MARKETING: When Sales Says They Don't Have Leads?.....Believe Them!

Time and time again, I've come into b2b orgs and one of my first tasks is to rebuild the relationship between sales and marketing. Why? Sales has lost trust in marketing, defining the department as a Black Hole due to the lack of reporting process and alignment with the sales structure. On the marketing side, there's frustration with not receiving the support required to fix the operational infrastructure that prevents them from building and funding programs that align with Sales goals.

How do we fix it?

Marketing has to operationalize their department with scalable and repeatable processes that align with sales.

1. Define Your Attribution

If marketing's KPIs are aligned specifically to first-touch attribution (ie. Top Funnel), it's ok to still run awareness campaigns. However, there should be a clear tracking process to understand where that 'visitor' landed, where they became a 'known Lead/Person'. Once they're known, the Account object should be visible at the Lead level to define the Lead Type. Lead Types include: Net New, part of an Opportunity, or a Customer. The latter two should be routed immediately to the proper sales rep and/or SDR partner.

Monitor the Cost Per Lead (CPL) by Lead Type so you're able to distinguish the cost difference to drive first-touch vs additional Contacts into an Account. Without this, your budget for first-touch gets watered down, and the lead volume is diluted and not distributed effectively to sales.

Tracking ROI on this spend will empower Marketing to change the attribution model based on what channels are driving the best revenue conversions, and where they're converting: Top or Mid-Funnel.

2. Segment Your Revenue Model

Marketing should always be included in the revenue and sales goal setting. I'd say this is the number one gap that's missing in most organizations. Marketing is handed a bucket revenue number and told to drive 50%-90%.

You can get away with this plan if your sales teams are eating out of the same bucket. But it all falls apart the moment companies shift the sales teams to Segment or Territory based structure.

If marketing isn't updated or included in how the revenue goals are broken out across segments and/or territories, then it becomes hard for marketing to build a model that maps to each sales group.

There's no one-size-fits-all in building pipeline for sales teams as the needs, acquisition channels and costs are different.

Example By Segment:

SMB acquisition can become more transactional, with shorter sales cycle and minimal contacts in the Buyer Journey. As a result, the CPLs are lower.

Enterprise acquisition has a longer sales cycle, needs more contacts in the sales cycle, requiring diverse channels, content and programs to engage them. Resulting in a higher CPL.

Example by Territory:

Territories are typically based upon the verticals and more account-based focus.

Northeast territories may focus on Financial Services, where there's often more interest and higher conversion with in-person programs.

West Coast may be more technology, education focused - not interested in in-person as much. Equals more digital content like webinars, thought-leadership reports.

This all has to be taken into account with Marketing to build a budget model based on the needs of the sales team. The process includes: evaluating sales KPI/Quotas by Segment or Territory, defining the attribution percentage, determining the channels to use, reviewing conversion rates, establishing CPLs and reverse engineering Revenue > Lead funnel to say "this is the Lead volume, per month, that we can deliver for each sales group.

Finally, you'll want to track progress in detailed, weekly reporting structure. Implement this and all leads will be accounted for and Marketing will always have advance insight into lead flow and which campaigns are not producing viable leads. Weekly review will allow teams to quickly pivot and move funds around to programs that are producing value.

3. Build Marketing KPIs beyond the MQL

Last, but not least, Marketing KPIs should go beyond the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). This is where a lot of the gaps and breakdown happens between Marketing and Sales, the areas of focus are in two different sections [Top Funnel vs Full Funnel).

MQL criteria should be established and signed off by Sales to ensure Marketing is driving the right audience into the funnel.

Next, the MQL criteria and scoring model should be built into the marketing automation and CRM platforms, with clear communication and rollout to the SDR and Sales teams. Once implemented, MQLs should be monitored and tracked all the way through to Revenue. Often MQL quality is only monitored to the SDR qualification or Pipeline generation. That's a huge loss if 80% of marketing generated pipeline get's disqualified.

Marketing KPIs should always include the following:

1. Leads

2. MQLs

3. SDR Meetings Set

   1. (the SDR workflow is typically lost and should be tracked equally)

4. Sales Accepted Leads (viable Opportunities)

5. Sales Qualified Leads (Opportunities w/ dollar value associated)

6. Closed/Won # and Value

   1. (Avg Deal Size should align with sales numbers. Isn't helpful if sales goals are $50k ADS, but the marketing generated deals are $20k)

Don't forget to track and monitor the Disqualification, Closed/Lost and Conversion rates. Keeping this as part of the reporting structure will allow marketing to track changes in rates and optimize at each stage of the funnel.

I've often seen companies focus solely on closed/won and then later we realized certain marketing channels had a 90% closed/lost or DQ rate. It's easy to ignore when quota is being met. Questions will emerge only when pipeline and revenue dips, and only then it's discovered the budget implemented two quarters previously is now showing their ROI. Sadly, by them it's too late as the pivot typically takes at least a quarter to show results. Earlier, and consistent monitoring will mitigate such losses and allow more efficiency in marketing's ROI.

This collaboration and visibility will quickly strengthen the Sales and Marketing relationship and success for the business, tenfold!