How to Value B2B Leads — CPL vs Close-Rate | Revenue Dynamics - Episode 2

Nearly the entire marketing budget in a sales-led B2B organisation goes towards one thing: a flow of leads that sales can engage, close and turn into revenue. Yet surprisingly little thought goes into what a lead is actually worth. The conversation tends to stop at cost per lead, an efficiency question, when what matters is how likely sales is to turn that lead into revenue, and at what cost. As Dale W. Harrison puts it, nobody cares how many MQLs you generated. In Episode 2, Dale W. Harrison and Jamie Hendrie take apart the economics of the B2B lead: how little control marketing has over media costs, why so much cheap media is bot traffic, why marketing's spend is often a penny to 10 cents of every dollar it takes to close a deal, how buyer-seller fit and an evidence-based ICP change the picture, and why intent and timing belong to sales. Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:21 Back for the second episode of Revenue Dynamics 2:33 Cost per lead is an efficiency question 4:55 Ad inventory up fivefold in ten years 7:06 Effective CPM versus CPM 9:06 Gartner: around 1% of B2B leads convert to closed-won 15:54 Jamie: an 84% crossover across ten target account lists 18:56 Marketing's cost is 100 to 1,000 times smaller than sales' 22:23 Jamie: private equity and "shrink your ICP" 24:36 Buyer-seller fit 30:14 Wins and losses as the input to the ICP 37:25 100% of the work on intent and timing is wasted 46:51 2026 de-anonymisation rates: 40–60% of companies, 4–7% of individuals 51:48 Mark Ritson and market orientation 54:54 Marketing's job in a single sentence 56:15 Wrapping up: back to the basics Key Topics Discussed Cost per lead as an efficiency measure, and how little of it marketing controls Bot traffic, ad fraud and effective CPM Close rate, sales effort and the true cost of a lead Buyer-seller fit, and building the ICP from wins and losses Why intent and timing belong to sales, and what de-anonymisation can really do Marketing's job: maximising the future consideration sets your brand is placed in Notable Quotes “100% of all of the work that you, as a marketer, do on establishing intent and timing is 100% wasted.” — Dale W. Harrison “Have we built the right to win this account? Yes or no?” — Jamie Hendrie “Marketing's job is to maximize the number of future consideration sets your brand gets placed in.” — Dale W. Harrison Resources & Mentions Gartner B2B sales funnel benchmark data Google Performance Max (PMax), Reddit, Meta and LinkedIn advertising Mark Ritson and market orientation Next Episode Episode 3: What CFOs Really Want in Your Marketing Report Subscribe & Follow Catch every episode of Revenue Dynamics: Marketing, Sales, and the Economics of B2B Growth on your favourite podcast platform, and subscribe here on YouTube for future episodes. #B2BMarketing #LeadGeneration #RevOps #SalesAndMarketing