Before you spend money on ads, a funnel or an event, work out four numbers. You need to know what one client is worth to you, how many leads turn into conversations, and how many of those conversations turn into clients. From those three you get the fourth: the most you can afford to pay for a lead. Once you have them, you can tell fairly quickly whether a campaign is paying off. If you don't have them, every dollar you spend is a guess.
This article is for the coach, therapist or practitioner who's good at the work and has plenty of happy clients behind them, but whose inquiries still come in bursts. You don't need to love spreadsheets. You need about an hour, your sales from the last six months, and an honest look at where people drop away.
I'm an engineer by training, so I enjoy this part more than most people. But you'll see it's mostly simple arithmetic.
Key Takeaways
- Before you set any marketing budget, work out what an average client is worth to you across the whole relationship.
- Measure lead to booked call and call to client as separate steps, so you know which one to fix first.
- Start from the number of clients you want each month and work backwards to the calls and leads you need.
- Judge any campaign twice, once while it runs and again a few months later, because people you add to your list can keep buying long after an event ends.
- Tag every new lead with where it came from, so your numbers come from records and not from memory.
The Four Numbers That Decide Whether Marketing Pays
| Number | What it tells you | How to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Client value | What one new client is worth over the whole relationship | Revenue from past clients divided by the number of clients |
| Lead-to-call rate | How many new subscribers or inquiries book a conversation | Calls booked divided by new leads in the same period |
| Close rate | How many conversations become clients | Clients signed divided by calls held |
| Affordable cost per lead | The most you can pay for one lead and still hit your target | Worked out from the three numbers above |
Client value carries the most weight, yet most coaches only know their price. On the Virtual Summit Strategies podcast, Chris Cameron said that once you know your lifetime value of a customer, "you know what you're up against." It becomes much easier to decide which stages, partnerships and summits are worth a yes. So if your clients usually buy a program and then renew, or move on to a second offer, count that second purchase too.
Working Backwards From the Clients You Want
You only need five steps.
- Choose how many new clients you want each month.
- Divide that by your close rate to get the number of calls you need.
- Divide the calls by your lead-to-call rate to get the number of leads you need.
- Decide what share of the new revenue you're willing to put back into marketing.
- Divide that budget by the leads you need. The result is your ceiling per lead.
Here's a worked example with hypothetical numbers. A health coach sells a $3,000 program and wants 4 new clients a month. She closes about 1 in 4 calls, so she needs 16 calls. About 1 in 20 new subscribers books a call, so she needs 320 new leads. Those 4 clients bring in $12,000. If she's comfortable putting 20% of that back into marketing, her budget is $2,400, and she can pay up to $7.50 per lead and still reach her target.
Now she has a ceiling. If a channel brings her right-fit leads for less than that, it's worth testing. If it costs more, she'll need a higher client value or a better close rate before it makes sense.
The same exercise tells her where to push. Suppose her close rate improves from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3. Then she needs 12 calls and 240 leads, and her ceiling goes up to $10 a lead. Improving the sales conversation or the follow-up often costs much less than buying more traffic.
Why a Cheap Lead Can Lose Money and an Expensive One Can Pay
Mitch Asser runs paid traffic for summits. On the podcast, he explained that some companies are happy to lose money on each lead during a summit because their backend earns it back afterwards. For him, the first goal was simply to break even on the front end.
Our own summits taught me the same thing about timing. Own Your Stage, in February 2022, was the first summit Jennie and I ran on EventRaptor. It brought in more than $24,000 in sales within two weeks. By February 2024, that one summit had led to more than $50,000 as new registrants kept buying.
At another summit, I was too exhausted to put a proper offer together, and it made only about $1,800 during the event. It still added 476 new people to our list, and those people will keep buying for years. If I'd judged either summit on its first week, I'd have got the math wrong. These are our results, and they don't predict yours.
So measure every campaign in two windows. The first is what it brings in while it runs. The second is what the people it attracted buy over the months that follow.
The Number Most Coaches Never Track
That number is follow-up conversion. After we built EventRaptor, I watched hosts run good summits and add hundreds of people to their lists, then turn few or none of them into clients. The event usually wasn't the problem. They just had no process for turning registrants into conversations. In my experience, a good follow-up process might turn 10 to 15% of those people into clients. That depends a lot on the offer, the audience and the follow-up itself, so take it as my experience. It isn't a promise.
