Sterling Wealth had good advisers, a strong referral culture, and no idea how many leads they got, what those leads cost, or how many converted. We built the system that answered all three.
lead sources now measured independently, from none
We ask every new client three questions: what's your monthly lead volume, what's your lead-to-client conversion rate, and what's your cost per lead?
Sterling Wealth answered all three the same way. Unsure.
That isn't a criticism of the firm. It's the normal state of a professional services business that grew on relationships. But it makes growth guesswork, and it sat on top of three real problems.
Asked which channels generated the strongest results, the answer was referrals. Asked which channels performed poorly or inconsistently, the answer was also referrals. The firm's best source and its least dependable source were the same thing, and there was no second channel to balance it.
Leads came in through referral, the website and Google Business Profile, and were handled by whoever picked them up. No defined follow-up, no contact cadence, no record of attempts made.
A significant introducer relationship was passing qualified, pre-booked appointments across by hand, with the consistency problems that implies.
Meanwhile the ambition was specific: same-day advice, speed as a differentiator, an armchair service, and better management information. All of which require infrastructure the firm didn't have.
We didn't start with campaigns. Running paid media into a business that can't track a lead just buys expensive anonymity.
A seven-stage lead pipeline, from New Lead through to Closed Lost, with a named owner and a written SLA at every stage. New leads logged same day and called within 24 hours. Five contact attempts across seven days before a lead is marked no-contact.
The design was deliberately reduced from an initial eleven stages to seven. Complexity nobody maintains is worse than a simpler system everybody uses.
Ten sources tracked separately, including paid advertising and social, which were built in before either channel went live so the reporting was ready ahead of the spend. Website enquiries auto-tag through a hidden form field. Nothing depends on someone remembering.
The introducer relationship was wired up so referred contacts land directly at the Appointment Booked stage. Consent status, the consultant who identified the lead, the screener who qualified it, and the qualifying notes all transfer with the record. No human action required.
Most CRMs record that a lead was lost. That's not useful. We split it into two distinct fields: six pre-meeting disqualification reasons, and eleven post-meeting outcomes.
The distinction matters commercially. Pre-meeting losses mean the source or the qualification is wrong. Post-meeting losses mean the meeting is wrong. A high rate of adviser-decision drop-offs after a meeting says qualification isn't filtering hard enough at the front, a problem you can only see if you measure the two separately.
Confirmation email and SMS on booking. Pre-meeting pack five days out with a document checklist. Warm-up call task two days out. Reminder the morning before. No-show sequence within two hours, with rebooked and closed tracked separately so the recovery rate is visible.
Sixteen custom fields, including primary need and approximate asset value. Which means the firm can now see not just how many leads a source produces, but what those leads are worth: the difference between a channel that looks busy and a channel that pays.
Adviser profile pages, service pages, a later-life planning page and a who-we-serve page. A monthly newsletter, LinkedIn training and employee advocacy for a team of advisers who are the brand. Lifecycle campaigns triggered on client events so existing clients generate new business without new spend.
Lead volume, source, conversion and cost are now tracked as a matter of course rather than estimated. Every lead carries a mandatory source, a primary need and an asset value band.
Including two, paid advertising and organic social, built and ready before launch, so those channels start with attribution rather than acquiring it later.
Pre-qualified, pre-booked appointments transferring automatically with consent, referrer chain and qualification notes attached.
Six pre-meeting disqualification reasons and eleven meeting outcomes, replacing a single undifferentiated “lost”, each one pointing at a different fix.
Automated confirmation, pre-meeting preparation, reminders and no-show recovery across email and SMS.
The firm can now evidence which sources produce clients rather than enquiries, the prerequisite for spending on paid media with any confidence.
Tell us what the firm needs more of and we will tell you honestly whether we can help.
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