special issue: revenue attribution - sales benchmark index · 2017-11-08 · multi-touch revenue...

MAKE YOUR NUMBER™ | MAY 2017

Special Issue: Revenue Attribution

T H E S T U D I OG R A N D O P E N I N G

BOOK NOW

WHAT IS THE STUDIO?

The Studio is SBI’s new multimillion-dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center located in Dallas, Texas. It was developed by SBI

specifically for executive teams inside of companies with aggressive revenue growth goals, who don’t have a lot of time to waste, and have a lot on the line.

SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/TheStudio

http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/TheStudio

May 2017 . SBI Magazine . 1

Account for the Length and Complexity of the Buying ProcessMulti-touch revenue attribution tracks different interactions throughout the buyer’s journey, assigning a weighted credit to each.By Randall LaVeau

Improve Your Relationship with SalesTime-decay revenue attribution deepens insights into the monetary impact of marketing actions.By Eric Bauer

Optimize Your Demand-Generation SpendFirst-touch revenue attribution focuses on the signal rather than the noise.By Stephen Trask

Measure Your Impact on Delivering Quality OpportunitiesLast-touch revenue attribution credits the most recent marketing interaction before lead or opportunity conversion.By Eric Estrella

COVER STORY

Piloting Revenue AttributionHow top-flight CMOs prove that each new marketing dollar they invest drives organic revenue growth.

By Vince Koehler

/30

SBI MAGAZINE MAY 2017

CONTENTS

/30

ILLU

ST

RA

TIO

N:

RA

YM

ON

D B

ON

ILLA

/44

/50

/54

/58

2 . SBI Magazine . May 2017

/13

/64

CONTENTS

/4EDITOR’S LETTER

/5FEATURE CONTRIBUTORS

/6PERSPECTIVES

/9DEPARTMENTS

/10THOUGHTS/10 Proving the Business Value of Your

Marketing Campaigns/12 Building a Believable Revenue

Attribution Model/13 Winning Sales Over to the Value

of Marketing/14 Bring Your Product Leader Around

to the Value of Marketing/15 Translate Your Marketing Budget

into Revenue Growth/15 CEO Cheat Sheet: Comparing

Revenue Attribution and Marketing Contribution

/16IDEAS/16 Capitalizing on Revenue Attribution

in Your Next Job Interview/18 The Big 5 Marketing Metrics/19 What Revenue Attribution Can Do

for the Board/21 The Brand Premium/21 Average CMO Tenure Dips

/22INSIGHTS/22 Why Some CEOs Are Skeptical

About Revenue Attribution/24 Tools of the Trade/25 Stop the CFO from Pillaging Your

Marketing Budget /27 Attributing Revenue to Non-Digital

Interactions/27 The Revenue Attribution

Technology Landscape

/62LIFESTYLEOvercoming the Dilemma: Dress Business Casual or Professional?

/64ACCESS: THE STUDIOWelcome to The Studio!

PE

OP

LEIM

AG

ES

/IS

TO

CK

PE

TE

LA

CK

ER

/22

GR

AD

YR

EE

SE

/IS

TO

CK


Top of MindTune in to SBI online for priceless insights that help make your number:

SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/TV

“We look at revenue objectives when you execute a campaign. We track marketing engagement across the life cycle, for each campaign to ultimately whether they become a customer.”

“It’s never one activity that is responsible for winning or sourcing an opportunity. You have many touches along that buying cycle. Understanding which ones give you a lift, and accelerate or progress an opportunity, becomes critically important.”

Generating Revenue with Hyper-Targeted Campaigns Andrea Brody CMO at BravoSolution

Prove Marketing’s Contribution with Undeniable Scientific Fact Arnaud Kraaijvanger Vice President of Marketing Insights and Operations at Genesys

YU

RI_

AR

CU

RS

/IS

TO

CK

/14

http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/TV

https://salesbenchmarkindex.com/insights/generating-revenue-with-hyper-targeted-marketing-campaigns/

https://salesbenchmarkindex.com/insights/prove-marketings-contribution-with-undeniable-scientific-fact/


EDITOR’S LETTER

Revenue-generating chief marketing officers create more shareholder wealth than any other type of CMO.

More than brand-building CMOs. More than lead-generating CMOs. More than product-positioning CMOs.

What is a revenue-generating CMO?

A revenue-generating CMO is a CMO who converts the marketing budget

into revenue dollars. He, or she, is the primary reason their company’s revenue growth rate is higher than the revenue growth rate of their industry and their competitors. For this type of CMO, revenue growth trumps brand equity, leads generated, and product marketing.

