Do Your Metrics Measure Up?
Behold the corporate research project. Generally commissioned by a single division or function, as soon as others get wind of it they want to put their two cents in and add “just a question or two here or there.” Before you know it, the list is so huge that the cutting starts, and the original reason the research was asked for is lost in a morass of competing agendas.
Those whose jobs it is to measure sales and marketing performance often feel the same way. With a barrage of specialized requests coming from above, below and sideways seemingly every day, it’s easy to forget which metrics are actually worth unearthing and tracking.
If an organization wishes to be successful in tracking and assessing its sales and marketing functions, it should adhere to three guiding principles of measurement:
1. Metrics should either drive action, or be axed
2. Metrics must be measurable
3. Confidence comes from consistency
Peel away the special requests, the pet projects and the wild goose chases, and you’ll find the core set of metrics that we believe are the most impactful in the b-to-b world. These include:
o Reputation - Historically, the job of managing reputation and assessing its impact has been highly manual and highly unreliable. Now, however, there are a growing number of third-party tools and services that allow organizations to bring reputation-building activities largely in-house.
o Demand creation - Five metrics provide a view into an organization’s demand creation funnel, and how marketing has impacted that funnel. They include: inquiries/responses, marketing qualified leads, sales accepted leads, sales qualified leads and closed business.
o Sales optimization/revenue - Between sales expense and revenue lies a series of competencies, activities and opportunity management structures that when in place make sales more productive. A focus on measuring sales productivity in a way that reaches beyond just revenue is highly valuable.
Everyone wants to measure. It’s how we justify the existence of our functions and our requests for additional dollars and bodies, as well as how we validate our strategic approaches. But measuring just for the sake of measurement gets us no closer to achieving any of these goals; it merely fills in the need for charts in our corporate presentations. By focusing on the metrics that truly make a difference – and compiling these metrics in a credible, consistent fashion – we are much more likely to turn even the most skeptical head.
