending. We're segmenting those stuck contacts and the customers who haven't purchased in eighteen-plus months into dedicated reactivation sequences, because trust already exists there, and that's worth more right now than a fresh cold lead. The lifecycle problem gets solved before the budget problem does.

It’s also a great time to get some data cleaned up.

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Even though leads may sit for a while in your CRM doesn’t mean they are dormant or dead. If you are implementing proper tracking, including the HubSpot tracking pixel, you’ll be able to pinpoint buyer behaviour signals.

I’ve been trying this with one client, and it works. We got four meetings booked - one of them a potential $10 million account.

This is still in motion across most accounts, so I won't hand you a result I don't have yet. What I can tell you is the diagnostic alone changed every one of those calls, because once a leader sees 80% of their pipeline sitting dormant, the CAC conversation stops looking like a market problem.

Before you spend another dollar chasing acquisition, pull your own lifecycle report and see how many contacts are stuck in MQL, SQL, or Lead with zero movement. That stuck pipeline is the cheapest growth lever you have, and most teams aren't even looking at it.

TL;DR

Rising CAC feels like a market problem, and that’s something we can’t really control. We can try different strategies to bring it down, but it’s no secret that AI has influenced how we manage this work.

But leads? Chances are you have plenty of those. Most of them are parked pipeline problems.

Have questions? Email me at [email protected] and let’s talk!