Evaluate electrical leads: What your purchasing contributes to orders
Assess a defined group of electrical enquiries using purchase costs, handling time and orders. Find the observations that support your next purchasing decision.
You want to know whether purchased electrical enquiries help your business economically. That requires connecting purchasing, all work on those contacts and the resulting orders. One attractive order can be encouraging. Your next purchasing decision also depends on the time and money consumed by the other enquiries in the same group.
A manageable evaluation helps you decide whether to retain the purchasing framework, improve handling first or allocate additional funds to further enquiries. You do not need new software. Start with actual purchasing records, existing case notes and your own job calculations. All figures must describe the same enquiry group, with unresolved decisions remaining visible.
Define the enquiry group before calculating
Choose a clearly bounded group, such as all electrical enquiries received through a specific lead order during a named period. Record its start, end and allocation method. The aim is not to find an unusually favourable sample. You need to trace which contacts belong to the purchase and which orders resulted from those conversations.
Include unsuccessful and still open cases. Looking only at won orders and their direct quotation time misses work on other contacts. An unsuccessful site visit also consumed resources. An open quotation may later result in an order, but is not a sale at the evaluation date. These distinctions belong in the same overview.
Change group membership retrospectively only for a documented factual reason, such as an unambiguously incorrect allocation. Assign a later order to its original enquiry even if the decision falls in another month. You can then update today’s interim result without silently redefining earlier findings or counting one order in two groups.
Describe each contact’s actual progress
A few clear stages are sufficient. Distinguish a contact attempt from a conversation, a site visit from a sent quotation, and an open quotation from a won order. Agree how the team identifies the latest stage. A positive conversation alone is not a sound basis for recording an order as won.
For open cases, record the next decision. Is the prospect waiting for information needed for a quotation, is your own calculation missing, or was a later conversation agreed? These differences show whether time is needed or work has stalled. The generic label “in progress” hides the action that would actually move the case forward.
For ended conversations, a brief factual reason is sufficient when known. The project was postponed, your business could not offer the requested scope, or the customer chose differently. Label assumptions as assumptions. A lack of response establishes neither a competitor’s involvement nor the quality of the original contact.
Combine purchasing and handling costs
Use actual allocated purchase costs from your records, rather than a remembered list price if the invoice differs. The relevant figure is the cost of this exact group. Record other attributable acquisition costs using your own consistent method and identify them clearly. This operational overview does not establish tax or accounting rules.
Add active working time: contact attempts, conversations, preparation, site visits, travel and quotations. Include clarification and unsuccessful contacts. Waiting for a customer decision is not automatically active work. If a specialist handles other projects meanwhile, that work does not belong to this enquiry group. The calculation thus uses genuinely allocated effort.
Value time with a transparent internal rate. It can make capacity comparable, but is not automatically an additional cash payment of the same amount. Avoid double allocation: do not add travel costs or working time again if another rate already includes them. Record what the chosen rate covers and which costs are considered separately.
Work through a complete example
Every following figure is invented for illustration, not a webRichtung price or an expected conversion rate. A group of twelve electrical enquiries costs €720 to purchase. Your team allocates twelve active handling hours. At a hypothetical internal rate of €50 per hour, valued work is €600. This simplified example includes no other acquisition costs.
Total allocated acquisition effort is therefore €1,320: €720 purchasing plus €600 time valuation. Three orders have been won at the evaluation date. This gives €440 per won order, calculated as €1,320 divided by three. Time spent on contacts without an order remains in the numerator. The figure therefore describes group costs rather than work on successful cases alone.
Suppose the three jobs leave illustrative contributions of €900, €600 and €400 after their respective allocated execution costs, available to cover further business costs. Together that is €1,900. Deduct the separately recorded acquisition effort of €1,320 and €580 remains. This is not stated business profit: general overhead and other excluded items have not yet been fully considered.
Treat open quotations as unresolved outcomes
Alongside the three won orders, two quotations might still be undecided. Do not assign invented revenue or anticipated contribution to them. Maintain their actual status. The current €440 per won order is a dated interim figure based on three actual sales, not a final statement about future development of the whole group.
