Lead follow-up
What happens to a lead from the moment it lands to the moment it is won or dropped. This is the agency's own pipeline — leads from our forms, not our clients' campaigns.
The live version of this, with the current numbers at every step, is at Pipeline → Follow-up. This page is the process; that page is how it is actually going.
The steps
1. Lead comes in. A form fill from a Meta campaign, an inbound enquiry, or a referral. It lands in the portal with its source and campaign attached, which is what lets acquisition cost be worked out later. Nothing else happens automatically.
2. First message, same day. The first message goes out on WhatsApp. Speed is the whole game here — a lead answered within the hour behaves like a different lead from one answered tomorrow. Mark the lead contacted when the message is sent, not when they reply; the two are different facts and only one of them is ours to control.
3. Follow-up. No reply is the normal case, not the exception. Follow up rather than waiting, and move the lead to following up so it stops looking like an untouched new lead. A lead nobody has messaged twice has not really been worked.
4. The action. Every worked lead ends in one of these, and one of them is not "nothing":
- Appointment set — a call is booked. Record the time, because the next number that matters is whether they turned up.
- To the setter — needs a call rather than more messages. It goes to the dialler.
- Disqualified — wrong fit, wrong budget, wrong market. Record the reason. A disqualified lead is a result; an ignored one is a leak.
- No appointment — worked properly and did not book. Also a result.
5. Showed up. Booked and attended are different numbers and the gap between them is a real problem you can only see if both are recorded.
6. Won. They become a client. Record the contract value on the lead — that value, against the ad spend that produced the lead, is what makes acquisition cost knowable at all.
Why each step is recorded
Every percentage on the live page is the ratio between two of the steps above, so a step nobody marks becomes a blind spot rather than a zero. The three that go unmarked most often, and what each one costs:
| Not marked | What stops being knowable |
|---|---|
| Contacted | Whether leads are being worked at all, or just collected |
| Appointment set | Booking rate, and therefore whether the problem is lead quality or follow-up |
| Won, with a value | Cost per client, payback, and whether the ad spend is worth it |
Where the numbers come from
The live page reads the leads table directly — picked_up, appointment_set, showed_up and stage. It counts only leads with no client attached, because those are ours; leads belonging to a client are their campaign's, and mixing the two would describe our funnel with their customers.