How many leads do different sized businesses generate per month? We reviewed Hubspot industry benchmark data to find out.

How Do You Define a Lead?

A lead is anyone who enters your database; typically via subscribing, completing a form on your site, or providing you with their contact information and indication of interest.

How many leads do you generate in a month? And how many should you be receiving in order to achieve your longer-term campaign and revenue goals? The answer will vary from business to business, but it’s wise to compare your results with other similar organisations in your niche to check you’re on track.

Of course, not all leads will contribute to your end goals (if only!), so it’s important to review your lead numbers in line with your average conversion rates. This will allow you to identify whether you’re generating enough leads at the top of the funnel, to qualify enough good-fit MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualified leads) to close enough customers at the bottom of the funnel.

Exploring the Results: Monthly Leads Generated By Company Size

Industry Benchmarks: Leads By Company Size

So what lead volumes are other organisations achieving? According to Hubspot’s Demand Generation Benchmarks Report, based on 900 management level marketers:

Companies with 1-200 employees

Typically 77% of these companies need to generate 1-100 leads per month to reach their target, but this percentage drastically reduces over the spectrum, with only 1% of companies in this category requiring 2,500 - 10,000+ leads.

Companies with 201-500 employees

The largest percentage (31%) of this company size requires 101-500 leads.  Although 22% report a smaller requirement of 1-100 leads, this is followed by a more gradual downward trend, reporting that 4% require >10,000 leads.

Companies with 501 - 1000 employees

29% of companies of this size report that they require between 501-1,000 leads to reach target whilst, at the other end of the spectrum, 7% report that they require 10,000+ leads.

Companies with 1001 - 5000 employees

Typically, 25% of this size of company requires 2,5001-5,000 leads, and follow the trend that only 5% require more than 10,000 leads.  

Companies with 5001+ employees

As you would expect, this size of company requires the greatest number of leads per month, reporting that 22% need >10,000 leads, with an average of 12.6% requiring <10,000 leads per month.

Given that there are caveats in all data (i.e. product/service value, sales and revenue targets) these statistics support the logic that the larger the company (measured by employee numbers) the greater the number of leads required.

Calculating How Many Leads Your Business Needs

The number of leads required will vary from business to business and there are varying factors that will have an influence. For example,

• Annual revenue target. What revenue percentage are the leads your campaign generates, responsible for? This will determine the lead numbers your campaign needs to hit. Some companies may have a number of revenue streams, so it is important that these figures are identified at the outset of any campaign.
• Business size. Bigger businesses tend to have larger revenue targets and, depending on average sales value, this will probably equate to greater required volumes of leads.  
• The length of your sales cycle, When planning any campaign, it is important to be realistic about sales cycle length. Not all leads will convert into customers within your ideal timeframes so you need to recognise how long takes to convert a lead into a customer, and build this into projections.

Once you know the average value of your sales, you can calculate how many customers you need to achieve your revenue target - you may find our free lead-to-revenue ROI calculator useful. Applying average conversion rates, you should then be able to determine the number of leads you need to generate from your marketing campaign to achieve target.