Marketers need to keep track of many metrics, some of which relate directly to sales department success. In order to improve communication and collaboration between sales and marketing at your organization, it’s important to track these metrics:
In today’s multi-touch marketing environment, new leads can often be attributed to multiple sources. In order to collect meaningful lead source data, the marketing department should track a lead’s first and subsequent engagements and create a system for lead attribution. Sources of individual leads can be shared with the sales department in order to help them tailor pitches to each lead’s needs. Marketing can also use the aggregate data to refine marketing techniques and shape future campaigns.
Average revenue per lead tells your team how much each lead is worth. This number can be used as a basis to determine the allowable cost per lead for your marketing efforts. B2B businesses will tend to have a higher average revenue per lead than B2C businesses, but fewer leads.
This metric tells your team whether marketing goals are being met in a cost-effective way. Equally important, measuring cost per lead helps make your marketing more predictable by telling your team how many leads you can aim to acquire for a given investment.
Working with both marketing and sales, determine how your company defines a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL). Some marketing departments are over-eager to send leads to sales, and end up sharing leads too early in the process. Instead, leads should be sent to sales when they have proven to be serious prospects. Track the progression of MQLs to SQLs to understand how well your marketing funnel nurtures leads.
Sales and marketing are most productive and efficient when they work together. Once you’ve started tracking these key metrics, your team can also use them in important conversations with sales. Keep reading our posts this month to learn how to improve communications between marketing and sales.
Photo Credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg via Flickr Creative Commons
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