How many leads does a SaaS need to win one paying customer?
Usually 7–40 marketing-qualified leads per customer, about 14 at mid-range B2B rates: 25–45% become sales-qualified and 10–30% of those buy.
A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) has shown interest, for example by downloading a guide or signing up for a webinar. A sales-qualified lead (SQL) fits your target profile, has a clear need and has been checked by sales. Typical B2B rates are 2–5% from visitor to MQL, 25–45% from MQL to SQL and 10–30% from SQL to customer, according to our article on MQL vs SQL.
Work it backwards. Say you want five new customers a month. At mid-range rates of 35% MQL to SQL and 20% SQL to customer, 7% of MQLs buy, so you need about 72 MQLs a month. At a 3% visitor-to-MQL rate, that is roughly 2,400 visitors. An early-stage funnel with broad targeting, around 20% MQL to SQL and 10% SQL to customer, needs 250 MQLs for the same five customers.
This ratio is also your client acquisition rate: new customers ÷ leads × 100. Measure it per cohort, meaning customers won from the leads that arrived in the same month, because B2B SaaS deals with smaller companies often take 45–90 days to close.
Work backwards from your goal
- 1Customers neededDivide your monthly new revenue goal by the average first-year contract value.
- 2SQLs neededDivide customers by your SQL-to-customer rate. Without your own data, start with 20%.
- 3MQLs neededDivide SQLs by your MQL-to-SQL rate, usually 25–45%; use the lower end if your targeting is still broad.
- 4Traffic or contacts neededDivide MQLs by your visitor-to-MQL rate. Compare it with your website conversion rate to see if the traffic is realistic.
- 5Check sales capacityEvery SQL means a call. A rep can handle about 10–20 meetings a week, as described in a productive day in SaaS sales.
Benchmarks help you plan the first quarter. After two or three months, replace them with your own rates, because your definition of an MQL decides how many leads you need. Leads that begin as a conversation skip a stage, so give them their own close rate.