What Does a Lead Actually Cost You?
Most converters buying B2B leads have never calculated their cost per won order. The published numbers make that calculation uncomfortable.
Every converter I know has a view on paid lead platforms, and the views are strong in both directions. Some swear the subscription pays for itself. Others renewed for four years out of habit and could not tell you what it earned them.
Both groups are usually arguing from feeling rather than arithmetic. So let us do the arithmetic, using numbers the platforms publish themselves.
The published figures
IndiaMART is the largest player in this market and, being listed, discloses its operating metrics. From its own earnings presentation for the quarter ending September 2024:
- 8.1 million supplier storefronts on the platform
- 218,000 paying suppliers
- 28 million unique business enquiries in the quarter
- 127 million enquiries delivered in the same quarter
- ₹61,000 annualised revenue per paying supplier
Look at the third and fourth numbers together, because that is where the useful information is.
Twenty-eight million unique enquiries. One hundred and twenty-seven million deliveries. On average, each enquiry reaches about four and a half suppliers.
That is not a scandal and I am not presenting it as one. It is a disclosed, perfectly legal model, and for a lot of businesses it works. Matching one buyer to several suppliers is arguably the point of a marketplace — the buyer wants options. But it does mean that when your phone rings, roughly three or four competitors are getting the same call, usually within minutes of each other.
The calculation nobody runs
Take your annual subscription. Divide it by the number of orders you actually won from that channel last year — not enquiries received, not quotations sent. Orders won, and delivered, and paid for.
That number is your cost per won order. Compare it against the gross margin on a typical order.
Most converters cannot do this calculation, and the reason is instructive: nobody tracks which enquiry turned into which order. The enquiry arrives on WhatsApp, the rate is given on a call, the PO arrives three weeks later from a slightly different name, and no one ever connects the two. So the subscription gets renewed on a feeling that it is probably working.
If you only act on one thing from this article, build that one line of tracking. Even a column in a notebook. You cannot manage a channel you cannot measure.
Why a shared enquiry pushes you towards price
When four or five converters receive the same enquiry within minutes, think about what actually distinguishes you in the buyer’s eyes.
He has not visited your plant. He has not seen your BRC certificate. He does not know your rejection rate or whether you deliver on time. He has four quotations in his inbox by evening, and the only field he can compare with confidence is the rate.
So a shared, unqualified enquiry quietly pushes the whole conversation onto the one axis where you have least to gain. The converter with the oldest machines and the lowest overhead wins, and everybody’s margin resets downward.
This is not an argument against paid platforms. It is an argument for knowing what kind of demand you are buying, and for not letting it be your only channel.
What the alternative actually looks like
I should be straight with you here, because the honest version is more useful than the sales version.
GPN is a fraction of IndiaMART’s size. Anyone who tells you a newer platform matches an 8-million-storefront marketplace for raw volume is selling you something. It does not, and it will not for a long time.
What we built it to be is a second channel with different economics. On GPN you pay ₹449 once to see every buyer inquiry posted on the platform, for life, and to reply to them. There is no per-lead charge and no annual renewal on that access. The volume is smaller. The cost of finding out is also smaller — roughly what a single lead costs on a subscription model.
The other half of it matters more over time: being findable for what you actually do, through a capability-based directory, so that some buyers arrive asking for you specifically rather than blasting the same enquiry at five converters. A buyer who sought you out for your solventless line is a different conversation from a buyer comparing four rates.
What to do this week
- Calculate your cost per won order on every paid channel. If you cannot, start tracking today — one column, enquiry source against order number.
- Count your channels. If every new enquiry comes from one platform, you do not have a sales strategy, you have a dependency.
- Work out what a trial costs. Not what a subscription costs — what finding out costs. Those are different numbers and only one of them is a real risk.
- Ask your last five new customers how they found you. The answers are usually not what the marketing spend assumes.
- Stop renewing on feeling. Renew on the number, whatever it turns out to say.
Paid leads are a legitimate tool. Not knowing what they cost you is not.
Related reading: The tax rule that turned your unpaid invoice into your customer’s problem.
Sources: IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd, Earnings Presentation, Q2 FY25 (quarter ended 30 September 2024) — supplier, enquiry and revenue-per-supplier figures, as disclosed by the company.
About the author
Rajesh Modhvadia · Founder, Global Packaging Network
Rajesh Modhvadia is the founder of Global Packaging Network, a platform built for the packaging industry: a supplier directory, buyer inquiries, supplier search and cost calculators for flexible laminates, printed boxes, labels, laminated tubes, woven sacks and rotogravure cylinders.
