How do you identify where leads are falling off and how do you optimize for lead conversion?

It depends a bit on whether you're using a PLG or Sales-Led model.

PLG: Usually, the first sign is that trial leads aren't activating, or not enough inbound leads (demos, trials) are turning into paid customers. These are your red flags.

Sales-Led: Conversions are important here too, but it's trickier. Sometimes it's just the season, sometimes it's lead quality, sometimes it's the process. The best thing is to talk to sales and SDRs. What's happening with the leads? Are they totally wrong for us? Are they just not interested? Listening to sales calls, or gathering notes from tool such as Gong, can help you surface lead/ICP misalignments.

Regarding optimizing for lead conversion:

Basically, you have to ask yourself:

• What kind of leads do we want more of? How do we get them? What content and channels work best?

• What's the best way to get them to convert? Is pushing everyone into a free trial the answer?

• You have to be careful and maintain a critical mindset. You'll always get some bad leads, and the bad leads tend to be more visible than the very good ones. You don't want to stop a campaign just because you have a handful of visible bad leads, you might loose the good one as well.