Inquiry ROI by Source: Which Channels Bring Profitable Deals, Not Just Enquiries

BOTrento Team13 November 20268 min read

Why enquiry volume misleads you

Volume is easy to see, so it becomes the default measure of a channel. But an enquiry is only the start. Between it and the money in your account sit four things that differ by source:

• Win rate: how many enquiries end in an accepted quote.
• Deal size: what the accepted quotes are worth.
• Margin: what is left after delivery costs, discounts and extras.
• Effort: how many hours of quoting, clarifying and chasing each enquiry consumed.

Two channels can send the same number of enquiries and differ completely on all four. If you only count enquiries, you will spend more on the noisy channel and neglect the quiet one that pays.

The formula: profit per enquiry

Keep it simple. For each source, over the same period:

Profit per enquiry = (won deals × average margin per deal − cost of the channel − cost of your time) ÷ number of enquiries

Each part comes from somewhere specific:

You do not need precision. A rough, consistent method applied to every channel beats a perfect one applied to one.

Step by step: build the source report in a spreadsheet

1. Export the last 6–12 months of enquiries

Use a period long enough to include a few closed deals per channel. If your sales cycle is long, go further back. Pull from your shared inbox, Gmail or Outlook, plus any CRM such as HubSpot or Pipedrive.

2. Give every enquiry one source label

Pick a short fixed list: website form, directory, referral, repeat customer, trade show, outbound, other. One label per enquiry, no free text. If the source is unclear, ask in the first reply from now on ("How did you hear about us?").

3. Add the outcome

For each row, mark won, lost, or still open, and add the quote value and the final invoiced value. Keep open deals out of the win rate calculation, or you will understate it.

4. Add an effort estimate

Count the rounds of back-and-forth and estimate time per enquiry. Incomplete requests are the usual hidden cost here; our article on the cost of incomplete enquiries shows how to count those hours in one week.

5. Pivot by source

Build a table with one row per source and these columns: enquiries, win rate, average deal value, average margin, hours spent, channel cost, profit per enquiry. Sort by the last column.

6. Read the gaps

Look for sources where volume rank and profit rank disagree. Those are your decisions: sources to protect, fix or drop.

What to look for in the results

Patterns tend to fall into a few shapes:

• High volume, low profit: often price-led requests. Consider a stricter intake form or a faster, shorter standard reply rather than cutting the channel outright.
• Low volume, high profit: referrals and repeat customers often look like this. Ask what you can do to get more of them.
• High win rate, low margin: you may be winning by discounting. Check whether the source expects a lower price from the start.
• Low win rate, large deals: maybe the channel is fine and your response is too slow or follow-up too thin on bigger quotes.

To dig into price friction inside a channel, see how to spot pricing patterns in your own enquiries. If you want to go from source to a working priority rule, enquiry lead scoring from your own data is the natural next step.

Common mistakes that skew the numbers

• Crediting the last click. A customer who found you through a referral and then searched your name looks like "web". Ask them directly.
• Ignoring your own time. A cheap channel that needs three rounds of clarification per enquiry is not cheap.
• Judging too early. Long sales cycles mean recent enquiries are still open. Compare like with like.
• Mixing deal types. A one-off event and a recurring rental contract should not sit in the same average. Split by type where it matters.
• Dropping a channel from one result. One quarter is a signal, not a verdict. Re-run it before you cut spend.

A caveat: this analysis shows what happened, not what will happen. Use it to decide where to test changes, not to forecast income.

Where BOTrento fits

The hard part of this analysis is rarely the maths. It is the messy history: enquiries scattered across a shared inbox, quotes in attachments and spreadsheets, and follow-ups that depended on someone remembering. BOTrento Chief of Staff is a managed process for enquiries and quotes. It watches enquiries and quotes in your mailbox and in the data you upload, shows you a Today overview each working day morning, and prepares draft replies, quotes and follow-ups in four languages. A person approves everything; nothing is sent without that approval.

Here is how that helps with source reporting:

• You import your history from a CRM or spreadsheet as CSV/XLSX, or connect a mailbox through IMAP, and get an organised picture of what came in and what happened to it.
• At the start of the trial you get a "Lost money" report, which for backward-looking analysis works only for a mailbox connected through IMAP.
• Promises such as "I will get back to you by Friday" are captured and reminded, so follow-up on high-value sources is not left to memory.

To be clear about limits: BOTrento does not replace your CRM or your accounting, and it does not read the content of attachments, only the text of the email. Margin still comes from your invoicing and project costs. AI is included in the plan within a monthly usage limit. You can see a walk-through of the process and the plans, or read how it suits event and production companies, equipment rental and B2B services.

The 14-day trial is free, needs no card and no API key of your own, and starts with your first successful data upload (you have 7 days to prepare). We contact you within 24 hours on working days to help connect your mailbox. We promise no particular revenue result; the point of a trial on your own data is that you check it yourself.

Turn the result into decisions

Once you have the table, pick one action per source for the next quarter:

1. Protect: top profit per enquiry. Reply fastest here and follow up every quote. Our guide to measuring enquiry response time gives you a way to check this.
2. Fix: good volume, weak profit. Change the intake questions, the standard reply or the pricing approach.
3. Test: small but promising. Put a little more effort or budget in and re-measure.
4. Reduce: persistently low profit after a fix. Cut spend or time, not necessarily the channel itself.

For quick wins on the reply side, how to reply to sales enquiries faster and how to stop forgetting quote follow-ups cover the basics without repeating them here. Browse all answers to common questions.