Sales Methodologies
More leads won't fix it: improve your sales close rate first
Gaultier Beauchesne
CSO & Co-founder @Eagr
🎧 From the Eagr to sell podcast episode with Lyes Boukeroui. Watch on YouTube.
Key takeaways
"We need more leads" almost always points at the wrong problem.
When you diagnose a pipe, you mostly find quality leaks: leads never called back, an 80% drop between the first and second meeting, big close-rate gaps between reps.
Pump more volume into a leaky pipe and you just widen the holes.
Work the close and the discovery first. Add lead volume after.
The real issue is usually a skill, not a tool. Diagnose before you automate.
"We need more leads."
Almost every founder says it when the number doesn't land. And it aims at the wrong target.
Lyes Boukeroui diagnoses sales machines at scaleups. He sums up the trap with an image that sticks: pump water into a pipe full of holes and all you do is make the holes bigger.
Your sales close rate is decided down there, downstream. Not in the volume of leads you pour in at the top.
Why "more leads" is a misleading reflex
Asking for more leads is comfortable.
It puts the blame on an outside cause, the volume, the market. Instead of on the quality of execution. Saying "we don't have enough leads" hurts less than "we're not good at closing."
The numbers tell a different story.
The problem sits between the lead landing and the deal signing, in everything that leaks along the way. And the spread between reps is huge.
On the same team, with the same leads, the best closer sometimes signs two or three times more than the average. The market has nothing to do with it.
Lyes lived this on the ground, and here's what he finds the moment he digs into the numbers:
"We kept hearing 'we don't have enough leads, we don't have enough leads.' Then we'd diagnose the pipe and realize it wasn't a volume problem, it was a quality problem: leads that never got called, a first-to-second-meeting drop-off of around 80% for some reps. Artificially pumping up a pipe that's already full of holes fixed nothing."
Lyes Boukeroui, RevOps expert (ex-Uptoo)
The leaky pipe: where the money actually escapes
The leaks cluster around a few recurring spots, all tied to how leads get handled.
Spotting them tells you exactly where to act.
Leads never contacted : Not every lead gets a call, or not within the right window
First-to-second meeting drop-off : Up to 80% lost for some reps
Close-rate gaps : Conversion rates swing wildly from one rep to the next
Weak discovery : Sloppy targeting and qualification, deals that drag
Wrong contact : A second meeting run without the final decision-maker in the loop
That last leak is often the most expensive, and the most invisible.
Lyes ended up refusing any second meeting without the final decision-maker, after watching himself sign zero deals in that case. Gartner data points the same way: B2B buying groups that reach consensus are 2.5 times more likely to rate their purchase as high quality (Gartner). Sell without the decision-maker and you let that consensus form without you.
A worked example (illustrative)
Take a team of 5 reps asking for more leads. It gets 1,000 leads a month.
Here's its current pipe.
Leads received · Pass-through rate : n/a · Volume : 1,000
Leads contacted in time · Pass-through rate : 70% · Volume : 700
First meetings held · Pass-through rate : 50% · Volume : 350
Second meetings booked · Pass-through rate : 40% · Volume : 140
Deals signed · Pass-through rate : 30% · Volume : 42
42 deals a month.
Now, two options.
Option A, what the team asks for: double the leads, to 2,000. The pipe leaks the same as before. Result: 84 deals, but the acquisition budget doubled too.
Option B: keep 1,000 leads and fix two stages. Contact 90% of leads in time instead of 70%, and lift the first-to-second-meeting rate from 40% to 55%.
Leads contacted · Before : 700 · After : 900
First meetings held · Before : 350 · After : 450
Second meetings booked · Before : 140 · After : 248
Deals signed · Before : 42 · After : 74
74 deals, without a single extra euro on acquisition.
You land close to option A by working the skill instead of doubling the bill. The numbers are illustrative, but the mechanism is real: every point gained in the middle of the pipe counts for more than one more lead at the top.
The right order: close rate first, lead generation second
Seal the exit of the pipe before you open the entrance.
It feels backwards, and it works. The same number of leads handled well earns more than double the volume leaking out everywhere.
Here's how to diagnose, step by step, before you launch a single campaign.
1. Lay out your pipe stages. Lead received, lead contacted in time, first meeting held, second meeting booked, deal signed. Five stages are enough to start.
2. Measure the pass-through rate of each one. For every stage, divide the volume that moves on by the volume that comes in. You get a percentage per step.
3. Do it per rep, not just on average. The average hides the gaps. Compare each rep's first-to-second-meeting rate: that's where the individual holes show up.
4. Find the biggest leak. The stage where you lose the most volume in absolute terms. Often discovery or closing, sometimes just failing to contact leads in time.
5. Build that specific skill. Not "selling" as a block. The leaking step, on the reps who leak on it.
6. Open the tap upstream again. Once the pipe holds water, every extra lead actually converts.
Common mistakes in a diagnosis
Four traps come up when people try to fix their close rate.
Looking at the team average. A decent average close rate can hide one rep at 8% and another at 40%. The average makes you miss the real issue.
Jumping straight to a tool. "Automate opportunity generation for me" when the team already has enough. The shortest path runs through the selling method, not one more workflow.
Treating the symptom. You see the first-to-second-meeting drop, you add more follow-ups. But the cause is upstream: a botched discovery, or a first meeting run without digging into who really decides.
Fixing everything at once. You spread the effort across five stages and nothing moves. Take the biggest leak, fix it, measure, move to the next one.
The real problem is usually a skill, not a tool
When a sales ops tells you "just automate this," the shortest path almost always runs through the selling method.
Lyes sees it with his clients: he gets called in for an ops problem, and once he steps back, the real lever is skill. The team already has the right number of opportunities. It just needs to get better at discovery and closing.
Keep the diagnostic habit: observe, understand, act, measure, improve.
Don't jump straight to "act" because a tool makes everything possible. Eagr finds the exact point where each rep drops off in the sales cycle, from their real calls, and lets you replicate what your best closers already do across the rest of the team. See how Eagr diagnoses your calls.
FAQ
How do I know if my problem is volume or quality? Calculate your pass-through rate at every stage of the pipe. Losing a lot between the first and second meeting? Leads not all contacted in time? Your problem is quality.
How do I calculate my close rate exactly? Divide the number of deals signed by the number of qualified opportunities over the same period. Do the math per rep: the team average hides the real gaps.
What first-to-second-meeting drop-off counts as abnormal? A drop around 80% for some reps is a loud warning sign. Compare your reps to each other. Big gaps mean a skill problem, and the market has nothing to do with it.
Which stage should I work on first? The one that leaks most in absolute terms, usually discovery or closing. Working the top of the pipe is pointless while the bottom leaks.
Why does a second meeting without the final decision-maker lose deals? Because you hand your pitch to someone who knows it less well than you do, and the decision gets made without you. B2B buying groups that reach consensus are 2.5 times more likely to rate their purchase as high quality, according to Gartner. Without the decision-maker in the loop, that consensus slips past you.
Should I stop lead generation entirely? No. It's a question of order. Seal the pipe first, raise the volume after. Then every extra lead actually converts.
Sources
This article comes from an episode of the Eagr to sell podcast with Lyes Boukeroui. Watch the full episode on YouTube.
