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The Lead-Gen Vendor Audit Checklist: 20 questions to ask.

Twenty questions to ask whoever runs your ads, your lead generation or your appointment setting, grouped into the four places the problem shows up: what they report, what they are paid to do, what they actually own in your growth, and how they behave when things break. For each one, what a good answer sounds like and what a red flag sounds like.

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A vendor paid to deliver leads reports leads. The numbers that decide whether your ads work, booked, attended, qualified and closed, live in your calendar and your CRM, and the vendor's contract usually stops one stage before them. So both sides settle on cost per lead, because it is the only number the contract can defend and the platform can produce. That argument is written out in The Lead Vendor Incentive Problem. This page turns it into something you can use on the next vendor call.

How to score it: check the box when the answer you get, or the answer you already know, sounds like the red flag. Book thirty minutes with the vendor, or just pull up the last three monthly reports; for most of these you already know the answer. One red flag is a conversation. A pattern is a diagnosis. And to be fair to the people involved: most of what this surfaces is not bad people. It is the model working exactly as designed.

Want the quicker read first? The 9-signal fire-your-vendor test takes a few minutes.

Part 1 of 4

Reporting and numbers

Whether the numbers you get describe your business, or the inside of an ad account.

1. Do they report booked and attended appointments, or leads?Good answer: leads, booked, attended, qualified and closed, split by source, every month without being asked.Red flag: a lead count and a cost per lead, and "what happens after that is up to your sales team."

2. Where do the numbers in the monthly report actually come from?Good answer: your CRM and your calendar, reconciled against the platform, with the gap explained.Red flag: screenshots of Ads Manager. The platform grades its own homework and the report passes it along.

3. Can they tell you last month's show rate?Good answer: the number, by source, and whether it moved from the month before.Red flag: a pause, then "we don't control what happens after the lead comes in."

4. Do they know what an attended appointment is worth to you?Good answer: they asked for your revenue per client, margin, close rate and show rate in the first month, and the cost target is built from them.Red flag: the target is a cost per lead borrowed from another account, which is a number without a unit.

5. When their report and your calendar disagree, what happens?Good answer: the calendar and the CRM are treated as ground truth and the gap gets investigated until it is explained.Red flag: the dashboard gets defended, and the calendar is dismissed as "attribution being hard."

Part 2 of 4

Incentives and ownership

Not what they charge. What the agreement measures, what you own, and which direction their advice can point.

6. Which number does your agreement define success on?Good answer: a number you can verify in your own calendar and CRM: attended appointments, qualified appointments, cost per attended appointment against a target.Red flag: leads delivered, or a platform result. Numbers that live inside tools the vendor and the platform control.

7. Who owns the ad account, the pixel, the landing page, the CRM and the booking calendar, and what do you keep if you leave tomorrow?Good answer: everything is yours: the account, the tracking, the pages, the contacts, the calendar and the history. Leaving costs you nothing but the relationship.Red flag: any of it sits in their Business Manager, their CRM or their booking tool "for convenience." Leaving means starting over.

8. Have they ever recommended you cut or pause spend?Good answer: yes, and they can name the month and the reason.Red flag: never. In the entire relationship, the answer has always been more budget.

9. When the problem lives outside the ad account, in the offer, the follow-up speed or the sales conversation, do they say so?Good answer: they have flagged problems they do not get paid to fix, by name, in writing.Red flag: everything gets solved with a new campaign, because that is the only lever they hold.

10. When they propose a budget increase, what is it based on?Good answer: cost per attended appointment against your allowable, and how much open capacity the calendar has left.Red flag: "cost per lead is down, so there's room." The cheapest leads are usually the ones that never book.

Part 3 of 4

Strategy and ownership

Whether there is a diagnosis behind the activity, and whether you would keep anything if they left.

11. Can they name the single stage where your route loses the most?Good answer: a specific call, offer, creative, booking path, follow-up, show rate or qualification, with the number that points to it.Red flag: "we need to test more creative," for the third quarter in a row.

12. What changed in their plan after your last flat month?Good answer: a diagnosis and a different plan you can compare against the old one.Red flag: nothing. The flat month was seasonality, the algorithm or a platform change, and the plan rolled forward untouched.

13. If the vendor disappeared tomorrow, could your team run the follow-up, the booking path and the reporting they built?Good answer: everything lives in your accounts, and your team could operate it by Friday.Red flag: the automations and the reporting exist as their logins and their slide deck.

14. Do they know how fast your team follows up a new lead, and do they measure it?Good answer: yes, in minutes, by hour of day, and it is in the report, because the first hour decides most of the booking rate.Red flag: they have never asked. The lead is delivered; what happens next is your problem.

15. What is the plan beyond "more of what's working"?Good answer: a sequence: what gets fixed next, why, and which number will prove it worked.Red flag: scaling means duplicating campaigns and raising budgets until it stops working.

Part 4 of 4

Communication and accountability

How they behave when things break, the part no proposal ever shows you.

16. When performance breaks, who tells whom?Good answer: they flag the bad week before you see it, with a cause and a fix already moving.Red flag: you find the empty calendar and open the conversation yourself.

17. Can the person actually running your account explain the strategy?Good answer: the operator on your account can defend every decision in it.Red flag: strategy lives with the person who sold you, the one you have not seen since the contract.

18. Ask what didn't work last month. What comes back?Good answer: a straight list of failed tests and what each one taught them.Red flag: a highlight reel. Somehow, nothing has ever failed.

19. Do action items from your calls get done without you chasing?Good answer: promised, then delivered or flagged, in writing, before the next call.Red flag: you keep a private list of things you have now asked for twice.

20. Do they put recommendations in writing before the results are in?Good answer: a written call with an expected outcome you can check later, right or wrong, on the record.Red flag: the story arrives after the numbers do, and it always fits.

The verdict

0 of 20 red flags checked

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The next step

You could ask your vendor 20 questions. Or ask for the route that answers them.

The checklist tells you whether the vendor's answers hold up. Tran Growth Partners builds and operates the whole route after the click as one system, reported on the numbers in your calendar and CRM. One short application, one direct conversation with the founder. No sales team, no webinar.

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