Sales target breakdown: leads and ad budget you need for your profit

A clinic wants $6,000 of profit a month. How many leads that takes and how much to spend on ads is shown by a sales target breakdown. Yet the plan is often calculated as “profit ÷ margin”, forgetting that every client costs money in ads. As a result, the budget is too low, the goal is missed, and traffic is bought at a higher price than it pays back.

A sales target breakdown takes the goal apart from profit to leads and budget. In your account, this is done by the “Business decomposition” section, a sales plan calculator. You enter the profit you want, your economics and your funnel conversions, that is, the shares of people who move on to the next stage. The section instantly calculates how many ad impressions, clicks, leads and sales you need, what budget it takes and what the plan is for each working day. For the clinic in the example, that's 404 leads, 141 payments and $4,040.40 on ads per month.

The calculator comes with your account at no extra cost and is available to all users — you don't need a separate service to calculate your plan.

Watch the two-and-a-half-minute video, and below you'll find the step-by-step guide.

Why businesses need a sales target breakdown

• The owner gets an honest plan: the ad cost of each client is subtracted from the margin. The goal isn't missed because of an underestimated budget.
• The marketer gets limits for bids: the “Break-even cost per click” and the “Break-even lead cost”. Above them, every sale goes into the red.
• A real estate agency uses the “≈ N a day” plan to work out how many people to hire. In the example, that's 45 leads and 18 property viewings a day: at 4 viewings per agent, you need about 5 agents.
• A B2B company sees the most profitable lever in the “What +10% gives” block. In the example, after the cost per click, the biggest saving comes from higher conversion to “Proposal” — $4,500 less budget.
• A salon or car service sees in the “Sales to cover fixed costs” row how many sales go just to rent and salaries. In the salon example, that's 239 sales: the main burden is fixed costs, not ads.

How to calculate a sales plan and ad budget

The “How it is calculated” button in the header opens the formulas. In short, the calculation goes like this:

1. The conversions of the stages after the click are multiplied. This gives the share of clicks that get to payment.
2. The ad cost per client is the cost per click divided by this share.
3. Each sale leaves the margin minus the ad cost per client. The margin is what's left from a sale before ads: the check minus the cost of goods or services.
4. Sales needed = (profit + fixed costs) ÷ this remainder, rounded up.
5. Then the calculation goes up the funnel, and each stage is rounded up. Budget = clicks × cost per click.

The section takes nothing from the CRM or ad accounts — it's a plan, not actual results. The numbers are remembered in this browser, separately for each project, and aren't sent to the server. Colleagues don't see this calculation.

How to fill in the sales plan calculator

1. 1
   Open the section

   The “Leads” menu → “Business decomposition”. The section is open to all users of the account.
2. 2
   Fill in the goal and economics

   In the “Goal and economics” block, enter “Profit per month”, “Average check”, “Margin”, “Fixed costs”, “Cost per click” and “Working days”. The margin can be entered as an amount or a percentage with the “$ / %” switch.
3. 3
   Enter the conversions

   In the “Funnel stages” block, enter percentages: “Clicks” of impressions (that's your ad CTR), “Leads” of clicks, “Payments” of the previous stage.
4. 4
   Add your own stages

   The “Add stage” button inserts a stage before “Payments”: meetings, a webinar, a visit, a proposal. You can have up to six of your own stages.
5. 5
   See the result

   On the right is the “Sales funnel per month” with the “≈ N a day” plan, and below it are the “Revenue”, “Margin”, “Costs” and “Profit” tiles. There's no “Save” button: everything is recalculated as you type.

Unit economics: customer acquisition cost and break-even point

Unit economics means income and costs calculated per client. The “Unit economics” block shows how much each client costs and where the break-even line is:

• “Lead cost (CPL)” — the ad budget per lead, “Customer cost (CAC)” — per sale;
• “Ad spend share of revenue” — the tag is green up to 15%, yellow up to 30% and red above 30%;
• “ROMI” — how much margin on top of the investment each dollar of ads brings back;
• “Break-even cost per click” and “Break-even lead cost” — above them, every sale is at a loss;
• “Sales to cover fixed costs” — the break-even point; it appears if “Fixed costs” is above zero.

What +10% gives

The block recalculates the plan as if one condition got 10% better: a cheaper click, higher stage conversion, more margin or a bigger check. On the right is how much ad budget this saves for the same profit. The most profitable lever is at the top, and it's usually the cost per click. If the conversion of your own stage is next to it, for example “Proposal” or “Attended the webinar”, take a closer look at it. It's often cheaper to raise it with a script, reminders or an automated sales funnel than to haggle over the price of a click.

If “every sale is at a loss”

When the ad cost per client equals or exceeds the margin, a red banner appears: “With these numbers every sale is at a loss”. The section doesn't draw the funnel. Instead, it says what to change: how low the cost per click must go, or what the conversion from click to payment or the margin must become. Any one of these conditions is enough.

Read also: Sales funnel conversion rate: at which stage you lose clients, Marketing ROI tracking: which ads pay off and which drain your budget, Automated sales funnel: how the CRM texts, calls and reminds clients