Knowledge Base

Cost Per Contract

Total marketing spend divided by number of signed contracts. This is the single best measure of whether your marketing machine is working.

Healthy: <$3,000 per contract — Your targeting, outreach, and sales process are working well together. Typical of clients with calibrated BuyBoxes and consistent Feedback Loop submissions.

Warning: $3,000–$5,000 — Room for improvement. Usually one of three things: data targeting needs refinement, lead follow-up is inconsistent, or caller capacity doesn’t match list volume.

Broken: >$5,000 — Multiple factors are likely compounding. Bring this to your next engagement call — don’t wait for the quarter to end.

When cost per contract is elevated, the culprits are predictable. Here’s what we see most often:

Spending on properties outside your buy box — Every dollar spent mailing or calling a property that doesn’t match your criteria is a dollar that didn’t go toward your next deal.

Time wasted on non-serious sellers — Without distress-based scoring, you’re making cold calls blind. The Likely Deal Score exists to solve exactly this.

Lost deals to competitors — Using cheap, widely-distributed data means other investors reached the same seller first.

Missing high-motivation sellers — Generic lists don’t identify the 20% of properties that generate 80% of deals. BuyBox IQ does.

Lead-to-Deal Ratio

How many leads you work to close one deal. This tells you whether your data quality and sales process are converting efficiently.

Healthy cold calling: ~50:1 — 50 leads to close 1 deal. This is the benchmark for a well-tuned operation with good data and consistent follow-up.

If >100:1, something’s broken — You’re working twice as hard for the same result. The culprit is usually poor data targeting, weak follow-up cadence, or a sales process issue (poor qualification or negotiation).

Caller Capacity

This is one of the most common waste points we see. An investor subscribes to 5 counties generating 40,000 properties but only has 2 callers (capacity: 20,000). Half the data goes unused every month.

The fix: Right-size your data volume to your team’s capacity. Your CSM can help you identify which counties to prioritize and which to defer until you scale your team. This is a done-with-you process — your CSM provides the analysis, you make the call.

Assignment Fee Benchmarks (Wholesale)

Healthy: $5K–$25K per deal — You’re reaching motivated sellers with accurate property data. Better targeting correlates directly with higher assignment fees because you’re finding sellers with real distress, not spray-and-pray.

Below $5K consistently — You may be underpricing or targeting properties with thin margins. Review your BuyBox criteria with your CSM — often a small targeting adjustment unlocks higher-value deals.

How BuyBox IQ Moves These Numbers

BuyBox IQ identifies the 20% of properties that generate 80% of revenue. It prioritizes your highest-probability leads based on your deal history, market conditions, and distress signals. The practical effect:

Lower cost per contract — Better targeting means fewer wasted calls and mailers to reach a deal. Clients consistently hitting the 5X ROI target per marketing channel are the ones working high-Final-Score properties first.

Better lead-to-deal ratio — More motivated sellers in your pipeline means a higher conversion rate. The Likely Deal Score (0–100) predicts seller readiness before you spend a dollar on outreach.

Higher assignment fees — Reaching truly distressed properties with accurate valuations lets you negotiate better spreads.

But BuyBox IQ only improves with your data. Submit your Feedback Loop monthly, and it gets smarter. Skip submissions, and it’s optimizing blind. Across $2.1B+ in client-closed deals, the pattern is clear: clients who submit consistently outperform those who don’t.

Track These Monthly

Pull these numbers before every engagement call with your CSM:

1. Total marketing spend this month

2. Number of signed contracts

3. Number of leads worked

4. Average assignment fee (if wholesale)

If you’re above the warning thresholds on any metric, raise it in your next engagement call. Don’t wait for the quarter to end. Your CSM has seen the pattern before and can usually pinpoint the bottleneck in one conversation.