If you want to understand marketing’s impact and influence on sales and revenue performance, you have to look well beyond mere lead production. And with account-based marketing efforts, that’s especially true.
Developing precise measures of how well sales and marketing efforts are performing is arguably even more important with ABM, since the integrated approach between sales and marketing at each stage of the buying process can make isolating individual impact variables more difficult.
In working with clients the past several years on their account-based efforts, we’ve developed an ABM Measurement Matrix that takes into account both marketing and sales measures, breaking them down into high-level stages of the buying process.
This version assumes a six-month sales cycle, highlighting recommended metrics to track early on (as you are building credibility, attention and engagement) as well as mid-funnel where interest converts into qualification and opportunity followed by conversion into closed-won business.
Every company interprets and reports on these metrics slightly differently, but we’ve found that the key metrics categories stay fairly constant.
Many of these metrics are self-explanatory, and for a few that aren’t:
- Topical response consistency: Think of this as a “heat map” based on the account or contact’s measured interest. For example, if multiple contacts in an account are engaging with similarly-themed content, that may be a signal that there’s heightened interest in learning about the problem and exploring a solution.
- Buying cohort discovery calls: When sales can get multiple members of the buying committee on one call, that can help accelerate velocity and is a key measure for sales productivity early in the buying process
- BANT by committee: Getting multiple key members of the buying committee to agree on key elements of budget, authority, need and timeline. Getting lowercase “yes” consensus from buying committee cohorts helps lead to capital “Yes” answers that matter down funnel
- Engagement depth/duration: Too often in marketing we measure moments and fail to record time duration. The more time people spend with you and/or your content, the more likely they are to convert
And of course, if your sales cycle is longer than six months, adjust the duration of each buying journey stage accordingly.
Get your free, un-gated copy of our ABM Measurement Matrix here.
