COMPARE THE MARKETING FUNNEL AND THE SALES FUNNEL
How do you tell if your sales team and marketing effort are working well together?
There’s a simple diagnostic that I’ve come to use. Compare the marketing awareness improvement of lead generation efforts to sales’ funnel trajectory.
If the marketing lead generation is up and the sales bookings are up, the efforts and teams are aligned.
Ideally, the marketing awareness and interest is greater than the sales funnel, which means the marketing team generates more pipeline than sales can close. Marketing sources enough pipeline for sales to hit their numbers. If the marketing is up, and the sales are flat to down, then there’s a disconnect between marketing and sales. This is the most common scenario in startups. There’s a problem with the handoff between marketing and sales.
Some potential causes:
· Marketing focuses efforts on non-prospects.
· Marketing efforts may not be well qualified. Many demand generation marketers need to align themselves better with the sales team to mitigate this.
· The initial marketing pitch resonates, but the product fails to deliver, or the sales team isn’t trained well enough yet to close the customer.
THE TAKEAWAY :
Regardless, if the marketing funnel and sales funnel trend in the same direction, it’s worth spending time to understand the lead source and cost / sales funnel relationship better. The types of lead source can significantly impact your expenses on both Marketing and Sales funnel efficiency.
In addition, when analyzing the ratios of lead generation and sales bookings, it’s worth looking at the share of leads generated by marketing vs. sales. I’ve seen companies with 80% sales sourced leads and others with 80% marketing sourced leads that will impact the individual sales person and organization significantly.
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