Reaching your B2B KPIs without getting lost

With many of us hitting the road for holiday road trips, we’re reminded of those eternal truths passed down by word and deed over generations:

If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.

For B2B marketers, summer means that you’re far down the road in executing your annual marketing plan and starting to compare results to performance targets. What’s the best way to keep your plan headed in the right direction? If, like many marketers, you haven’t fully planned around KPIs, let’s take a step back to adjust in-route. Then, let’s apply our wisdom by turning to your teammates and to your data: continually adjusting your plans, and doing so using those specific, agreed-upon KPIs.

Here’s how.

Step 1: Build an integrated conversion funnel (mapping the journey).

First thing first: this process requires that you bring marketing and sales together if you have not already done so. Every B2B business establishes sales pipeline targets and you surely have marketing conversion goals. Just don’t overcomplicate it. The key is to build a continuous marketing-through-sales funnel with shared definitions and (measurable)conversion assumptions at each phase. If you’ve already gone through this exercise in your strategic planning, feel free to move to step three (with our admiration).

For each major conversion point:

Agree on vocabulary and definitions (hint: for better results, you can find many commonly used conversion benchmarks online).
Get representatives from sales and marketing in a room.
Hammer out an end-to-end funnel.
Set up conversion metrics that everyone agrees with.

Share this article

Don’t let your sales and marketing team leave the room just yet. You’ll need to make sure that these targets actually make sense in the real world. For instance …

Target = Wicker basket manufacturers

Phase

Definition

Conversion rate

Suspect

Someone who is known to sales but has not been contacted, or who has visited our site or viewed some social content but is otherwise a stranger.

10%

Prospect

A suspect (either a decision-maker or influencer) who we know works at a company relevant to what we sell

10%

Lead

A prospect who, based on an agreed-upon level of engagement with marketing content, has been passed on to sales and qualified as having enough potential to convert into the pipeline.

10%

Opportunity

A lead that has been pitched by sales and converted into the opportunity pipeline to close.

10%

Closed-won

A opportunity that has been successfully closed.

10%

Average deal size

$1,000,000

This example uses a common model but can be adjusted to whatever steps make sense for your organization. Just remember: the more steps in your model, the more chances to be wrong in your assumptions. Conversion percentages of 10% were used for ease of calculation.

Step 2: Reality check — populate your model and test.

2017 Sales target = $10.000.000
Average deal size = $1,000,000
Closed-won target = 10
Required opportunities in pipeline (10% conversion) = 100
Required leads in pipeline (10% conversion) = 1,000
Required prospects in pipeline (10% conversion) =10,000
Required suspects in pipeline (10% conversion) =100,000

Whoops.

Without the gut check phase, lots of bad things can and do happen at the tactical levels of both sales and marketing down the road. Remember: if you have the time, use it.

Step 3: Review performance, identify shortfalls and develop a hypothesis.

Demand generation in B2B requires us to humbly embrace and even welcome failure. Once some time has passed, reassemble the marketing and sales working group. And then keep doing it. Look at your pipeline at regular intervals while keeping some things in mind:

• Which conversion assumptions are not being met?

• Do we need to loosen or tighten criteria? Or adjust our definitions?

• Do we need to focus on bolstering one part of the funnel — say, top of funnel suspects, mid-funnel leads, etc.?

• If so, what tactics might we add or change?

Time and time again, we’ve found that bringing sales and marketing together to build shared pipeline models, and then keeping them in lockstep with each other as time progresses, leads to repeatable, realistic demand generation strategies with results that draw cheers from the C-Suite.

Need help pulling this off? Sales and marketing integration consulting is a core part of our business. Let’s talk.

let's talk

Contact us .

Ten tips for success as a digital marketer

Digital Marketing

Julia Parisot
VP Growth

julia.parisot@brandactionagency.com
312-985-7247

Get a free marketing analysis

Follow our thoughts

Privacy notice

BrandAction Agency
1 E Erie St Suite 525-2297
Chicago, IL 60611
312-584-9037

Partner with us