Last quarter marketing hit their MQL Target but sales didn’t even come close to hitting their goal. What happened? Is Sales dropping the ball or are these marketing leads just worthless?

The CFO is scrutinizing budgets and is looking at the ROI of marketing channels. Paid ads can be directly attributed to those same MQLs, but the Podcast doesn’t show anywhere in the attribution software so it ends up on the chopping block.

These are just two examples of common challenges we see in marketing today. The goal of RevOps is to align sales and marketing (not to mention customer success here) and identify what is actually working to drive revenue and what’s not.

In this article, we’re going to break down how to do that.

How People Buy

In RevOps we want to measure everything. We want a perfectly predictable path from an ad or piece of content to a lead and then to a closed deal. This would make it far easier to measure what’s working and what’s not and optimize our Revenue Engine.

Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple. Think about how we make buying decisions in our own businesses. It’s usually not one thing that influenced our decision. We saw ads for the company months or years ago. We heard about the product from a number of friends in our industry. We saw the brand again at a conference or joined a webinar.

At some point along this journey, we realized we had a burning problem and decided to find a solution. Then we realized we knew of at least one potential solution worth exploring. This is how we’ve always made buying decisions and we get fooled into thinking that technology has changed that.

Yes, SEO replaced the yellow pages, Podcasts have replaced radio spots and influencers have replaced celebrity endorsements. But, we’re still the same human beings making decisions based on a number of influences at the same time.

Our goal in marketing is not, therefore, any different than it was a long time ago. Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase then Retention and Advocacy. That means the job doesn’t stop once a lead is handed off to an Inbound SDR.

Align Goals

The biggest reason we have a misalignment between sales and marketing is goals.

Marketing is given an MQL number to hit and, since their job depends on it, they work pretty hard to hit that target. Unfortunately, the easiest way to generate MQLs is to lower the bar for what constitutes an MQL, usually determined by a Lead Score. Of the various ways to hit that Lead Score, items like white paper downloads tend to be far easier to obtain than a Demo Request, so marketing naturally invests more energy there. We then end up with the largest number of the lowest quality leads possible and very few of them convert.

If marketing and sales simply shared the same goal, to generate actual revenue, there would be a strong incentive to generate leads that have a much higher close rate. Another way to view this is to focus on lead value (expected value in ARR from each lead). It’s not perfect, because it assumes we know the source of each lead and that’s always a debate. You’ll need rules for saying which lead came from where, but once you do Lead Value becomes very helpful.

We should structure our data so as to be able to work backward from Close Deals to determine the value of each lead by the source at each stage in the funnel. If you value each thing by the expected revenue (ARR) it will generate, then it’s apples to apples from there onward.

All Leads are Leads

Some people argue over whether certain teams should be in Sales or Marketing. No matter what anyone says, a Business Development team in Sales can work. The same team in Marketing can work. What I want to tease from this is the truth that like teams, leads generated from all sources are leads and should be tracked as such.

A lead that comes from prospecting is a lead and we should craft a funnel around that. A lead generated from a BDR is a lead and there’s a funnel for that. It’s not just the leads that come from inbound Marketing that matter.

Prospecting is Marketing.

All leads are leads, they should all have an expected value and you should monitor and report on them. It will help with alignment, and it will help you forecast.

Lead Scoring is not a Perfect Science

The scoring methodology you will use is inherently arbitrary. Nowhere does it say that 50 pts for a given activity is the right number. In the beginning, it’s a wild guess.

It’s worth starting somewhere, but constantly revise your formula based on data. Only give points to things that have actual intent behind them – don’t give points for opening an email. Look into tools that apply AI to your funnel and think about replacing a simple 50-point scoring trigger with one that learns as you go.

Ultimately, most MQLs require a follow-up from an SDR. If you compare the conversion rates of MQLs to cold outbound prospecting, they should be at least as high. If not, if it’s harder for an SDR to convert an MQL to a Sales Qualified Opportunity than it is just by making cold calls, then the marketing engine is truly broken.

We’ve made a case for blending both together in an Allbound Sales model for exactly that reason.

Attribution is not a Perfect Science

Speaking of arbitrary, there is no way to predict what the right attribution model is. Really, we can only work by having a lot of data while looking backward. If you have that, run a regression to see what campaigns matter the most.

The “First Touch” method is useful, not as a way of giving credit, but as a way to learn how people enter your CRM. “Last Touch” methods may or may not be helpful at all except as a way to learn how people interact with you before triggering an MQL or Demo Request.

Remember, we subconsciously come to conclusions over time while influenced by multiple factors. We don’t know what is most responsible for a buying decision and it will be different for each person. If you have to do multi-touch attribution, weigh everything equally, but know that’s just an approximation.

This is the kicker for Attribution models. Many of the most impactful parts of your funnel aren’t being tracked. This is particularly true with word of mouth, or with audio recordings like podcasts. There’s also the whole “Dark Funnel” issue. I agree with my friends over at Refine Labs that it’s wise to have a simple field to ask “How did you hear about us?” in your website forms. You’ll be surprised what you find.

Follow Up on Handraisers Faster

One of the biggest reasons leads don’t convert is slow response times or slow “Speed to Lead.”

This often happens because all MQLs are mixed together and routed the same way. A hundred people downloaded a whitepaper and have zero interest in speaking to sales. Meanwhile, one other person requested a demo and is now waiting a day or two to hear back. In that time, they likely reached out to a couple of other competitors, already had a call with one of them, and are well along their path to a decision. The competitor has now set the tone, planted some landmines for other competitors, and will most likely win the deal.

Study after study shows that the first vendor to respond wins the deal the vast majority of the time. Often the prospect won’t even take the call after they’ve spoken with the first 1-2 vendors. They’re busy and no longer have a need to vet one more solution.

This also sets the tone for the way customers view their entire experience with your brand. So, make sure that “Handraisers,” people that actually request to speak to sales, get the fastest response possible. Using tools like Calendly or Chili Piper to allow them to book calls right on your team’s calendar can make this easy for everyone.

Demand Generation Isn’t Demand Capture

As you look to measure the performance of your marketing and deal with the challenges of attribution, it’s extremely important to realize that Demand Generation isn’t Demand Capture.

Demand Capture happens when your prospect already has a demand for your product and you are simply competing to capture their attention and try to beat out the competition. SEO and paid ads are a great way to capture people already looking for a solution and these are much more easily measured with attribution software.

However, you face stiff competition to capture a lead once someone has already gone so far down the path that they are actively searching for solutions. Demand Generation happens when you invest in much longer marketing cycles to educate your target audience through great content and brand building. Things like Podcasts and social media are perfect examples and they are extremely hard to measure. That “How did you hear about us?” field on forms will help, but ultimately it takes longer and it’s harder to measure real Demand Generation.

Either way, once you’ve generated a lead, it’s critical you optimize conversion: Optimized forms, Social Proof, and Routing Technology. A good Website can help with both. My point is simply that these are two different pieces of the Marketing story and everyone needs both. Having a great process for capturing zero demand is worse than the opposite, so start there.

SUMMARY

How should you think about Marketing in 2023:

• Share Goals
• Consider All Leads as Leads
• Understand the weaknesses of MQLs
• Understand the weaknesses of Attribution Models
• Follow up on Handraisers in under a minute
• Have both Demand Generation and Demand Capture