Cost per acquired client
Cost per acquired client is total sales and marketing spend in a period, including the fully-burdened time of whoever sells, divided by the number of new clients signed in that period. Leaving the founder's selling hours out of the numerator is the usual reason an agency believes its acquisition is cheap.
Referral-led agencies tend to report a near-zero figure, which is true of the cash cost and false of the real one. The founder's hours on calls, proposals and follow-up are the acquisition cost, paid in delivery and management time that nobody invoiced.
The number only becomes useful next to payback period and lifetime value. A high cost per client is fine on an account that stays three years, and a low one is a loss on an account that leaves in four months.
Covered in depth
What an agency client acquisition system is, and what it has to contain before it produces pipelineNot sure which of these is capping you?
Six questions, two minutes, and the diagnostic names the one constraint worth working on first.