When was the last time your company took a hard look at the inbound buyer’s journey?
Optimizing the inbound buying experience from marketing to sales creates a better experience for the potential prospect and can dramatically impact performance. This is where strong marketing and sales alignment comes into play.
Historically, marketing focused on generating the lead—this was mainly due to roles and responsibilities. They celebrated when they converted into a lead, and then the lead went off to the SDR/BDR team to work, where marketing wipes their hands clean and hopes for the best. What a partnership, right?
However, there’s a fuzzy line in between where team’s find themselves leaving pipeline on the table with a messy handoff at such a critical point in the buyer’s journey.
At a minimum, all members of the GTM team should know how the lead handoff process operationally works. This will help multiple team members pinpoint where trouble may be creeping up or where there are opportunities for even stronger process and alignment.
Understanding the handoff process starts with a method to framing the conversion path. There are 2 metrics I’d recommend adding to your regular scorecard to manage + measure.
From the work on defining Demand Conversion with the Chili Piper crew came a Demand Conversion Score:
The Demand Conversion Score (DCS) is a composite index that ranges from 1 to 20, reflecting the health of your demand conversion process. A higher score indicates a more efficient pipeline with minimal leakage, where leads are swiftly and effectively transformed into sales opportunities and, eventually, customers.
You can calculate your DCS with the following formula:
This formula factors in both the conversion of leads to qualified opportunities and the conversion of those opportunities to actual sales.
You can use our rubric to measure your DCS success:
DCS: How you’re doing
1 to 5: You’re in trouble—time to bring things back to the drawing board. 5 to 10: You’re at benchmark level, but there’s room for improvement. 10+: Your demand conversion is strong.
And the second way is through Pipeline Velocity.
Pipeline Velocity = (Win rate x ACV x Qualified Opportunities) / Sales cycle length (in days)
As marketers move beyond just sourcing leads and are focusing on adding value, we need better methods for measuring the throughput of leads sourced through the funnel. Pipeline Velocity is a good example of this next-step measurement to embrace — and it also serves as a helpful equation for many use cases outside of optimizing the inbound buying experience.
Why love this equation in this context: There are a lot of different variables with the inputs of the equation that can make a serious impact.
Most of these inputs can be improved at once by making improvements and adjustments to the buying experience by how you’re following up with leads and following them through the funnel.
In particular, the win rate, sales cycle length (one of the biggest levers to impact the velocity equation), and ultimately more qualified opportunities if you have a smoother process for prospects.
You don’t manage what you don’t measure—is bad advice
The truth is, you probably already have a marketing scorecard you’re managing and maintaining. I’m sure half the metrics on there you have to manually copy/paste from various sources. So I want to be clear when I say this, when thinking through how to create visibility and awareness for your inbound conversion journey, you should have metrics, but not death by metrics.
Here’s how I recommend brands think about it. If you’re not familiar with the bowtie method, here’s a TL;DR from MarketingProfs:
The Bow Tie model is depicted below. The left side of the bow tie reflects the conventional marketing and sales funnel. But then, instead of ending with a "closed-won," it goes into a state in which both parties—company and customer—mutually commit to achieving beneficial impact.
The Bow Tie data model covers three critical gaps in the traditional marketing funnel:
In the onboarding stage, aim to achieve the "first impact" the customer seeks.
In the adoption stage, achieve and report the recurrence of "recurring impact."
In the expansion stage, identify where you can expand the "impact" beyond the original scope.
A new take on the bowtie method is represented below. This is what I recommend you measure, and manage. Period. Sure, there will be other leading or lagging indicators that come up, but for demand conversion and especially for leadership visibility, this is what you should focus on.
Serviceable Obtainable Market: An estimate of the portion of revenue within a specific product segment that you’re able to capture
Target Accounts: A subset from the whole list of target accounts the marketing and sales decides to focus on
Accounts Engaged: Accounts that have some awareness, such as following on social media, visiting the website, signing up for the newsletter, attending events, downloading content, responding to sales emails.
Hand Raisers: Marketing qualified accounts that have filled out a form or opened a chat conversation and requested to talk to sales
Qualified Booked Meetings (QBMs): Qualified Accounts that booked a meeting
Qualified Held Meetings (QHMs): Qualified Accounts qualified that completed a meeting
Sales Accepted Accounts: Accounts with an open opportunity
Closed Won Opportunities: The end goal for everyone, right?
Now you’ve got a baseline. Calculate your conversion rates from stage to stage. At this point, don’t get caught up in comparing yourself to average benchmarks.
Benchmarks are just that…benchmarks.
They often lack context, relatable comparisons, and maybe most importantly they look backwards, not forwards.
As any bank or investment firm will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future results 😉
Benchmarks should be a reflection of part of the performance management picture, not the full thing. Context should be provided, always. And benchmarks shouldn’t always be running after what your competitors say they’re getting—make sure you’re benchmarking against yourself, too.
