What Questions a Managing Partner Should Be Asking Their Marketing Leader Every Quarter

Most quarterly marketing reviews at PI firms follow the same script. Marketing brings a slide deck full of lead counts, click-through rates, and conversion percentages. The managing partner nods along. Nobody mentions cost per signed case. Nobody leaves with a clear decision.

The fix isn't better slides. It's better questions — ones that connect marketing activity to financial outcomes and that a capable marketing leader should answer without hesitation.

These are the eight questions every managing partner should ask, and what a complete answer looks like.

Question 1: What Is Our Cost Per Signed Case by Vendor — and How Has It Trended?

This is the single most important financial question in a marketing review. Not cost per lead. Not conversion rate. Cost per signed case — by source, not blended.

A complete answer includes cost per case for each active vendor this quarter, the same number for the prior quarter, and a directional trend. If Vendor A was at $3,800 last quarter and is now at $5,200, you need to know before the next invoice — not after.

If your marketing leader cannot provide this number by vendor — if the answer is a blended average or a reference to what the vendor itself reported — that is the structural gap to close first.

Question 2: Which Vendors Are Above Our Break-Even Cost Per Case?

Break-even cost per case — the maximum acquisition cost at which a case remains profitable — should be a standing benchmark in your firm's financial model. Every active vendor should be measured against it.

A complete answer identifies which vendors are currently above break-even, by how much, and what the remediation plan is. “Vendor D is at $7,400 cost per case against our $5,200 break-even. We've issued a 60-day improvement plan with a $5,500 threshold. If they don't hit it, we exit.”

Vendors above break-even retained without a documented plan are not underperformers on a watch list. They are a capital drain without a financial rationale.

Question 3: What Is the Expected Revenue Value of This Quarter's Signed Cases?

Signed case count is an activity metric. Expected case revenue is a financial metric. Not all cases are worth the same — and a quarter with more cases at lower average value can be less productive than a prior quarter with fewer, higher-value cases.

A complete answer: “We signed 127 cases this quarter. Based on case type distribution and our historical average settlement by type, the expected contingency fee revenue is $892,000. That compares to $1,040,000 last quarter on 118 cases — we signed more cases, but the mix shifted toward lower-severity motor vehicle matters.”

That answer reveals something about lead source quality that raw case count never would.

Question 4: What Did We Learn From Our Worst-Performing Vendor This Quarter?

Every quarter has a worst performer. The question is not whether one exists — it is whether you have the data to identify and address it quickly.

This question tests whether your marketing leader operates from accountability or defensiveness. A confident, data-backed answer sounds like: “Vendor C dropped from 28% conversion to 19% this quarter. We believe the issue is geographic mix — they shifted toward counties where our intake team has lower close rates. We have a meeting scheduled to renegotiate territory terms.”

A defensive answer sounds like: “The leads just haven't been as good.” That signals missing attribution data, not missing effort.

Question 5: Are We Ahead or Behind Our Signed Case Target for the Quarter?

This should be a number, not a narrative. Ahead by how many? If behind, what is the specific plan to close the gap?

A complete answer: “We targeted 135 signed cases. We're at 127 with 18 business days left. At our current pace of 2.1 cases per day, we'll close at approximately 138. We're slightly ahead.”

If your firm doesn't have a signed case target, this question first requires setting one. Revenue goals need upstream operational targets. If you want $1.2M in monthly fee revenue and your average case produces $8,500 in fees, you need 141 signed cases per month. That is the target. Without it, there is nothing to evaluate performance against.

Question 6: What Would You Do With 20% More Budget — and What Return Would We Expect?

This tests whether marketing is managed as an investment or an expense. A marketing leader with a returns model answers immediately and specifically: “We would put $30,000 into Vendor A, which is generating cases at $2,900 each — 94% expected ROI. At that cost per case, an additional $30,000 should produce roughly 10 more signed cases worth approximately $87,000 in expected contingency fees. Payback period: 12 to 18 months given the settlement lag.”

A marketing leader without that model says: “We would test some new channels and see what performs.” That is not an investment rationale. It is a guess.

Question 7: What Is Our Marketing Spend as a Percentage of Expected Case Revenue?

This is your marketing margin — the financial efficiency ratio that measures how much revenue you expect per dollar of acquisition cost. For mid-size PI firms, a healthy target is 15–25% of expected contingency fee revenue allocated to marketing and intake combined.

A complete answer compares this quarter's ratio to prior periods and to your firm's target. If marketing spend is running at 28% of expected revenue and trending upward, that is margin compression — and it warrants a specific response, not just acknowledgment.

Question 8: What Are We Measuring This Quarter That We Weren't Last Year?

This evaluates the trajectory of your marketing measurement capability. Firms improving their financial intelligence add measurement layers over time: case type by source, rejection rate by vendor, expected settlement distribution across channels. Firms that are static have the same visibility they had 12 months ago.

A stagnant measurement environment is a risk indicator, not just a capability gap. Over 80% of PI firms still track marketing ROI manually in spreadsheets. The firms that move beyond that earliest compound the advantage year over year.

What to Do If Your Marketing Leader Cannot Answer These Questions

In most cases, the gap is not the marketing leader's knowledge — it is their data infrastructure. A skilled marketing director without source-level attribution cannot calculate cost per case by vendor, expected revenue per source, or marketing margin. The problem is structural, not personal.

The starting point: every lead entering your system must be tagged with its originating source, and signed cases must be linked back to those leads. Without that foundation, neither the marketing leader nor the managing partner can have the financial conversation firm growth requires.

RevenueScale's financial reporting framework gives managing partners complete answers to every quarterly review question — built for PI firms managing $100K to $750K in monthly spend.