The 7 Metrics That Predict Whether a Lead Seller Will Survive the Year

Most lead sellers think they are in a marketing business.

They are not.

They are in a mathematical business. Survival is a constant balance between acquisition cost, buyer performance, routing efficiency, and compliance risk. What’s surprising is not how hard this is. It’s how few sellers track the numbers that actually decide whether they make it through the year.

The market does not care about effort, volume, or intent. It enforces the math.

Below are the seven metrics that quietly determine survival for lead sellers. Ignore them, and the outcome is eventually decided for you.

1. Contact Rate: The Silent Killer of Lead Selling Profitability

If buyers cannot reach the consumer, everything else is irrelevant. Lead sellers often treat this as the buyer’s problem, but that distinction does not hold in practice. When contact rates fall, buyers do not blame their systems. They blame the leads.

The contact rate is simple.

Contact Rate = Leads Reached ÷ Leads Delivered.

Most sellers obsess over lead quality. In reality, what buyers call “bad leads” is usually caused by operational failure after delivery. Slow outreach, broken CRM workflows, poor phone hygiene, untrained call centers,