Where your own Sales & Marketing numbers come from

What this page shows

Sales & Marketing is where Verinode reads how work reaches you and what it costs to win it: how many inquiries come in, how many turn into jobs, what the average job is worth, what you spend to get there, and what you get back for every marketing dollar. Verinode does not run your marketing or decide your ad budget. It reads the leads, jobs, and financials you already have, computes your own numbers the same way every time, and lines them up against operators like you so you can see where you stand and where the room is.

Every number on this page follows one rule: it leads with your own value once your data supports it, falls back to a peer median once a comparable cohort exists, and only falls back further to a published industry figure when neither of those is available yet. Nothing is invented. A number that has nothing behind it yet stays honest about that instead of guessing.

Where to find it

Open Sales & Marketing from the sidebar. The route is /growth. The page header shows the section title with a Send data button beside it, for forwarding lead exports, marketing invoices, or P&L statements straight into the section.

The page is a stack of rows, in this order: the hero panel, Take Action, Pipeline (once leads exist), and Explore. Tapping any tile in Explore, or the Pipeline tile, opens the same swipeable card deck with four tabs across the top: Findings, Pipeline, Getting Leads, and Winning the Work.

The hero panel

At the top of the page is one large number and three smaller ones beside it.

The big number is Average Job Value. Above it, the eyebrow label tells you where the number is coming from:

• "Average Job Value · Your average", once you have enough billed jobs in the trailing year for a stable average.
• "Average Job Value · Peer median", once your own average isn't ready but a peer comparison is.
• "Average Job Value · Industry typical", a published industry figure, when neither your own data nor a peer cohort is available yet.
• Plain "Average Job Value" with no number underneath, when none of the three exist yet.

Three smaller figures sit beside it:

• Close Rate, with the same "Your number / Peer median / Industry typical" logic, as a percentage.
• Cost / Job, your cost per acquired job, same logic, in dollars.
• Lead Volume, a plain count with no peer comparison. It reads your trailing 12 months of received leads, the same window Close Rate and Referral Share use. The sub-label under the count currently reads "This month" rather than describing the trailing-year window; the count itself is the 12-month figure.

Below the headline, a subtext line changes depending on whether any peer comparison exists yet: "How you win work, benchmarked against operators like you" once at least one of Average Job Value, Close Rate, or Cost per Job has a peer figure behind it, or "How you win work. Your peer comparison fills in as more operators your size join" while none of them do yet.

If you have open decisions in this section, a pill reads "N Decision Ready" (or "N Decisions Ready" for more than one), styled in the analyze tone. It only appears once at least one growth decision exists.

Take Action

Below the hero, three things can appear:

• An agent activation tile, to bring the AI Co-COO into this section if you haven't already.
• An unlock tile, for whatever in this section is still gated behind your current plan.
• A row of decision tiles, one per open sales & marketing decision (up to 10), the first shown larger than the rest. Each one is a concrete, personalized recommendation, not a generic tip: tap it to open the drilled-in view with the full argument behind it.

If there are no open decisions yet, the row reads: "No sales & marketing decisions yet. They appear as your data builds and peers contribute."

Pipeline

Once at least one lead has flowed in, a Lead Pipeline tile appears between Take Action and Explore. It shows your trailing-year lead count in large digits, with the word "leads" beside it, and one of two lines underneath:

• "Every inquiry that came in. Tap for the overview.", in the neutral copper accent, when nothing needs a follow-up.
• "N need a follow-up. Tap for the overview.", in Ember Red, when one or more open leads have gone stale.

A lead counts as needing a follow-up when it hasn't converted to a job and either: it's brand new with no first response logged and it's been more than 3 days since it came in, or it's been sitting at Quoted for more than 14 days. Tapping the tile opens the deck on the Pipeline tab.

The Pipeline tab in the deck

This is the at-a-glance funnel summary. It shows your trailing-year lead total, a 4-column grid of New / Quoted / Won / Lost counts, your close rate (won divided by total, rounded to the nearest percent) if any leads have landed, and a line telling you how many open leads need a follow-up (or, if none do, "All open leads are being worked").

A button underneath reads "Work the leads that need attention" when something's stale, or "Open the full pipeline" otherwise, and takes you to the full leads list.

Empty state. With no leads captured at all, the tab reads: "No leads captured yet. Inbound inquiries appear here as your lead sources flow in, then you can work them by stage."

