In the unique business environment we work in today, Sales and Marketing work together to achieve a common goal—sustainable, predictable revenue growth. To get here, Sales has a quota that must be met to contribute to the recurring revenue goal.
But what about Marketing? What is their contribution to revenue? Marketing, like Sales, should be held responsible for their contribution to revenue with a quota that aligns with their processes.
Create a Marketing Quota
Let Marketing jump right in. Make the Marketing team responsible for quotas throughout the entire Sales process. This is the best way to kick start a Marketing quota in your organization.
Marketers should be measured on milestones like conversion of leads to meetings, and conversion of proposals to customers. These numbers are easily identifiable thanks to sales and marketing automation software that tracks deal progression and the lifecycle stage of each prospect.
More importantly, these conversion points measure real milestones in the sales funnel. When leads come in, they are converted to Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) at a point that is defined by both Sales and Marketing. And when they are ready to be turned over to Sales, they become Sales Qualified Leads. It is Marketing’s job to produce the highest quality of leads, not just the highest quantity of leads. These conversion metrics track that number. It is more important to measure how many MQLs convert to SQLs, than how many leads come into the funnel, because the majority of them will be unqualified. The conversion of a MQL to a SQL is a critical success point for Marketing.
Quotas that measure the success of Marketing activities and the generation of qualified leads are important, but only when you can tie them to the contribution to revenue. Depending on company size, quotas will vary. As a generalization, a study by Eloqua and MathMarketing states that 25% of revenue should be generated from leads delivered by Marketing.
In order to accomplish this goal, marketers must know the size of the funnel they are working with. They need to know how big the market pool needs to be in order to generate the amount of leads it takes to convert 25% of them into customers.
In an example from Sales Benchmark Index, they also use 25% as Marketing’s contribution to revenue. They further outline how many leads are required from DemandGen efforts in order to convert 25% of them into customers. This is a vital piece of information for Marketing as they research buyer personas and target the right potential leads.
Ensure Marketing’s Success
A Marketing quota may be new for some organizations. Either way, it can’t be met without collaboration and ongoing teamwork between Sales and Marketing.
Businesses that have achieved Smarketing, the alignment between their Sales and Marketing teams, were significantly more successful than their counterparts:
- Grew 5.4 points faster
- Closed 38% more deals
- Lost 36% fewer customers
Smarketing helps drive the success of the Marketing quota, because it pairs Sales and Marketing on the same team, analyzing the same data, working towards the same goals. When there’s a leak in the pipeline, Sales and Marketing work together to uncover what went wrong by analyzing data about their lead’s engagement activities. Use of sales and marketing automation is key to measuring which campaigns worked, which drove the most leads, what those leads engaged with, etc. Sales and Marketing technology is built to enable Smarketing. And with Smarketing, businesses achieve growth faster than their unaligned counterparts. Therefore, Smarketing is the best investment for your company to meet revenue goals.
To break it down into the most simplistic terms, Marketing and Sales are the pillars of your company’s growth engine. Marketing is just as responsible for contributing to your company’s revenue as Sales. Hold both teams accountable and you will witness unparalleled growth.
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