The business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing roles are continuously evolving because of social selling, marketing automation, mobile devices, and more. According to Biznology, today’s sales process takes about 22% longer than 5 years ago. So, how does your business measure the effectiveness of sales and marketing campaigns? Below is a brief list of tips to successfully measure your B2B marketing initiatives:
Know Your Sales Pipeline Calculations
We get calls all the time from businesses that want to increase their sales and revenue. Unfortunately, not all businesses take the time to access their sales pipeline and calculate what it will take to achieve their goals and objectives.
- How many prospects do you need to call to book a meeting?
- How many meetings turn into a quote?
- What’s your quote-to-close ratio?
Knowing this information will give you a sense of your potential budget needed to create the incremental volume necessary while also determining whether or not your goals are realistic. You will also have visibility into phases in the sales pipeline that are under performing.
Capture Progress of the Sales Pipeline
It’s no secret that sales reps hate manually entering data. In fact, 23% of salespeople cite manual data entry as the biggest challenge using their existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system (HubSpot, 2017). Capturing the progress of the sales pipeline in your CRM allows you to measure the impact of each sale or prospective customer’s actions. This will improve the sales forecast or closing ratio. The incentive for your business and the sales reps is to help focus on which actions will generate high revenue and sales. Use marketing automation to work on your sales reps behalf.
Access the Impact Marketing is Having on the Sales Funnel
So, you just want more sales but do you respect the sales funnel? The sales funnel is the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products or services. The goal of your marketing is to have prospects enter the sales process to solve your customer’s problem. Access the impact your marketing is having on moving prospects through the funnel. Your business won’t increase its sales until more prospects move through your sales process.
Create a Measurement Plan for B2B Sales & Marketing Campaigns
A measurement plan is a document that translates your business objectives into metrics that can measure your website’s offline sales. It provides a framework to customize the configuration of your digital analytics and sales funnel. It is a vital part of your digital marketing strategy and will guide you to set realistic expectations. If you can’t get to raw numbers to calculate the metrics, can you really measure it?
Report Only on B2B KPIs That Matter
There are so many reports, dashboards, and analyses , but whichget to the point of your marketing and sales campaigns? Narrow down the metrics to your key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you’re not looking at every metric associated with your business to business (B2B) marketing and sales initiatives – only the ones that matter.
Check out Pipedrive (CRM) to improve your sales & marketing campaign tracking. Already measuring sales and marketing? Let us know your thoughts and add to the list of tips.