News flash: Sales doesn’t control when the deal is closed

The number one complaint I hear from marketing executives who don’t want to embrace revenue responsibility is that they don’t have control over when the deal closes.  Why, they claim, should they be held responsible for revenue influence or contribution when they don’t own closing the deal?

Here’s the dirty little secret that your VP of Sales has known all along – they don’t control when the deal closes either.

If they did, they’d hit their number every single month.  Every quarter.

It actually gets worse.  The buyer often doesn’t control when the deal is closed either!  On a regular basis, your decision-maker won’t be able to close on time due to procurement slowing things down, changes in corporate priorities, their own/internal sales results and how that impacts budget availability, etc.

So let’s take the idea of “control” off of the table.  Nobody actually has control.  But that doesn’t change the fact that marketers need to focus not on activity, not on campaign volume, not even on leads – but on sales pipeline contribution and closed business.  Its the only thing that matters.