Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The total cost of acquiring one paying customer - including ad spend, sales rep time, marketing tools, and content. Healthy SaaS CAC is recovered in under 12 months from customer lifetime value (LTV/CAC ratio of 3:1 or better). AI agents reduce CAC primarily by removing sales rep time from low-fit prospects, increasing demo-to-close conversion, and shrinking sales cycle through faster speed-to-lead.