A marketer’s job should not end where a salesperson’s job begins. One of the biggest mistakes that B2B marketers make is assuming that their job should end with lead generation. All B2B marketers should be full-cycle marketers, which is to say they should stay engaged with sales and help move leads through each stage of the sales cycle. Generating leads isn’t enough. Marketers should know which efforts are generating calls, leading to conversations, creating opportunities and—most importantly—driving ROI.
Driving Revenue Should Be in Every Marketer’s Job Description
This is just one of seven essential sales dashboards revealed in RingDNA’s latest eBook, 7 Essential Salesforce Dashboards for Predicting and Influencing Inside Sales Success.
This ebook reveals some of the most important metrics that sales managers should be tracking, but it’s equally important for marketing to track how campaigns are actually driving results. When sales performance suffers, it is common at many organizations to play the blame game. Salespeople blame marketers for bad leads and marketers blame salespeople for not closing deals. Having been on both sides of the fence, I understand the desire to want to pass the buck. But instead, marketers and salespeople should be working in tandem to move leads through the sales cycle. Think of dashboards like a treasure map that can lead you to more revenue. By knowing where leads are getting stuck in the sales cycle, marketers can take actions to help more of those deals close.
Here are five vital sales metrics that should appear in virtually any B2B marketing dashboard.
1. Qualified Lead Velocity
This is a great sales and marketing alignment metric, as knowing the number of leads that marketing is handing to sales each month can help identify whether there are enough qualified leads for inbound salespeople to be working. This number should always be increasing! If marketers are unable to deliver increases in qualified leads month over month, than they need to adjust their efforts or invest in new channels in order to drive more leads.
2. Inbound Calls by Campaign
Marketers need to ensure that the phones are lighting up with the right leads and not the wrong ones. Phone leads can be some of the highest quality leads, but only if those leads are qualified. It’s the job of marketers to ensure that campaigns aren’t only causing phones to ring, but that they drive conversations with high quality inbound leads. Knowing how calls correlate with revenue can help marketers assess the ROI of campaigns.
As an example, suppose you have two campaigns:
Campaign A
Number of inbound calls generated: 1000
Overall Revenue Generated from inbound calls: $100K
Campaign B
Number of inbound calls generated: 500
Overall Revenue Generated from inbound calls: $100K
Even though the campaigns generated the same amount of revenue, Campaign B actually provides better ROI because it took up less of your sales team’s time. Knowing this can help marketers invest more in the most efficient efforts.
3. Opportunities by Campaign
If a campaign is driving a lot of calls but not a lot of opportunities, it’s quite possible that Marketing can do a better job of targeting qualified leads. For example, say you’re selling a marketing automation platform for Salesforce users. Your lead profile should be marketers using Salesforce. Therefore, you likely want to avoid campaigns that flood inbound phone lines with leads that don’t have or plan to invest in Salesforce.
4. Closed/Won Deals by Campaign
If a campaign is generating a lot of deals that go to the opportunity stage but aren’t closing, then it means that salespeople could probably use some additional resources to close deals. Marketers can work with salespeople to provide prospects with contextually relevant collateral (slide decks, one-sheets, eBooks, etc.) that can move deals forward.
5. Competitors We Lose To
Examining which competitors you are losing deals to on a regular basis can also help markers pivot their strategy. Salespeople and marketers can work together to craft a narrative of ways that your company exceeds specific competitors. By crafting collateral that shows ways that you can beat various competitors, you can win more of those highly competitive deals.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 5 Sales Metrics Every B2B Marketers Should Know
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