What is a customer worth beyond the first job?
A break-even figure built on one job undervalues any business people come back to. This adds repeat work, retention and referrals, and sets the result against what you pay to acquire someone — without pretending there is a published ratio you should be hitting.
Your numbers
The answer
Lifetime value, in gross profit
$1,776.00
$4,440 of revenue over 4 years
Lifetime revenue
$4,440
3.7 jobs including referrals
Value per year
$444.00
Gross profit, averaged over the life
Arrives after the first job
73%
$1,296.00 of the total
Lifetime value to acquisition cost
5.92×
No published benchmark exists for this ratio
Jobs to pay back acquisition
0.6
$300.00 ÷ $480.00 of profit per job
How this was worked out
- Repeat revenue
- $1,200.00 × 0.6 a year × 4 years = $2,880
- Referral revenue
- 0.3 × $1,200.00 = $360
- Lifetime revenue
- $1,200.00 + $2,880 + $360 = $4,440
- Lifetime value
- $4,440 × 40% = $1,776.00
- Payback
- $300.00 ÷ $480.00 = 0.6 jobs
How sensitive this is to the retention you assume
| Years retained | Lifetime revenue | Lifetime value | Ratio to acquisition cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | $2,280 | $912.00 | 3.04× |
| 2 years | $3,000 | $1,200.00 | 4.00× |
| 3 years | $3,720 | $1,488.00 | 4.96× |
| 5 years | $5,160 | $2,064.00 | 6.88× |
| 8 years | $7,320 | $2,928.00 | 9.76× |
The spread across this table is the reason retention has to be measured rather than assumed. Nothing else on the page moves the answer by as much, and nothing else is as easy to be wrong about.
What to do with this
- A customer is worth $1,776.00 in gross profit over 4 years, from 3.7 jobs including referrals. 73% of that arrives after the first job.
- Against $300.00 to acquire one, that is 5.92×. There is no published ratio you are supposed to hit — the figures in circulation are assertions with no dataset behind them — so read this against your own cash position instead.
- The first job already covers the acquisition cost. That is the position from which a business can raise spend quickly, because growth funds itself inside a month rather than over years.
- Check the retention input against your own records once a year. It is the assumption that silently justifies every other number on this page.
Change anything above and the link in your address bar changes with it, so you can send the exact result to whoever needs to see it. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the whole calculation happens in your browser.
What this does, and how the maths works
What it does
- Adds the first job, the repeat work and the referrals into one revenue figure over the life of a customer, then takes your gross margin off it.
- Divides that by what you pay to acquire a customer, so you get a ratio and a payback period rather than a vanity number.
- Shows how much of the lifetime value arrives after the first job, which is the part a break-even calculation misses entirely.
How to use it
- Enter the value of the first job and how many further jobs the average customer books in a year.
- Enter how many years they stay. Be conservative — most businesses have less retention data than they think, and this input drives the whole result.
- Enter referrals per customer over that life. Count only referrals that became paid work.
- Enter what it costs you to acquire a customer. The cost per booked job calculator produces exactly that figure.
The formula
- Repeat revenue = first job value × repeat jobs per year × years retained
- Referral revenue = referrals per customer × first job value
- Lifetime revenue = first job + repeat revenue + referral revenue
- Lifetime value = lifetime revenue × gross margin
- Payback = acquisition cost ÷ gross profit on the first job
Reading the answer
- If most of the value arrives after year one, your acquisition budget can be larger than a single-job break-even allows — but only if you can survive the cash gap while it arrives.
- The payback figure is the practical one. A business that recovers acquisition cost on the first job can scale spend quickly; one that takes three jobs cannot, however good the lifetime number looks.
- Retention is the input with the most leverage and the least evidence in most businesses. Measure it before you plan on it.
What it cannot tell you
No published lifetime value figure exists for any trade in any market, so every input here is yours and there is no benchmark to compare against. Assumed retention is where this calculation goes wrong: a lifetime value built on four years of loyalty nobody has measured will justify an acquisition budget the business cannot actually afford.
Where every figure on this page came from
Every default in the calculator above is either your own number or a figure from one of the studies below, with the market and the sample stated. Nothing here is an estimate somebody felt was about right, and no United States figure is wearing an Australian label.
This tool cites no third-party figures. Every input is your own, which means the answer is only as good as the numbers you put in — and that nothing here is a benchmark dressed up as a default.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about working with SoudCoh
Have more questions? Let's chat!
Book a Free Strategy CallThe commonly quoted 3:1 does not come from any dataset we could find. It appears on agency and software blogs without a source and has been repeated until it sounds established. We are not going to print it as a target. The ratio that matters is whether the payback period fits your cash position: a business recovering acquisition cost on the first job can grow spend quickly, and one waiting three years cannot, whatever the ratio says.
No primary source publishes one, for any trade, in any market. We went looking and found only assertions. That absence is why every input on this page is yours and why there is no benchmark row in the table — a made-up lifetime value is the single most dangerous invented number in marketing, because it is the one used to justify overspending.
Gross profit. A lifetime value in revenue looks impressive and cannot be spent on anything. This tool shows both, but the figure it puts in the headline is after your gross margin, because that is the money actually available to pay for acquiring the next customer.
Take every customer from a year far enough back that the pattern has played out, and count how many booked again, and how many times. Average across all of them, including the ones who never returned — averaging only over the repeaters is the mistake that turns a 0.4 into a 2.1 and inflates everything downstream.
Yes, if the repeat work is real. The break-even calculator gives you the ceiling on one job; this one gives you the ceiling across the relationship, and for a maintenance-style business the second is considerably higher. The catch is cash: you can only spend against future profit if you can fund the gap while it arrives.
Run these next
One number rarely settles anything on its own. These three answer the questions this one raises.
Break-even ROAS and max cost per lead
Turn job value, gross margin and close rate into the maximum you can pay for an enquiry, the break-even return on ad spend, and how much headroom your current cost per lead leaves.
Your own numbers only — no benchmark used
True cost per booked job
Add management fees, tools and tracking to your media spend, divide by booked jobs rather than leads, and see what is left of the margin after acquisition.
ATO
Contract churn and replacement cost
Work out how many recurring contracts you lose a year, what replacing them costs, and how much of your new business is spent standing still.
SoudCoh case studies
We will read
your real ones.
Send us the account rather than the estimate. We will tell you what it is actually costing to win a job, which part of the chain is leaking, and whether it is worth fixing — before anyone asks you to sign anything.