Most PI firms have a marketing performance review. Spend is reviewed, lead volume is discussed, cost per lead by source makes the slide deck. What very few firms have is a separate intake performance review — one that examines the conversion layer between marketing spend and signed cases, pinpoints where leads are being lost, and connects intake operational data to the vendor attribution driving budget decisions.
This is not a redundant meeting. It serves a fundamentally different purpose: holding the intake function accountable to data, not to anecdote. The persistent argument between marketing and intake — “the leads are bad” versus “the team isn't closing them” — does not resolve without a shared data structure and a regular forum built around intake-specific metrics.
This post outlines exactly how to build that review.
Who Should Be in the Room
The intake performance review should include, at minimum:
- Marketing director or equivalent: Brings vendor spend data, lead volume by source, and cost per lead. Connects intake performance data back to marketing budget decisions.
- Intake manager: Brings conversion rate data, rejection data, non-contact rates, and speed-to-lead metrics. Can explain patterns at the specialist level.
- Operations or firm administrator: Brings a pipeline view — how cases are progressing post-signing, where stalls are occurring, and withdrawal rates.
- Attorney (optional but valuable): Provides case quality perspective — are signed cases meeting the firm's criteria? Is the severity mix consistent with expectations?
The managing partner doesn't need to attend every review but should receive a summary. They're the audience for the budget decisions this review generates.
Cadence and Format
Keep reading
Monthly is the right cadence for most PI firms. Weekly is too frequent — patterns need time to emerge and the data is noisy. Quarterly is too slow — problems compound for three months before anyone addresses them.
The review should work from a prepared data package, not a live dashboard exploration. Someone owns building the metrics summary each month — usually the intake manager or a marketing analyst — so the meeting is spent discussing the data, not assembling it.
Plan for 45–60 minutes. If it regularly runs past 90, the scope has expanded beyond what a monthly review can sustain.
The Five-Section Agenda
Section 1 — Volume and Velocity (10 minutes)
Open with the numbers: total leads received this month by source, compared to the prior month and — where available — the same month last year. Flag volume changes immediately. A vendor who delivered 30% fewer leads than contracted deserves a note before you discuss quality.
Include speed-to-lead averages by source. If a source is averaging over 30 minutes to first contact, note it before reviewing that source's conversion data — slow response times inflate apparent non-conversion rates and distort the analysis.
Section 2 — Conversion and Rejection (15 minutes)
This is the core of the review. Walk through:
- Conversion rate by source (signed cases ÷ total leads received)
- Rejection rate by source
- Top 2–3 rejection reason codes by source
- Non-contact rate by source
- Any sources with significant month-over-month shifts in either metric
Don't review every vendor in equal depth. Focus on outliers — sources performing above or below the portfolio average, and sources where the trend has shifted materially since the last review.
A vendor scorecard helps: each source's conversion rate, rejection rate, and non-contact rate side by side, color-coded against a threshold (green/yellow/red). The room immediately sees which vendors deserve discussion and which are within normal range. RevenueScale's intake performance dashboard generates this view automatically each month.
Section 3 — Case Quality (10 minutes)
For firms with case severity tracking, review the severity distribution of signed cases by source. The question is straightforward: is the case mix from each source consistent with prior periods and with the firm's target case profile?
If severity classification isn't in place yet, this section can cover a qualitative update from the intake manager or reviewing attorney — any sources where the case profile felt different in the past 30 days. Less precise, but still a useful directional signal.
Section 4 — Retention and Withdrawals (10 minutes)
Review withdrawal activity in the period. The relevant data:
- Total withdrawals in the period (by case opening cohort, not just current period)
- Withdrawals by lead source, attributed back to the source that generated the original lead
- Withdrawal reasons (client-initiated, case quality issue, non-responsive)
- Any sources with withdrawal rates significantly above the portfolio average
Withdrawal data lags. Cases signed this month won't produce most of their withdrawals until 60–90 days later. Track the 60-day and 90-day withdrawal rates for prior cohorts — not just withdrawals that happened to occur in the current month.
Section 5 — Decisions and Actions (10 minutes)
Every review ends with a decision log. What actions are being taken based on what the data showed? The format: the decision, the owner, the timeline.
Examples of decisions that should come out of these reviews:
- Vendor A's rejection rate has exceeded 40% for two consecutive months. Marketing director to schedule a vendor call with rejection reason data prepared. Decision point at next review.
- Non-contact rate for Vendor C is 31% — double the portfolio average. Intake manager to audit lead entry timing and response workflow for that source before next review.
- Conversion rate for organic search leads has increased from 19% to 27% over the last three months. Marketing director to review Google Ads allocation for a potential increase.
- Withdrawal rate for Vendor B's Q4 cohort is 26% at 90 days — elevated enough to discuss volume reduction. Decision deferred pending one more month of data.
The decision log becomes the first agenda item at the next review. Accountability is built into the cadence itself.
Building the Data Package
The quality of an intake performance review depends almost entirely on the quality of the data package that precedes it.
Use a consistent format month over month. Changing the layout or metrics between reviews destroys the trend comparison that makes the data meaningful. The first two or three reviews are mostly establishing a baseline. The analysis gets richer as trend data accumulates.
Automate wherever possible. If building the data package takes 8 hours of manual collection each month, it will eventually get deprioritized or handed to someone without the context to do it well. The goal is a package assembled in under 2 hours — ideally triggered automatically from your intake platform and CRM. Native CRM integrations make this possible without custom engineering.
Flag anomalies before the meeting. If someone has reviewed the data in advance and highlighted the three most notable patterns, the meeting is spent on implications and decisions — not on discovering the data for the first time.
| Metric | Vendor A | Vendor B | Vendor C | Vendor D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leads Received | 142 | 98 | 210 | 75 | |
| Conversion Rate | 18% | 14% | 9% | 22% | |
| Rejection Rate | 15% | 22% | 38% | 12% | |
| Non-Contact Rate | 11% | 16% | 31% | 9% | |
| Avg Speed-to-Lead | 8 min | 12 min | 22 min | 6 min | |
| Status | On Track | Watch | Over Threshold | On Track |
What Changes After 6 Months of Consistent Reviews
Six months of consistent intake performance reviews produce compounding benefits that no single review can deliver.
Vendor patterns become legible. You can see which sources have been consistently above or below threshold across multiple metrics — not just in a single month. That makes vendor decisions significantly more defensible to partners, to vendors, and to yourself.
Intake improvements become measurable. A process change made in Month 3 — a new response protocol for a specific source, retraining specialists on rejection reason codes — shows up in the data from Month 4 onward. You can see what worked.
Marketing and intake develop a shared vocabulary. The argument about lead quality resolves into a more productive conversation when both teams are looking at the same data, measured the same way, on the same cadence. That shared visibility is what actually changes the quality of the collaboration.
Related guide: See our complete guide to PI intake performance — the 8 metrics every PI firm should track, benchmarks, and how to connect intake data to marketing attribution.