The full pipeline: /growth/leads

Tapping through from the Pipeline tile or tab lands you on the Leads page: every inquiry that has come in, filterable and workable one at a time.

Header. "Leads," with the line "Every inquiry that came in. The ones that need a follow-up are flagged first." Two buttons: Add lead (a manual entry form) and Import CSV (a file picker for a spreadsheet export from wherever you currently track inquiries).

Filter chips, each with a live count: Needs attention, All, New, Quoted, Won, Lost. The list defaults to Needs attention if anything is flagged, otherwise All. Whichever filter you pick, needs-attention leads always sort to the top, then newest received.

Each row shows the contact's name (or the property address if no name was captured), the channel and source underneath it ("Referral · Angi's List," for example), how it's been worked ("Unworked," or "Responded in 40m / 6h / 2d"), the estimated value on the right (an em dash if none was given), and the status with how long ago it came in ("Quoted · 6 days ago"). A lead flagged for attention gets a red rail down the left edge of its row.

Empty states. With zero leads captured anywhere: "Leads will appear here as inquiries flow in from your inbox and imports." With leads on file but none matching the current filter: "No leads match this filter."

Tapping a row opens its detail as an overlay, eyebrow set to the channel, title set to the contact name (or "Lead" with none captured):

1. 1Estimated value and status sit at the top, large.
2. 2Take action buttons appear based on where the lead is: Log first response (a brand-new, unworked lead), Mark quoted, Mark won (opens a picker to link the job it became, with a "Won, no job link" option if you'd rather not), Mark lost (prompts a free-text reason, then Confirm lost), and Reopen (sends it back to New from any other status).
3. 3Contact lists name, phone, email, and property address, whatever was captured; if none of the four exist it reads "No contact details were captured with this inquiry."
4. 4Source lists the channel and, if known, the specific source name.
5. 5Timeline shows how long ago the lead came in, its first-response status, a lost reason if it was marked lost, and "Converted to a job" if it's linked to one.

The Mark won job-link picker matches candidate jobs using the same contact keys Verinode uses across the platform: property address paired with the last name first (jobs don't carry a phone or email, only leads do), falling back to phone, then email, when an address match isn't available.

How a lead's channel gets classified

Whatever you type or import as the source, a raw string like "referred by a plumber" or "Google Ads," gets sorted into one of eight channels: Referral, Repeat customer, Paid search, Paid social, Local Service Ads, Organic / web, Direct, and Carrier program. Verinode checks the text against an ordered set of keyword rules first (repeat-customer phrasing, then carrier or TPA program language, then Local Service Ads, paid search, paid social, referral language including agent, adjuster, word-of-mouth, and directory sites, then organic/web, then direct or walk-in language). Anything that doesn't match one of those rules gets classified by an AI pass instead, so nothing is left unclassified. Referral share, described below, groups the Referral and Repeat customer channels together.

Explore: the six benchmark tiles

Each Explore tile shows your own value once it exists, or the peer median, or a published industry figure, whichever is available, and collapses entirely if none of the three exist. A row of empty "still forming" placeholders would look like a broken product, so Verinode simply doesn't render a tile it has nothing to show.

Under each value, the tile's sub-label tells you the source: "Your number", "Peer median" (with a live count of how many peer operators are behind it printed right there in the tile), or "Industry typical." Tapping any tile opens the deck on the tab that metric belongs to.

Average Job Value

What it is: the average dollar value of jobs you billed in the trailing 12 months, restricted to jobs with a positive billed amount and a billing date inside that window. It needs enough billed jobs in that window before the average is stable enough to show; below that, it stays in a warming-up state. Cluster: Winning the Work. Direction: higher is better.

Close Rate

What it is: won leads divided by leads received, over the trailing 12 months. A lead counts as won if its status is Won or if it's linked to a converted job. It needs a modest volume of leads received in that window before the rate is meaningful; below that, it stays warming up even if a raw lead count is already showing elsewhere on the page. Cluster: Winning the Work. Direction: higher is better.

Marketing % of Revenue

What it is: your marketing spend as a share of revenue, read from your most recent usable profit-and-loss period. Marketing spend here is the sum of three cost categories, digital advertising, broker and referral marketing fees, and association dues, matched against that period's normalized P&L lines. It needs a P&L period with real revenue in it and a sensible length (roughly three weeks to just over a year) before it can compute; shorter, longer, or missing periods stay warming up. This one has no inherent "good" direction, spending more or less isn't automatically right or wrong, so the tile shows a neutral comparison rather than coloring it good or bad. Cluster: Getting Leads.

