Emilio GarciaManaging Partner, Boundify · Demand Gen Advisor

The Cost of a Lead in B2B

23 Jan 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:15

In this short video, Emilio Garcia contrasts B2C and B2B lead follow‑up processes. He explains that B2C follow‑up is almost cost‑free because it is fully automated through SMS, email, and other system‑driven touches. In B2B, however, a lead is typically handed to a human for qualification, making the follow‑up cost much higher due to the time investment of salespeople. Because of this, B2B teams must be far stricter about which leads are passed to sales. Garcia emphasizes the need to infer buyer intent early, filter out “tire‑kickers” who only ask for price or ask questions that could be answered on the website, and only forward leads that are a good fit. The overall message is that effective lead screening and intent inference are essential to control the high cost of B2B lead follow‑up.

Chapters

The cost of following up on someone of B2C is almost zero from a sales perspective because usually there are no humans behind it. There are just systems. You send an SMS, you send an email, you follow up on automatically. But in B2B, because of the nature of the purchase, the moment that you get a lead, you assign usually a human for qualification. And the cost of following the sales process, and then that person not being qualified is high because you invest the time of people. So the other big difference is that you are way more strict on the, the persons that you're gonna pass along to sales. And therefore you have this interesting dance between, well, I wanna send you opportunities or inquiries, but at the same time I wanna make sure that one, they're the right fit. And two, as much as possible, that we can infer intent and not just tire kickers that are asking for price, or to put an example, a question that could be have answer on the website itself rather than sending it to a person for to follow up on a sales process.