As revenue teams align with the modern B2B buyer, evolving your reporting should not feel as if you are passing a kidney stone.
A few years ago, I was scheduled to attend an all-day offsite with my fellow executive team. Half of the day was dedicated to a deep dive of current pipeline performance, including an extensive analysis of the past 6 quarters. At the time, I was mid-stream transforming the company around an ABM go-to-market strategy. Many of the challenges associated with this company-wide transformation were always manifested during the reporting process and weekly pipeline meetings.
At 5 am on the morning of the offsite, I awoke with excruciating pain in my abdomen. After an hour of unbearable pain, I was rushed to the hospital emergency room. At the time, I didn't know what was wrong with me or if I was dying. Regardless, I was very happy that I would not be attending the offsite. Why? My brief hospital vacation would give me a temporary reprieve from another painful reporting conversation.
While this story may seem extreme, many of my fellow marketing peers can probably identify with the magnitude of these reporting challenges, especially as revenue teams rapidly evolve their data, metrics, and systems to align with ABM programs and today's B2B buyer. Specifically:
- In an account-based world, traditional reports built on volume metrics are of little value
- For any complex and lengthy B2B sales process, legacy tools and models can't accurately report pipeline progress, account engagement, marketing contribution, and campaign attribution.
- Revenue leaders face additional blind spots when evaluating individual seller performance (AE + ADR/SDR) on pipeline contribution and bookings.
- Revenue teams are unsure how to interpret reporting results and take corrective action.
- Limited ability to leverage data to prioritize account targets and segments for sellers.
- In the absence of reliable reporting and a common and accepted set of metrics, everyone walks away from pipeline meetings frustrated.
- Rinse and repeat: We all get to repeat the same process the following week.
As GTM and revenue teams evolve their ABX programs and related metrics to measure progress, how do we break this painful cycle?
Build a Solid ABX Foundation and Plan: This step may seem ridiculously obvious. That said, in their haste to accelerate account-based programs, revenue teams often cut corners during the planning process. As a result, many of these shortcuts are painfully manifested months later when revenue teams cannot interpret results and take decisive action.
Understand your data, Martech stack, and sales process: The underpinnings of any ABX program require using the right data with an aligned sales team and marketing stack. Any weak links in this process will negatively impact GTM teams downstream. Finally, revenue teams should regularly evaluate its ABX foundation's performance to reflect current marketplace realities, including ICP, account targets, conversion rates, and buyer personas.
Leverage multiple models: Don't be afraid to use multiple metrics. The B2B customer journey is long, messy, and complicated. When revenue teams are focused on very large enterprises, this challenge is compounded significantly. To gain a 360-degree view of customers across multiple (and sometimes overlapping) dimensions, revenue teams should infuse first touch, last touch, multitouch, and weighted influence models into their overall reporting framework.
Evolve your reporting over time: Rome was not built in a day. Teams should start small across a limited segment of target accounts. Key learnings should be captured to drive change and improve behaviors and the overall reporting process.
Align with revenue leaders and stakeholders: Revenue teams must leverage a common set of metrics to support decision-making. Most importantly, the reporting process will surface as a common forum to address stakeholder misalignment, expectations, and outcomes.
Join us, September 9, 2020, at 10 am PDT, where we will discuss strategies to evolve ABX Metrics as part of Folloze's Account-Based Experience (ABX) Masterclass program and weekly \"Office Hours.\" If you'd like to learn more, attend this session and connect with like-minded marketing and revenue team peers, enroll in our ABX Masterclass today – it's free to join.