Cost per Job

What it is: your cost per acquired job (CAC), your annualized marketing spend from that same P&L period divided by the number of billed jobs behind your Average Job Value figure. Because it needs both pieces, the marketing-spend read and the billed-job count, it stays warming up until both are present. Cluster: Getting Leads. Direction: lower is better.

Return on Marketing $

What it is: revenue earned per marketing dollar (ROAS), derived directly from Marketing % of Revenue (100 divided by that percentage). It only computes once Marketing % of Revenue itself has a value greater than zero, so it warms up on the same schedule that metric does. It's shown as a dollar-and-cents ratio rather than a whole dollar figure. Cluster: Getting Leads. Direction: higher is better.

Referral Share

What it is: the share of your trailing-12-month leads that came in through the Referral or Repeat customer channels. It runs on the same lead-volume floor as Close Rate: a modest number of leads received in the window before the share is meaningful. Cluster: Getting Leads. Direction: higher is better.

Speed to Lead

This tile sits alongside the six benchmark metrics but works differently: it's mined directly from your lead timeline rather than pulled from a benchmark cohort. It shows the median number of days between a lead coming in and your first logged response, built from your own in-order received-to-first-response cases. With enough of those cases on file, it also shows a short trend preview and how your pace compares to peers on the same step. Until there's enough of that timeline to mine, it reads: "Log lead responses to map your speed to lead." Tapping it opens the deck on Getting Leads.

Getting Leads and Winning the Work: the deck tabs

Tapping any Explore tile (other than Pipeline) opens the card deck on one of two tabs, grouped by what they're about:

• Getting Leads: Marketing % of Revenue, Cost per Job, Return on Marketing $, Referral Share. Intro line: "What it costs you to bring in work, compared to operators like you. Your own numbers appear as your marketing spend and lead sources flow in."
• Winning the Work: Average Job Value, Close Rate. Intro line: "How often you win the work and what it sells for, compared to operators like you. Your own numbers appear as your leads and won jobs flow in."

If none of the metrics on a tab have a peer figure yet, a line under the intro reads: "The peer cohort is still forming for these metrics. Each one fills in once enough operators like you contribute."

Each metric inside the tab is its own block: the metric's name and one-line plain-English caption on the left, the headline figure and its source label ("Your value," "Peer median · N operators," "Typical · industry," or "Warming up") on the right. Underneath, where there's peer data or your own value to plot, a horizontal bar shows the peer P25, median, and P75 as fixed reference points, with your own value as a dot positioned against that spread, colored to signal whether you're ahead or behind the median (a neutral copper dot when the metric has no inherent good/bad direction). If a published industry figure exists, it's printed underneath as "Typical (industry): [value]."

Findings

The Findings tab is the same drill-down grid used across every section: it lists the growth decisions behind the Take Action row and lets you tap into any one of them for the full argument. It reads from the same decision set, there's nothing additional to configure here.

What decides whether your peer cohort is scoped tightly or broadly

Every peer figure on this page is matched against operators near your size and, for Marketing % of Revenue specifically, your state as well. Your size band comes from the employee count on your operator profile; your state comes from the same place. Until both of those are filled in, Verinode can still show a comparison, it just may only be able to match you at a broader level rather than the tightest one available. Filling in your operator profile (Settings) is what lets these narrow to the closest peer group Verinode can find for you.

Best-practice example

Say Average Job Value shows $8,400 · Peer median, your own average isn't showing yet because you haven't billed enough jobs in the trailing year. Cost per Job and Return on Marketing $ both read "Warming up" because no normalized P&L period has landed. That's a clear next step: forward a recent profit-and-loss statement or connect your accounting system (see connecting your data) so the marketing-spend side of the picture can compute, and keep billing jobs so your own Average Job Value and Close Rate stop leaning on the peer median. Meanwhile, if the Lead Pipeline tile reads red with leads needing a follow-up, work those first from /growth/leads, filtered to Needs attention, since a stale quote sitting past its window is lost revenue whether or not the benchmarks above it have lit up yet.

Related reading

• How Verinode's benchmarks work
• Reading a benchmark
• Benchmarks overview
• The decision workspace
• Understanding your margin
• Clients and carriers
• Forwarding documents
• Connecting your data

Data sources