I keep seeing the same revenue leak in every company I work with and it's driving me nuts

★★★ signal-strong r/entrepreneur · ↑ 1421 · 💬 205 · 2025-05-24 · kw: hours every day · open on reddit ↗

Tool

Salesforce, Coda, Notion, Claude

Issue

Companies lose 30-50% of potential revenue by failing to respond to leads within 5 minutes (average response time 23 hours), following up fewer than 7 times, and leaving proposals in email for weeks without follow-up, despite having sufficient lead volume.

Cost

34% revenue increase in 3 months from fixing response time and follow-up alone; unstated in absolute dollars but implied to be material across 40+ companies consulted

Recommendation

Implement fast response systems (sub-5min turnaround), structured multi-touch follow-up sequences (7+ touchpoints), proposal tracking with automated reminders, and basic CRM/document organization tools like Salesforce or Coda; internal employee incentive programs for identifying revenue leaks

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

# Ok this is gonna sound like I'm oversimplifying but hear me out. I've been doing sales consulting for like 8+ years now and I swear, EVERY single company I work with has the same problem. Doesn't matter if they're selling software, professional services, manufacturing stuff, whatever. They're all obsessed with getting more leads when they're literally bleeding money from the leads they already have. Like last year I'm working with this company and the CEO goes "We need more traffic to our website. Our lead gen sucks." So I'm like ok let me just peek at your current process first. Turns out: Average response time to new leads: 23 hours (should be under 5 mins)They follow up twice then give up (most people need 7+ touchpoints)Proposals sit in email for weeks with no follow-up I'm like... dude. You don't need more leads. You need to stop throwing away the ones you have. We fixed their response time and follow-up process. Nothing fancy. Just basic stuff. Revenue went up 34% in 3 months without spending a dime on new lead generation. This happens EVERYWHERE. I've seen it 40+ times now. Everyone wants the shiny new marketing tactic but nobody wants to fix the boring stuff that actually makes money. Here's what I do now: Week 1: Figure out where leads are falling through cracks Week 2-3: Fix the biggest leak (usually response time or follow-up)Week 4: Measure what changed That's it. Not sexy but it works every time. The pattern is always the same: companies are sitting on 30-50% more revenue with their current leads. They just don't realize it because everyone's focused on the top of the funnel. It's like having a bucket with holes in it and trying to fix the problem by pouring water faster. Anyone else seeing this? Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy because it's so obvious but apparently it's not obvious to the people actually running these companies lol What's the dumbest revenue leak you've found? Guys i dont post this to promote myself,trying to provide value. Look at your business from this perspective and you will definitely find that leverage for growth

Top comments (7)

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[score=280] MountainManPlumbing

You're absolutely spot on. I'm running a small plumbing company, and even at my scale, I've noticed this exact issue. Big plumbing firms around me spend thousands chasing new leads but drop the ball on simply following up quickly and clearly with the people already reaching out. I've made it my core strategy to respond fast (often within minutes) and consistently follow through. It's not flashy or complex, but my conversion rates are way higher just from paying attention to these fundamentals. Glad I'm not the only one seeing this sometimes the simplest fixes really are the most powerful!

[score=73] gimmiesnacks

I used to do online marketing for small businesses. Had a roster of like 200-300 clients. Most of my conversations with business owners was them screeching at me about how all of the reported leads were made up by my company. I’d point out that we have call recording turned on for their leads and they’ve got a 5% rate of calls being answered.

[score=85] techhouseliving

Yeah basic shit. I go into a lot of companies as fractional CTO and I find most of them don't have basic document tracking. They throw everything in Google docs and have no way to know what's what. So I usually institute coda (similar to notion) and teach them how to use it with maybe a tutorial, a video or two, and lots of teaching by example since I use it religiously. Not to get fancy but to save a ton of work i attach Claude to coda and have it write pages too, update databases. There is a lot of basic organization that's needed and my attitude is why but, it's not hard, and it feels like since every company is a tech company someone should take it on and it makes it easier for everyone.

[score=28] perceptualmotion

do you have a Bible for this stuff? like a set of benchmarks you can just go through Salesforce with? I feel like this is the issue at my current company.

[score=22] ca_saloni

Unlike consultants, internal employees are a) not paid extra for figuring these issues or b) their ideas get rejected by managers and hence, they are not motivated to find such problems. As a result, these issues are common across companies. If companies promotes monetary or recognition within team for innovations, then, you will find companies not making 'dumb' revenue leaks.

[score=20] InternationalAide498

yep, this is spot on. i’ve worked with business coaches across a bunch of industries, and this exact thing comes up constantly. everyone’s chasing “more leads” when the real win is usually in what happens after the first touch. one of the coaches we work with doubled a client’s (plumber) conversions just by helping them reply faster, follow up more deliberately, and tighten up post-call process. no new leads- just fixed the gaps. Feels like people want the new tactic, but don’t realize the real leverage is usually in the follow - through. rhythm matters way more than reach. Dumbest leak i’ve seen? builder quoting $50K+ jobs without any kind of system to follow up. one text and done. wild.