R&R

We were doing a quick brainstorm on what to call the key metrics to measure sales and marketing people jointly and came up with “ratios and revenue” or in other words  “R&R.”  The point is, how do you get your marketing people aligned with your sales people.  Working on the same thing. Worrying about the same goal.

I like the term is its a great pun too.  There is no rest and recuperation involved in worry about ratios and revenue.

Sales people think that marketing is off doing some stupid “non priority” that doesn’t matter to the only thing that matters; revenue generation.  On the other hand, the marketing person knows that the CEO is paying their salary and when he or she says ‘”go jump” they say “how high” as that’s generally who pays for the bacon. 

How to fix this?   Measure them both on the success of conversion ratios in the demand generation process –obviously  the number of names generated before the pipeline begins,but more importantly the % of leads accepted by sales, the % converted into product opportunity (forecastable pipeline) and finally the % actually converted into revenue. 

This sounds simple but its excruciatingly hard to get marketing people to accept; they have generally been burned far too often by the sales rep who can’t sell or is happy to blame the marketing program.  Or they simply don’t see themselves as a business person; they are a creative genius after all.

But I think the bigger problem is not really the marketing person.  It starts with the CEO and what they inspect and respect.  I have had the misfortune to work with some CEOs and Presidents (of Fortune 500 companies and startups) who do not even consider dirtying their hands with ratios and revenue, or have so many pet projects going on that the poor marketing staff are spinning like whirling dervishes daily.

So there you go, ratios and revenue.  It’s not the whole picture of course.  But its a great acronym and as some great philosopher said; all great journeys start with a great acronym.