Leadership Lens: July Webinar Recap

Top 10 Reports Sales Wants to See From Marketing

We recently held a webinar focused on the top 10 reports that Sales expects from Marketing. We were joined by a panel of two experts, Neal Latman, Enterprise AE from Oktopost and John Leonti, Marketing Operations Director and Consultant.

Wait?! Did you say Sales AND Marketing on the sale webinar?! What kind of donnybrook ensued?

Stay calm! The was no sales and marketing fight. In fact, during our time, we had unprecedented levels of agreement on the importance of 10 reports that help to drive understanding, connection, and ultimately revenue.

A Few Key points From Our Discussion:

Lead Source Report

- - - Key to help sales understand how to do better outbound calling. When reps know what target prospects respond to, the rep can then use that in their outreach efforts. Seems so simple, but even this kind of report, along with the right explanation makes for meaningful change on the sales team.
    - Should not be used for “credit” or “ownership” purposes. It is a good indicator of activity and what is attractive to prospects.

Conversion Rate Report

- - - Informs what leads convert and helps to define “sales ready” as well as “good leads.”
    - The key to success in this report is for Sales and Marketing to work together to define “sales ready” and “good leads.” These definitions differ based on which team you talk to, so it is important to get the teams in a room to hammer out the definitions.

Attribution Report

- - - Critical for understanding what marketing actions perform well. “Perform well” means what actions drive pipeline and close deals.
    - It is possible to get VERY granular with this type of report. But, what is most important to start with is a directional report and drill into the layers when questions arise. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by all the data that is possible to gather.

Sales Funnel Report and Pipeline

- - - This is the most basic diagnostic tool for Sales and Marketing. The key here is honesty is reporting and discussion. The second one team begins to fudge numbers, the whole thing falls apart, which is why it is critical that Sales AND Marketing are both involved in developing the funnel report.
    - The biggest challenge is creating the overall organizational funnel. Sometimes leads are truly developed by Sales and they start at a different stage of the funnel, this can make your funnel seem misshappen. This often calls into question the accuracy of the funnel overall. It is oftentimes best to look at funnels by teams, cohorts, or campaigns, too which will drive complimentary insights.

Lead Nurturing Report

- - - This report, while mostly used by Marketing is important for Sales because, “What is working for Marketing can work for Sales.” When leads convert on a nurture campaign, Marketing needs to arm Sales with the same materials to drive outreach.
    - This also helps Marketing and Sales understand where leads are in the customer journey – nurture streams should be aligned with the overall customer journey facilitating this insight.

Campaign Performance Report

- - - This report is truly another level of the previously mentioned Attribution Report. It can be useful to help both teams understand the impact of specific campaign groups such as “paid advertising” or “events.”

Closed-Won and Lost Opportunities Report

- - - During our audience poll, no one chose this report as important for Marketing to share with Sales. In fairness, this is through of more as a Sales report in the first place, but none of the CMOs or Marketing Ops attendees identified this an an important report – Surprising to us all.
    - This type of report is useful for both Sales and Marketing answering questions such as, Why do we win? How can we prevent losses? and Do our pipeline opportunities meet our ICP? A great tool for helping both teams get better.

Customer Journey Analysis

- - - The most important comment made about this report is that done well, the customer journey report can tell us WHEN in the journey a prospect is ready for WHAT campaign. These insights map of your prospects activity and are key to future success.

Velocity and Sales Cycle Length Report

- - - Time kills all deals! Without a velocity report, we don’t know how long it takes a prospect to become a customer and where the critical drop off exists.
    - This report bring reality to the pipeline. For example, if your company is going to miss the forecast, oftentimes the conversation turns to What can we do now to drive a deal? With accurate velocity reporting, Marketing and Sales understand what is possible based on the sales cycle.

Sales Forecast and Customer Acquisition Cost Reports

- - - At the leadership level, this report is critical and best reported on by the Finance team. But, it is also a perfect connection point for all the go-to-market teams to understand the dynamics of selling, signing, and servicing a customer.
    - Understand and agree on a definition before generating this report.

By the end of the webinar, we agreed that it is never too late to start tracking these types of reports. And, while the attribution report and the customer journey report might be the most complex reports to create, their value far outweighs the effort. In fact, the value of all 10 reports far outweigh the effort to produce them, so get excited and get started!

» Watch the webinar for yourself here: Top 10 Reports Sales Wants to See From Marketing