As I work with CMOs, I always ask the following question, "What do you want to achieve and how will you measure progress" The responses often have some element of revenue generation or new prospect acquisition. However metrics are all over the place, some are loosely attributable to marketing objectives, with vague or overly complex elements that sales and marketing teams struggle to manage to.
Here are some examples:
-At a macro level, they are often some form of MQLs "Marketing Qualified Lead" or SQLs "Sales Qualified Lead" (various definitions)
-At a micros level, they include email opens, marketing asset opens such as a white paper downloads, site visitors, social media likes, forwards or comments, event attendance, prospect engagement or any related ABM metrics, and the list go on.
Marketing produces exhaustive dashboards showing marketing activity with well-meaning attempts to show positive sales attribution. While this is worthwhile at some level, CMOs have muddied the waters by making marketing measurement too complex.
On the opposite side, when I ask sales leaders the exact same question, how should marketing be measured, I get one simple & consistent response, prospect meetings. Sales simply wants an opportunity to engage directly with prospects in meaningful value-added conversations. They want to listen, define sales opportunities, and share proven approaches to solving challenges with relevant customer examples.
If marketing focused on just one metric, specifically "Net New Prospect Meetings" (NNPMs), sales and marketing would be better aligned.
I once worked with a smart CEO and all he cared about was exactly that. He measured marketing by one metric NNPMs and it was brilliant. It took all the hyperbola and complexity out of marketing. The discussion became: "How many marketing meetings did we set up this week with our targeted prospects" There was nowhere to hide, the answer was simply some or none. If it was none, he drilled down and demanded better results next week. He did not initially care about the results of each meeting and related pipeline opporunities (that became a sales related discussion at a later point) He cared about prospect meetings (was the prospect likely to buy, do we add value, should we them to our highest priority list or do we remove them from our list) He valued keen & unpublished competitive insights as a valid outcome of the process (which competitors are entrenched, can they be unseated or can we operate as a bolt-on to get a foothold into the account)
Some CMOs understand the need for "Net New Prospect Meetings" and pay external vendors to set them up. The problem is that such vendors typically have limited buyer knowledge, experience or credibility These vendors tend to hammer away at scale in order to to secure such meetings (most of these vendor are overseas) CMOs are attracted to cost-per-meeting models with fees ranging from $1000 and $2400 per meeting secured. These offshore factory-oriented approaches often fail and can alienate a company's prospect base due the generic or non-personalized high-volume approach.
However, there is a smarter way to drive "Net New Prospect Meetings" by creating value-added credible best-practices conversations with B2B Prospects. Over the past two years, I have developed a proven methodology to do exactly that, it is called "Magnet Marketing" and includes "Moderated Discovery Meeting" with the sales teams, these are not leads but actual meetings.
Magnet Marketing has several additional benefits beyond securing prospect meetings, these include thought leadership, competitive insights, buyer discovery, and content marketing for lead generation
I was just interviewed on the topic by the CMO of Plannuh, please take a look and let me know with you think https://blog.plannuh.com/blog/the-next-cmo-podcast-abm-and-prospecting-with-michael-phelan
Please reach out to me at michael@gotomarketpros.com for more details on the program.