It's one of the first things a business owner says to a growth advisor or marketer. Dave Slovin, Partner at Big Wheel Performance, and Sebastian Polacek, CEO of Cactus, hear it constantly. So they got on a call to share their experiences, live and unscripted.
“We need more leads” is a comment business leaders often make when something upstream isn't adding up, and it can point in several different directions depending on who's listening. Neither Dave nor Sebastian tried to answer it directly. Instead, over about forty minutes, they followed it through marketing, intake, sales, client experience, and business operations. What follows is that conversation, organized by the real business growth questions it actually raised.
A business owner or leader says "we need more leads." What actually goes through your head?
Ch.1 DaveDave's first move is downstream, into the leads that already exist. What happens after an inquiry comes in? How is it followed up on? How many inquiries turn into meetings, and how many of those become clients? To him, "we need more leads" isn't a strategy. More doesn't help until you know what's happening to the ones you've already got.
Ch.2 SebastianSebastian starts further upstream. He wants to know how people heard about the company, who's actually reaching out, and why – and whether the business is attracting the audience it wants in the first place. The request rarely arrives as "we need more leads"; it usually starts narrower, as a website or a social push, and grows into the bigger ask.
Same instinct, different starting point, leading to a similar end point. Understand strengths and weaknesses in your current client lifecycle before adjusting your marketing or lead gen efforts.
When does a lead actually become worth something?
Ch.1 DaveA click, a call, an impression. On their own, Dave says, they're worth nothing to the business. They're a great leading indicator, but the real work is building a system that can follow a lead all the way to revenue. Once you can say "we generate a lead for $250, and the average client is worth $3,000," marketing stops being a cost and becomes an investment decision.
Ch.2 SebastianSebastian names the trap on the other side of that same coin: vanity metrics. Followers, likes, booth visits – numbers that feel good and are hard to defend as an investment on their own. His work is wiring those softer signals into the same finish line Dave is describing, so the business can better understand how social, events, and other marketing activities contribute to revenue.
Marketing becomes an investment – instead of a budget line item – once you can trace the thread from first touch to signed contract.
Before you chase more leads: is the process that handles the ones you already have actually working?
Looking at the entire client lifecycle often reveals more than one opportunity for improvement. One firm was already generating plenty of leads, but following those leads through the business showed problems at almost every stage.
Here's what that breakdown looked like inside one firm:
Looking at the entire lifecycle helped identify the specific improvements needed across the business. Processes, systems, and reporting helped apply those changes consistently and measure the results. Happier clients generated more referrals, further boosting lead volume without incremental marketing investment.
Before you invest in generating more leads, look at your current client lifecycle in detail. Identify where the continuity breaks, and fix that first.
Once the fundamentals are fixed, is the business ready for more leads?
Ch.1 DaveDave frames it as sales readiness: can the business follow up on the leads it already receives? Is there a documented process everyone uses the same way? Can progress be tracked and results measured? Until that's locked down, he doesn't think it makes sense to pour effort into generating more leads. The extra volume doesn't grow the business. It just backs up at the point where things are already struggling.
Ch.2 SebastianSebastian's comment on the same risk: get spectacular at generating leads without the capacity to convert them, and "we will just jam the engine." Success on one side of the business is wasted because the other side can't keep up. A strong marketing team doesn't do the business any favors if the rest of it can't turn those leads into clients.
Generating more leads only helps if the rest of the business is prepared to handle them. Otherwise, more volume can make an existing problem worse.
You've built a marketing and sales engine. How does that change the business?
Ch.1 DaveFor Dave, this is the moment marketing stops being a budget line and becomes a genuine investment. Because now acquisition cost and ROI are measurable. That opens the door to structured testing. Try a new activity or channel. Prove that it works and expand. Or prove that it doesn't work and move with confidence to the next idea on the list. In his words, at that point it just becomes a machine.
Ch.2 SebastianSebastian sees the same shift turn attention outward – toward competitors, positioning, and what the market is searching for. Research that once required a budget only a Coca-Cola or a Nike could justify is now available to almost anyone, and AI has compressed the time it takes to turn raw information into a hypothesis worth testing. The tools that do this didn't exist even a couple of years ago. They do now.
Building your sales and marketing engine opens up new possibilities to test, invest, and grow.
By the end, "we need more leads" had turned into a different, much broader set of questions – each one pointing somewhere different in the client lifecycle.
Before you decide you need more leads, spend some time looking at how you're generating and managing the ones you've already got. You may find opportunities for improvement, and you'll know exactly where to invest next.
Helps organizations build scalable growth systems by aligning marketing, sales, operations, and client experience at Big Wheel Performance.
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Helps companies simplify complex offerings into marketing that attracts fans, followers, and clients at Cactus.
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