The Connecting the Funnels Process
How do you actually connect your marketing and sales funnels?
Connecting the Funnels requires a detailed, step-by-step process that takes time out of the traditional routines of sales and marketing teams. For most executives, this is a project that is not done regularly if at all.
Sure, you may see the occasional report about what is happening with the SDR teams (mostly how many meetings are being booked) or marketing teams (how many leads did we get last month) – but knowing how the systems worked is essential to gauge the overall health of the go-to-market functions.
Taking a step back – when was the last time you wrote an outbound email or copy for a Facebook ad? The small details eventually turn into big things, like deals and new customers. Knowing what worked, even in the last few days, will drive pipeline into the next six months or more. Understanding how click through rates and cost per acquisition moves translate into revenue weeks down the road help exceptional teams stay on track and producing at a level needed to grow the business.
The three main inputs in the Connecting the Funnels program are: Data, People, and Metrics. Each taken separately make up a piece of way an audience is transformed into customers. Together they show a larger picture of the way things can either help or hinder the revenue process, and let management know what to change or promote based on real results.
Data
The first step is gathering information from a variety of sources. Take what exists in your CRM, social media platforms, and marketing materials and gather it all together to figure out what is already being done. Are relevant deal notes in Salesforce? Are all the numbers flowing out of your Facebook Ads Manager?
Note that what we look for here is raw data – not summaries, reports, or other things put together for management reporting purposes. Looking at the language in each email in a cadence is as important as the open rate at this point. Collecting images used on LinkedIn seems random now, but when viewed with other similar campaigns means you get a broader view of what is happening on the marketing team.
Key Data Examples:
CRM – What is being added to the CRM from both sales and marketing teams. Does your sales team add relevant information religiously even on smaller deals? Are emails synced automatically? Do leads generated by the marketing team arrive in your system with the proper data including email and phone number if possible?
Email Language – Do your teams use automated emails like SDR cadences or marketing emails through something like HubSpot? Can you track variations, personalization, or strategies based on specific language included in each?
Social Platforms – This relates both to organic posts as well as paid advertising. Do you have a library of what you have used in the past, along with data on each like CPA or impressions?
Marketing Materials – What content comes from marketing, like webinars, eBooks or whitepapers? What does the schedule look like and how does new content compare to existing content from months or years ago that got you to this point?
People
While data can tell a lot of the story, it is missing a lot of the things that went into the development. In this context, data is viewed as the execution of a strategy created by team members through experimentation, experience, and many meetings.
Picture your team sitting in a conference room coming up with new content for a social campaign or a series of emails to be sent to new leads. Lots of white-boarding, tons of bad ideas spit out until one resonates with the group. Many creative thoughts left on the cutting room floor, not seeing the light of day even though they might help drive more business.
Knowing how people come up with things to try and how they interact with each other is essential in understanding the less quantifiable parts of your process. Not only how team members work together, but following the path of a lead as it is handed off between teams. Who says what to another person, if at all, can be the difference between animosity and happiness.
The difficult part of taking stock of how people affect your strategy is getting to each level of the organization. Meetings frequently happen within one or two levels – meaning a CRO meets with his or her direct reports but not often with an SDR or marketing manager. SDRs talk regularly to their coordinating AEs, but not often with the head of marketing (even if they are also on the direct front lines of working with leads). There is not enough time in the day for these types of interactions because each person is doing their job and focused on their own success metrics.
To be clear, this is not at all a way to rate, grade, or analyze people individually. The result is not who is doing better or needs work, it is to determine relationships and know how ideas form and eventually turn into what is sent to a potential customer. Getting feedback and information from each level / team / role at the organization allows a 360-degree view of how things work and what can be done to make things run smoother.
This process does involve talking with your team members about their roles, how they work, what they are measured on, and how they interact with other teams. We have developed questionnaires and surveys to get at the heart of what is happening at that level, and when combined with interviews and conversations will give us a fuller picture of the organization.
Key People Examples:
Sales – CRO, VP of Sales, Director of Sales, AE, SDR
Marketing – CMO, VP of Marketing, Director of Marketing, Platform Heads (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), Marketing Manager, Copywriter (or similar role directly interacting with the systems or creating the ads / webinars / whitepapers)
Communications / PR / Customer Success – if applicable depending on the size of the company
Metrics
Once we have that data and understand what is happening on a personal level, we can look at what is being measured in the organization. What determines success for each role and how do they affect other roles (i.e. leads generated to meetings set to deals closed).
Each action typically has a resulting metric associated with it to help know what is working and what is not working. At a high level, these metrics can be a bellwether for the business and help management keep track of goals. However, by only viewing these summary metrics, management misses the nuance and what goes into the numbers. Give someone a spreadsheet full of numbers and a goal to solve for and they will generally give you that success even if it leaves out some key factors.
It is important to know what is important to your business. Are you purely revenue driven, or do you value other things that go into delivering that revenue. If the question the CEO asks in your weekly meeting is how much have you closed, that answer is always top of mind. If it’s a people-focused CEO, he or she might ask about how the team is doing and what are the dynamics inside a team.
To get a better idea of what is happening inside your company, we will look at what is currently on your “dashboard” – what is being reported to the board, CEO, and other senior level executives. We will also look at what is being reported at the lower levels – from SDR or AE to their managers or from a marketing manager to the VP of marketing. How these move uphill help determine what is the highest priority, and how that can either flow smoothly or break across teams and groups.
At each point in the process we will analyze the metrics at a basic level – are they being hit or not – and then determine if they are in fact giving the right picture to the right audience. For example, is a lead really a lead? Are they all created equally? Should all deals count the same, or is there a weighting factor that should be applied in each salesperson’s pipeline? There may also be things not being shown that could be helpful, patterns unseen because they haven’t been viewed through the right filter or with the right base data.
Key Metrics Examples:
Marketing – Click through rate, cost per acquisition, ROI, impressions, leads
Sales – leads converted, demos set, deals closed, time to deal close
Summary
When Connecting the Funnels, it is important to have all the information necessary to determine what is working and what is not working (i.e. where the funnels disconnect). With the three main points listed above, we can create the full picture of what is happening at your company hiding beneath the surface.
It does take time, but it is not time by you outside your normal business activities. Deals are not being neglected, campaigns are not being pushed to later dates. By coordinating with teams and team members, conversations and questions happen while people are working and doing what matters most to them. Data helps fill in the past, and metrics help understand the trajectory of the company into the future.
What is the result? You will understand what has worked previously along with what is working now and why. You will get a feel for where things are breaking down and can be improved, and you will help optimize the work that is currently happening to focus on better results. Finding one point of improvement in one bit of language in an email or campaign can drive revenue, thereby justifying the work immediately. One fantastically worded cadence email translated into a social media post can help all teams – and by working together the funnels (teams) can get a better appreciation for the work being done because they feel part of the same team.