Looking Back
What Did We Say When?
Traditionally, words are measured qualitatively rather than quantitatively. It’s hard to put the value on a single word sent in an email cadence from an SDR or in LinkedIn ad copy. With email automation and social media metrics it’s getting easier but still not perfect.
Since the buying process is complicated, it’s normal to focus on the day-to-day work of shepherding someone through it as seamlessly as possible. The magic of a one-call close rarely happens, and in more complex, higher-value deals the time can extend into many months. Marketing teams need to be in front of someone across channels and with many touchpoints to even get that person to take the first call or download the recent eBook.
Attribution throws a wrench into metrics as well. Knowing who deserves what (percentage or otherwise) credit for a deal is a case made daily inside sales and marketing teams. Did your eBook so perfectly hit the need of the lead that they would buy no matter the skill of the salesperson? Did the demo blow the person away to the point of immediately signing a contract? Is the feature just rolled out from the product roadmap vital to your lead’s job?
One of the key components of the GTM process is messaging. Understanding what to say when and to whom keeps many managers up at night, fine-tuning and massaging the wording in an email until it’s just right. With one correct email response, a deal can move forward or die. The right description of a feature can bring in hundreds of leads or dry up the funnel to the point of shifting to a completely different strategy.
Interestingly, most of the messaging lives siloed in different systems depending on someone’s role at the company. That perfect email goes from Gmail into a CRM (if the connection is working at that exact moment) and becomes one in a list of many during the course of a deal. The feature description is two scrolls down the FB ad manager screen, hidden in plain sight but without the shiny beacon of “here’s the right answer for the future” shining through.
When, if ever, are these sources of information reviewed? A fleeting moment might be brought up in a meeting to go through wins, but losses are infrequently mentioned and simply thrown away before shared internally. “Yeah, that didn’t really work but check out what we’re doing now” is a refrain heard even by the most quantitative teams.
Here’s the key message for this post – gold is in your CRM, you just need to know how to find it. Like proverbial panning, it takes sifting through all data sources with a knowledge of what to look for and how to extract, present, and implement changes based on what you find.
Ready to do a quick exercise to see just what you can find? Follow these steps below:
Take your last five deals closed by each sales rep. These can be SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, anything that began from a lead and turned that lead into a customer.
Look at all the communication between your team and the customer. Did you describe a feature in a specific way that drew them in? Did you make a change on the contract to speed up the signing?
Go back to the marketing side – what campaign drew them into the system? Did they click the “Request a demo” button organically from somewhere like Google, or did they download a whitepaper released last week? What campaign brought them in, and who else came to your sales team from marketing from that campaign.
Analyze the communication. What were the key themes (overall market, product features, pricing, competitor advantages)?
Analyze the timing. How long did each deal take, and can you identify what caused one deal to close longer than other deals?
Measure how the customer compares to your current ICP. Were they right in the sweet spot, or are they surprising given that they don’t fit your ideas on who will buy?
Summarize the findings. Bring the data to a meeting with involvement from your teams. The teams don’t have to be together, but at least showcase what happened so that if someone is working on something similar (but not yet closed) you can bring the success from the win to the current deal.
Of course, all of this takes time and energy. While your salespeople sell and your marketers market, who is left to undertake this challenge? Is it a valuable use of your time as a manager to look this deeply into your CRM, or to read each of the 20 emails in one deal? Ask yourself if this is important, who would do this on your team?
There is always the next deal, the next campaign. If you only look at CPA on social, email open rates, or closing rates, you’re missing a lot. The data is there if you want to find it, if you believe in learning from what has happened in the past. With newer startups, the process can provide valuable insights to help you scale fast. In more established companies, understanding what got you to this point will allow you to grow wisely without being unrealistic, especially in the current market environment.