You can only measure follow-up if you know where each person came from. Chris Cameron's advice was to tag everything, so you always know where a client started and what that source is really worth. A Google Sheet will do it if you're disciplined about it. Most busy practitioners find that hard to keep up, so it's better when the tagging happens automatically. If your follow-up slips whenever delivery gets busy, read about building a client attraction system that keeps working when your coaching calendar fills up.
How a Summit Changes the Equation
A virtual summit moves two of your numbers at once. Speakers promote the event to their own audiences, which can lower what each lead costs you and is one of the main reasons to host a virtual summit. And attendees spend hours learning from you before they ever book a call. More than 5,000 people on our own list came to us because other speakers promoted our summits.
Lucy Bedewi, a personality-driven copywriter, hosted the Out-Earn Your Man summit in September 2021, and we produced it for her on EventRaptor. Her email list grew from 25 people to 825. She booked 4 discovery calls right after she presented, all 4 became clients, and her talk brought in $10K in sales. That's one person's result, and it doesn't predict what another host will get.
The summit math follows the same logic as the steps above:
- Registration page views multiplied by your opt-in rate gives you registrants.
- Registrants multiplied by your sales conversion rate gives you sales.
- Sales multiplied by your average offer value gives you gross revenue.
- Subtract speaker affiliate commissions, any ad spend, and software or production costs to get your net revenue.
Hosts who set a revenue goal and forget about commissions end up short. EventRaptor takes no ticket fees, so that's one cost you won't have to subtract.
What EventRaptor Records for You
Each speaker gets their own promoter link. Your registrant list shows who brought in each person, a growth graph tracks registrations day by day, and you can export a promoter performance report. Registrants also sync to GHL/CRMRaptor with tags, so the source of every lead is already recorded when your follow-up starts. If we're producing the summit for you, our team sets all of this up. We've run 13 summits of our own and over 40 summits for clients. You can see how the pieces fit together on the summit software features page.
A Note for Therapists and Practitioners
The math works just as well for a private-pay practice, a group program or an intensive. Your client value might be a course of sessions or a workshop seat. Your proof will come from your teaching and from peer referrals, so never use testimonials or stories from therapy clients. Summit content is education. It isn't therapy, so present it that way, as our guide to virtual summits for therapists and healing practitioners explains. And check your licensing board's advertising rules before you run ads or make an offer.
Your Pre-Spend Checklist
- I know my average client value, including renewals and second purchases
- I know my close rate from my recent sales calls
- I know what share of new leads book a call
- I've written down the most I can pay per lead
- Every new lead is tagged with the place they came from
- I have follow-up for people who aren't ready to buy yet
- I've decided how long I'll measure before I judge a campaign
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Good Cost Per Lead for a Coach?
There's no single good number, because it depends on your client value and your conversion rates. Work backwards from the clients you want and the budget you're willing to reinvest, and that gives you your own ceiling. A lead that costs more can still be a good deal when your client value is high and your follow-up converts well.
How Do I Work Out Client Lifetime Value If I'm Fairly New?
Start with your total revenue from past clients and divide it by the number of clients. If you only have a few clients, use your main offer's price plus anything clients typically buy next, and update the figure as more data comes in. A rough number you keep improving beats having no number at all.
How Do I Know If My Funnel Is Working?
Measure each step on its own: page views to leads, leads to booked calls, and calls to clients. When one step falls well below the rest, fix that step before you spend more on traffic. Then check again a few months later, because many buyers take their time.
Is a Virtual Summit Cheaper Than Running Ads?
It can be. Speakers promote the event to their own audiences, so you aren't paying for every lead the way you do with ads. A summit still has costs, including your time, speaker affiliate commissions and production, so include them when you work out your net revenue.
Your Next Step
This week, fill in your four numbers using your last six months of sales. Even rough figures will show you whether to work on traffic, sales calls or follow-up first.
If you'd like help reading those numbers and deciding whether a summit, a smaller event or better follow-up fits your practice, Book your Client Attraction Planning Call. We'll go through your figures with you and sketch a plan that fits your offer.