The email arrived on a Tuesday. Polite language, professional formatting, and a message that boiled down to five words: You didn’t get us leads.

Fired. Not for doing bad work. For refusing to flood a client’s phone with garbage calls that look good on a report but rot the business from the inside.

Let me explain.

This client wanted more leads from Google Ads. I get it. Every business owner wants more leads right now. Consumer confidence is dropping, the phone rings less than it did six months ago, and when revenue slows, panic doesn’t knock; it kicks the door in.

So the pressure came: “Get us more leads.”

And honestly? We could have. It’s not hard.

But then what?

Booking and close rates crater. And the actual cost to acquire a paying customer, not a “lead,” a customer, climbs higher than it was before you started.

My old ethics professor, John Hauck, had a favorite answer for questions that seemed simple. You’d ask him something straightforward, and he’d pause, nod, and say, “Yes, but at what cost?”

That’s the question most businesses forget to ask when they start chasing volume.

Can you get more leads? Sure. But at what cost?

A lead is not a customer. A lead is a maybe. And maybe costs real money: ad spend, labor, wasted hours, opportunity cost when your best technician sits in the wrong living room instead of the right one. If the cost to acquire that lead exceeds the profit it produces, you’re not growing. You’re bleeding. You can’t see the wound because the dashboard says the numbers are up.

This is where the digital weasels live.

You know the type. The agency or consultant who knows exactly how to pump your lead count without ever asking if those leads make you money. They juice the numbers because those numbers keep them hired. A hundred leads in the report, and the weasel looks like a genius. Nine of those turn into revenue? By then, they’ve already moved on, or they’re blaming your sales team.

I wasn’t willing to play that game.

So yes, we got fired. I’m not going to say it doesn’t sting. Losing a client hurts, especially when you believe the work was right. I also know what happens when you fill a pipeline with low-intent, high-cost leads. It doesn’t blow up right away. It shows up 3 months later, when the owner reviews the books and wonders why revenue didn’t increase even though the ad reports looked great.

Now, I have to be honest about my part in this, too.

I should have communicated better. When the economy shifts, expectations shift with it. What made sense as a goal in January can feel completely inadequate by April. The target moves, and if you’re not having real conversations about it, not just sending reports, you wake up to a polite email that ends the relationship.

I should have been in that room sooner, saying, “I see the pressure you’re under. Here’s what we can do to push volume up, and here’s the line we shouldn’t cross because crossing it costs you money instead of saving it.” That part is on me, and I own it.

But the principle doesn’t change.

If your marketing partner promises “more leads” without ever mentioning cost per lead, close rate, or revenue per job, that should worry you. They’re not building your business. They’re decorating a spreadsheet.

Here’s something I’d ask you to try. Pull up last month’s ad report. Count the leads. Please now count the jobs that have actually been booked. Divide your total ad spend by the number of booked jobs, not the number of leads. That number, cost per booked job, is the only honest measure of whether your ads are working.

If your agency can’t give you that number, ask yourself why.

Can we help your business generate more leads from Google Ads?

Yes. But at what cost?

Latest posts by Luis and Daniel Castaneda (see all)