If a fourth order is later won, add both its contribution and additional handling time. Adding only the sale to the denominator while forgetting intervening quotation work would be incomplete. Conversely, a longer decision period does not automatically make a quotation unsuccessful. What matters is the known status and costs incurred since the previous review.
If no order has been won, cost per order cannot be calculated for that group. The result is not zero euros. Show total cost so far, achieved stages and the unresolved outcome. That presentation helps decide whether more conversations need to conclude before drawing an economic conclusion from the group.
Find an actionable cause behind the result
Review the actual cases. If several enquiries have not reached a conversation, first examine your contact attempts and agreed callbacks. If quotation preparation is mainly missing information, clearer feedback from site visits may be the next task. This review seeks a specific step you can influence; it does not replace individual assessment of customer needs or technical feasibility.
Also distinguish an unsuitable request from a lack of your own capacity. Being unable to process work you generally offer in time calls for a different decision from receiving a request outside your service range. Both can matter economically, but require different business changes. Do not hide them inside a vague judgement about quality.
A small group can provide clues without proving a permanent rate. One large project can substantially change contribution; an unusually demanding visit can change hours. Identify such exceptions. Where possible, compare more of your own groups using the same method. Use team experience to explain observations without treating a plausible story as a proven causal relationship.
Change one clear thing in the next step
If handling works and orders cover the costs considered, assess another limited purchase under similar conditions. Establish available extra money and working time first. A positive interim result does not automatically create capacity. The next group must receive attention while open contacts in the first group continue.
If feedback is delayed, improve the specific observed step first. The specialist may need a clearer visit brief, or the office dependable cover. Record what changed and how you will recognise its effect in the next group. Such a bounded change is easier to assess than simultaneously changing area, delivery type, handling and service range.
If there is no economically sustainable prospect, previous effort alone does not require expanding the next purchase. Document the finding and condition for a new decision, such as available quotation capacity or a clarified service boundary. Continue supporting existing contacts according to agreements; an internal purchasing decision does not cancel promised customer feedback.
Compare orders using the same cost boundary
Revenue alone does not explain different electrical projects’ results. A large order can also consume substantial materials and execution time. Use the same internal calculation method for every job before comparing its remaining contribution with acquisition costs. Subtracting only materials from one job but also installation time from another produces differently constructed figures.
Pay particular attention to work appearing both in quotation handling and the later project calculation. Do not deduct it twice unnoticed. Agree with the person responsible for your cost accounting where it belongs in this overview, and apply that consistently. This makes the evaluation more informative without prescribing a particular business costing system.
If execution costs later change, update the job contribution too. An early estimate and a later actual result represent different information stages. Identify which you use. An initially attractive contact can then be reassessed factually, and future purchasing does not remain based on an outdated assumption.
Keep the comparison readable for the next review
A short review note records the enquiry group, evaluation date, purchasing, active hours, time rate, won orders and open cases. Add which costs are already included in the job result. Another person can then follow the arithmetic. A stored total without its components offers much less help for future purchasing decisions.
Keep links to actual records and cases too. If a job changes or another order is won, add a new dated version. The earlier interim view can remain identifiable. You can see how the group developed and which information supported each decision at the time. This needs no separate analytics project.
End with exactly one justified next action. Perhaps the purchasing framework stays the same while the team improves site-visit feedback. Or you consider another limited purchase because handling and contribution fit under observed conditions. Figures provide the basis; the responsible person connects them with your real capabilities.
Prepare your next lead order
Compare the current offer with your process on the electrical installation industry page. In the lead order, you choose industry, area, delivery type and monthly cap. Standard enquiries go to at most three providers; exclusive enquiries go to one. The cap does not promise a delivery quantity or replace your internal money and time budget.
You see the current price in the customer portal before placing a binding order. This article’s hypothetical €720 and €50 hourly rate say nothing about that price. Register your electrical business and prepare your lead order if you want additional customer conversations and to assess their development using your own cases.