Diagnosing the top of funnel (Part 3)
10 questions to get you on your merry way
First of all thank you everyone who joined the Marketing QBR HeRO (Head of RevOps) Hour last week. I’d like to wrap up the top of funnel diagnostic thread we’ve been pulling over the last few weeks.
But first, a word from our sponsors.
Lead routing shouldn’t be a full-time job. Changing rules, like rep OOO or reassigning territories, should be quick and easy. Set up all your lead routing rules in hours, not days. Leave the lead routing and distribution to Chili Piper’s Distro so you can focus on your customers. Get a 14-day free trial.
Tired of forecasting in spreadsheets? RevOps teams use Weflow to run an efficient and data-driven forecast process, synced with Salesforce. Submit calls deal-by-deal, automate roll-ups, and track week-over-week changes to forecast within 10%. Uncover forecast accuracy for each rep and see how you're pacing against your revenue goal with one click. Get a 10% discount - just mention "Jeff" when booking a demo.
[Covered last week] What is your lead SLA? How much time does it take for the team to follow up with a lead after notification?[Covered last week] How does your team reach out? Do they call? Do they send a personalized email? Or is it an auto step? Do they connect on LinkedIn?[Covered last week] How is the team notified? Slack? Email? CRM notification?[Covered last week] Is the lead scored? What's the rating of the lead? Do you use the term "MQL" to indicate it's a sales-ready lead?What factors go into your lead score? Behavioral component? Firmographic/persona component? Can you show the breakdown?When was the last time the lead score and its components were regressed against actual conversion data? When was the last time the score was refreshed?If you have too much lead volume the likely culprit may be too low of a lead score as opposed to too little sales capacityDo you have a decay component in your lead score? Lead scores have a bad habit of astronomically high scores if you do not have decay or negative component scores. Tire kickers and ebook addicts especially
What sources and mediums do you source the leads from? What's the offer and the call to action?
Segment your assets and offers into intent bands of low, medium, and high. Anything outside high might be better served moving into a nurture track
Do you have a decay component in your lead score? Lead scores have a bad habit of astronomically high scores if you do not have decay or negative component scores. Tire kickers and ebook addicts especially
Sometimes we can learn a ton from other disciplines. Take chemistry for example. The concept of a half life is poignant for inbound leads.
Half-life (symbol t½) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value.
Now imagine you’re a company that sells to the Revenue Operations persona (yay us for receiving so many prospecting emails!). Two things just happened.
A Director of Revenue Operations at a 150 person SaaS startup just filled out the demo form.
Your Intent data reporting package says that three unique visitors from said company visited your Pricing page.
As a Sales leader you’re automatically thinking…
But something is wrong. Or several things could be wrong.
Your Pardot/Hubspot/Marketo sync is OFF (OH NO!!!!) to Salesforce. The lead is stuck in ‘interval sync’ purgatory
The lead score misidentifies the lead and does not score it as an MQL. The lead is filed in the dustbin.
The lead is routed to a brand new SDR who knows JACKSH*T about your business and botches the initial call
Why is the lead that is this hot even routing directly to an SDR anyway?
The lead is routed and notified properly but the sales team doesn’t follow up
Sales Operations doesn’t bother looking at Lead SLAs to enforce good behavior
All of the above can cause top of funnel nuclear meltdown.
Let’s revisit that half-life definition. Half-life (symbol t½) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. It works so well for lead follow ups doesn’t it?
How many times have you ever walked into a store and plucked something off the shelf thinking that you need something. You walked all around the store with the item in your shopping cart. Once you pull up to cash register you scan your basket of goods and realize that you no longer need it. You figured out a workaround or figured it’s just not the right time for it. So you take the item out and plop it on the nearest shelf.
Oh if you were a retail employee and could see all of the most common goods left on those almost purchased goods.
That’s what happens with leads. But it’s even worse. I once rain an analysis for a client and the drop off is exponential.
