3 Sales & Marketing Reports You Need Right Now
As marketing and sales managers we are increasingly responsible for the performance of our lead generation efforts. Our digital & inbound marketing agency is no different. Being able to draw the line from spend to return on investment is a critical activity not only for gauging current success, but also for planning future activity and investment. With that in mind I offer you three reports you should create, and monitor, right now.
Open Leads with No Activity Set and Not in a Sales Reps Name
Lead leakage is real, even if you have a sophisticated system of importing leads into your CRM, some will fall through the cracks. What better way to increase your ROI then by making sure you are getting the most out of the leads you have today. This report will offer you a way to manage leads that, for whatever reason, are not being worked. Hence they are open but not tagged to any sales rep, and have no future activity set.
In one organization with high lead flow from our Paid Search Marketing campaign, we caught 25 to 40ish leads per day that had fallen off the radar for a variety of reasons. Imagine how much we would have lost without this valuable report. Whether it was a failure to import, sales rep sloppiness, or employee turnover, we were able to identify potential issues in our sales process while at the same time ensuring each lead was worked and nothing went to waste.
Pro Tip: A report for open leads with no activity set that are in a sales reps name is also important for making sure leads that are claimed are being worked.
Sales Rep Performance by Lead Channel
Testing your way into new lead sources? Great. But you have an important decision to make. Distribute them evenly to your team, or put them in the hands of your most trusted sales reps? Either way, you need to identify the top performing sales people in every channel. Our solution, create a report showing performance by lead source by sales rep. Anyone that drifts below the average channel performance is removed and a new rep that is hungry for an opportunity is added to the lead flow. This will help ensure you are getting the most out of your lead sources, and giving each new lead source the best chance of success. Bonus benefit, keeping your sales team honest. ; )
Pro Tip: In my experience sales people are better at some lead channels than others. As odd as that sounds, it makes it very important to play to their strengths, and provide them with leads they are good at closing.
Acquisition and Retention Contribution of a Lead Channel
As a performance based marketing agency you can be sure we are always looking at ROI as the key metric to any marketing program’s success. Problem is, most reports only use your immediate ROI based off of the profits from a customers first purchase in the calculation. Smart marketers know that it’s less expensive to keep a current customer (and keep them buying) than it is to find new ones. This means that all retention purchases are an important part of the puzzle and need to be accounted for when evaluating the overall performance of a channel. It just might be OK to break even, or even manage a small loss, on the first sale if we know that repeat business will be profitable down the line. It also allows us to track a lead channel’s performance based on overall profitability, in addition to immediate profitability, as a second method of evaluating where to invest marketing dollars in the future.
Pro Tip: The importance of a lead doesn’t end at your first sale. Managing your leads once they hit the retention phase of your business can pay huge dividends.
Put these three reports in place and be sure to manage your efforts to them. I guarantee you will become a more profitable business going forward.
Have any questions or don’t know where to start? Contact us to schedule a free consultation and we’ll get you pointed in the right direction.
