Check how much a lead should cost for prospecting to pay off
Wondering whether outbound is the right channel for you? Enter your funnel and customer value, pick the return you expect, and see meetings and deals plus the maximum rate per qualified lead, per meeting and per month of outbound at which it still pays off.
Enter your numbers and click Show results. After that everything recalculates live.
Most companies ask what a lead costs. That is the wrong question. The right one is how much you can pay per lead and still have outbound pay off. This calculator answers with your numbers and none of our prices. Enter the funnel and customer value, pick a return, and get the maximum rate per lead, per meeting and per month.
The default funnel is a rounded snapshot of a typical B2B campaign we run - out of 20 interested leads about 17 pass qualification, 13 turn into meetings, half of the meetings produce a real opportunity, and one in five opportunities closes. Replace it with your own data if you have it.
How to read the result
The calculator works backwards. From interested leads and your funnel it derives deals, from customer value it derives revenue, and from the return you expect it derives the budget you can spend. That budget divided by leads and meetings gives the maximum rates.
A 2x return means revenue from deals is twice the outbound cost. For mature outbound a sensible target is 3x and up, but for a first campaign, while the funnel is still settling, 2x is a realistic starting point.
What the calculator ignores
Your team's time on meetings, onboarding cost, and the fact that some customers stay longer than you assume. It computes the steady state, without the first weeks of ramp-up.
- If you sell subscriptions, enter the fee and the average number of months a customer pays.
- If you have data from your own campaigns, put it in the funnel. Treat the defaults as a reference point only.
- The rates come from your customer value. If a customer is worth little, no lead provider fixes that.
Three situations where outbound does not add up
First, customer value below a few thousand. Then the maximum rate per meeting comes out below what booking one costs in any model.
Second, low conversion from meeting to opportunity. That points to the offer or the sales conversation. Outbound amplifies that problem and cannot fix it.
Third, an expected return set at 5x for a first campaign. That result comes after a few months of tuning segments and copy, rarely from day one.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the default funnel values come from?
Does the calculator show Scaling Labs prices?
What does a 2x return mean?
Do you store my numbers?
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Albert Zuszman runs Scaling Labs, a B2B prospecting agency based in Warsaw. He has spent years building cold email and cold calling campaigns for B2B companies, PE funds and teams entering the Polish market. He writes about what works in real projects, with campaign numbers.