What does a customer actually cost you to win?
Seven or eight questions, about two minutes. Most owners divide ad spend by customers won and stop there. This adds back the sales pay, commissions, tools, agency fees and discounts that never show up in that one bill, and shows you the gap between the two.
Free, and no card. One question is genuinely hard to know exactly — you'll be offered a range for it rather than a borrowed guess.
Informational only — not audit, attest, legal, tax, or investment advice. This is arithmetic on the figures you enter; it is only as good as they are.
The number you compute today is missing four lines
Divide what you spent on ads by how many customers you won, and you get a number — the one most owners call “cost per customer.” It only counts the money that arrived as a bill with “marketing” written on it. It leaves out the time someone — often the owner — spent actually selling, the commissions paid because a deal closed, the CRM or ad-platform subscriptions kept specifically to sell, any agency or freelancer fee, and every discount given away to get the signature.
None of those show up on the same invoice as the ad spend, so none of them make it into the number most owners already trust. This tool adds them back and shows the fully loaded figure beside the ad-spend-only one, so the gap between the two — usually the most surprising number on the page — is visible rather than assumed away.
It doesn’t tell you the fully loaded number is too high, or that any of these costs should be cut. What a customer is worth to you, and whether that cost is worth paying, is a separate question with its own answer — this just makes sure the question is being asked about the real number.
Frequently asked questions
What is the fully loaded cost per customer?
Ad spend, plus sales pay, commissions, tools, agency fees and discounts given, all divided by how many customers you actually won. Most owners only divide ad spend by customers won — the ad-spend-only figure this tool shows beside the fully loaded one — and that leaves out everything that didn't arrive as a marketing bill.
Why does sales pay get a low/high range instead of a straight question?
Because it's a share of a role, not an invoice — nobody bills you '40% of this month spent selling.' The other four lines (commissions, tools, agency fees, discounts) are ordinarily things you can point to an exact figure for, so they're asked directly and a real $0 is a normal answer. Sales pay is the one genuinely soft input, so skipping it offers a low and a high guess instead of a borrowed number, right where the gap is felt.
Why call out discounts specifically?
Because a discount never arrives as a bill, so it's the easiest of the five to leave out of a mental tally — and it costs exactly as much as a check written for the same amount. If you gave any discounts to close these customers, the tool names the dollar figure so it doesn't stay invisible.
What if I spent nothing on ads?
Then the ad-spend-only figure most owners use is $0 — and the tool says so plainly, because every dollar of your real cost is invisible in that number. Referral- or word-of-mouth-driven businesses still have a fully loaded cost per customer once sales time, tools and discounts are counted.
Why is there no recommendation at the end?
Because there's nothing to choose here — the fully loaded figure is arithmetic, not a decision. Whether it's worth paying depends on what a customer is worth to you, which this tool doesn't ask and won't guess at.
Do I need an account?
No. The fully loaded figure, the ad-spend comparison and the full breakdown are free with no email wall. Signing in only keeps the result so a later run can show you what moved.