For many SMB who aren’t hitting their revenue goals, the ability to identify the root cause may be there but is invisible to them. Let me explain.
In the absence of good data, many companies simply add salespeople hoping to gain the revenue they seek. The reality is that without understanding the quality and health of your sales and marketing ecosystem, you might be spending money in the wrong place.
In any sales pipeline there is the top of the funnel consisting of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL’s) and the subsequent steps of the funnel leading to new business. Properly tracked, this data will yield some valuable information about managing your growth. Ideally, a CRM program with pipeline tools will be used by the sales team to capture this information.
There are three simple variables needed to project growth: number of MQL’s, average annual new customer value, and close rate at the top of the funnel. Using these variables, you can project future business from what is in the pipeline today, identify how many MQL’s are required to meet your revenue goals assuming the average new customer value remains the same. If you can increase new customer revenue, then the number of MQL’s required to hit revenue goals will be reduced.
Let the data drive your decisions.