5 to 15 minutes: as good as it gets for conversion
16 to 30 minutes: that prospect is in another meeting but you’re likely still on their mind
31 to 60 minutes: still in a meeting but there’s now space to think that the issue isn’t that important
1 hour to same day: busy and less likely to convert
Next day: still busy and even less likely to convert
Two days later: now you’re back in cold lead territory
Three days or later: forget about it. DEAD LEAD
Charting it might look something like this.
Speed to lead matters.
But so does your lead score. Without building a “decay” component a lead score remains artificially high. Seeing lead scores pile up to several hundreds is a clear indicator no decay component is baked in.
Leads are like perishables in your fridge. THEY PERISH!
One simple fix is to add a decay component to your lead score. For example in Hubspot you can build something like this out. If someone has visited a particular URL it will receive 1 point but that point will go away on the 90th day.
I suggest you check out Todd Sprinkel’s recent article on How to Create Custom HubSpot Behavior & Demographic Lead Scores.
What sources and mediums do you source the leads from? What's the offer and the call to action?
Get organized. Set up your campaign nomenclature so that you can properly attribute the most recent actions leads have taken. One simple thing you can put together is a workflow diagram of web visitors and the UTMs. If you don’t have one of these set up I highly suggest you put one together.
By the way. I’m going fractional soon and if you want to do a paid audit for top of funnel or any of your sales processes feel free to reach out!
Correctly tagging UTM sources and mediums helps in several ways:
1. Tracking Effectiveness: UTM parameters allow you to track the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns, channels, or sources. By tagging URLs with specific UTMs, you can see exactly where your traffic is coming from and which channels are driving the most engagement or conversions.
2. Attribution: UTMs help in attributing conversions or actions to specific campaigns or channels. This is essential for understanding the ROI of your marketing efforts and allocating resources effectively.
3. Optimization: With clear UTM tagging, you can analyze which offers or call-to-actions (CTAs) are performing best. This data helps you optimize your campaigns by focusing on what works and adjusting or eliminating what doesn't.
4. Segmentation: UTMs allow you to segment your audience based on different criteria such as traffic source, campaign type, or even specific ads. This segmentation can provide deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences.
Where Marketing Ops and Revenue Ops can advise marketing is where can we really amp up our offers and assets. Some assets will offer value without an explicit ask (call to action) while others will go for the jugular (hit that demo button!).
Unique UTMs for each CTA: Create distinct UTM parameters for each offer or CTA. For example, if you're running an email campaign with multiple links leading to different landing pages, use unique UTMs to track which links are generating the most conversions.
THEN compare performance: Compare the performance of different UTMs to understand which offers or CTAs resonate best with your audience. Look at metrics like conversion rates, bounce rates, and engagement levels to make data-driven decisions.
THEN USE VARIATION! A/B testing: UTMs can facilitate A/B testing by allowing you to easily differentiate between variations of the same campaign. You can test different CTAs, messaging, or landing page designs and track their performance through UTMs.
AND always strive for iterative improvement: Use the insights gained from UTM tracking to iterate and improve your offers and CTAs over time. Adjust your marketing strategies based on what UTMs reveal about customer preferences and behaviors.
Segment your assets and offers into intent bands of low, medium, and high. Anything outside high might be better served moving into a nurture track
Pierre Herubel posted this graphic a few months back. As an operator the bottom row is where we can actionably set up our attribution information capture.
If you’re slammed in your RevOps or want to level up; check out the RevOps Impact Offerings below
There are 4 ways I can help you:
1/ RevOps Course: Unleashing ROI (RevOps Impact). A ten-week RevOps course. Lessons from my career scaling from $10M to $100M+. Join 100+ alumni.
Enroll into the RevOps Q3 Course
2/ Sales Ops Masterclass. A six-week virtual, live instruction SalesOps course designed to take your sales operations skills to the next level.
3/ You’re a GTM Startup. Sponsor this newsletter and reach 3,200+ tenacious revenue leaders. Reply to this email if you’re interested in receiving a media kit.
4/ 1-on-1 RevOps Coaching with me. Let me help you push through the ceiling