Why do they outperform?

They understand revenue attribution. They can prove how each marketing dollar spent generates revenue. This results in the board, and the CEO, giving them more marketing budget to invest. And with each new dollar invested, organic revenue growth accelerates. As organic revenue growth leads to an increase in free cash flow, and multiple expansion, employing a revenue-generating CMO is tightly correlated to exceptional shareholder wealth creation.

In this edition of SBI Magazine, we explore the importance of revenue attribution, the different types of revenue attribution, and how you may put this information to use (see “Piloting Revenue Attribution” on page 30).

Can you become a revenue-generating CMO, hire one, or act like one?

Yes you can, and you should. The payoff is worth the effort.

How?

To start, read this edition of SBI Magazine. It is dedicated to helping CMOs generate revenue.

Pay special attention to the feature articles. For instance, on page 44 Randall LaVeau presents a smart piece, titled “Account for the Length and Complexity of the Buying Process,” which deals with the multi-touch attribution model. On page 50 Eric Bauer penned an insightful article on how to improve the relationship with sales by using the time-decay attribution model. And marketing expert Stephen Trask on page 54 discusses the first-touch attribution model and its role in determining the ROI of the marketing budget.

If you are a board member, or investor, who needs organic revenue growth to increase enterprise value, make sure you have a revenue-generating CMO running your portfolio company’s marketing department. This de-risks your investment and increases the probability of a successful exit.

If you are a CEO with aggressive revenue growth targets to make, and don’t have any time to waste, implement the ideas in this edition of SBI Magazine. This will result in your CMO converting marketing budget dollars into revenue growth dollars.

If you are a CMO struggling to prove marketing’s contribution to revenue, learn how to develop a believable revenue attribution model. This will improve your working relationship with your CEO, and your board, who may not understand marketing as well as you do. The result will be more realistic expectations being placed on your shoulders.

GREG ALEXANDERCEO

The Revenue-Generating CMO

PE

TE

LA

CK

ER


FEATURE CONTRIBUTORS

TR

EV

OR

PA

ULH

US

MAGAZINE | MAKE YOUR NUMBER™

CEO and Editor-in-Chief Greg Alexander

Managing Partner Matt Sharrers

Principal – Talent Management Dan Perry

Director of Marketing Vince Koehler

Managing Editor Debra McDonald

Senior Editor James Hurd

Art Director David Chan

Design and Illustration Cynthia Webb

Photography Pete Lacker, Trevor Paulhus

READER SERVICETo sign up for a complimentary subscription, visit SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/register. To change your mailing address for a current subscription, or unsubscribe, visit SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/account.

WHAT IS SBI?SBI is a management consulting firm specializing in sales and marketing that is dedicated to helping you make your number.

HOW DOES SBI WORK?SBI uses the benchmarking method to help clients accelerate their rate of revenue growth. Benchmarking allows our clients to leapfrog their competitors by getting access to emerging best practices from the top sales and marketing leaders.

SBI Magazine is published quarterly by SBI, 2021 McKinney Avenue, Suite 550, Dallas, TX 75201, U.S.A. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without permission in writing from the editor-in-chief. Opinions expressed in this magazine may not be those of SBI. The content in this publication is provided as is without express or implied warranties of any kind, and is subject to change without notice.

Copyright © 2017 SBI. All Rights Reserved.

SBI, the SBI logo, and Make Your Number are trademarks or registered trademarks of SBI in the U.S.A. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Cover illustrator: Raymond Bonilla

Printed in the U.S.A.

This magazine is printed on paper that contains recycled fiber.

Randall LaVeauDevelops scalable sales and marketing programs ranging from demand generation to website optimization and sales effectiveness. Randall has also created, coordinated, and executed lead-generation plans, programs, and campaigns for new customer acquisition and existing customer [email protected]

Stephen TraskHelps clients become the difference-maker in their company’s revenue growth. A Johns Hopkins–trained data scientist, Stephen routinely uses machine learning to help clients make evidence-based decisions that advance growth. [email protected]

Vince KoehlerBrings deep marketing expertise to help clients’ brands achieve success and drive strong marketing returns on investment. Vince has a record of delivering strategies and campaigns through a data-driven approach that accelerates sales growth and profitability. [email protected]

Eric BauerDrives business growth through brand strategy, sales and marketing alignment, and marketing effectiveness. As a global marketing leader, Eric helps clients identify and implement strategies that result in sustained [email protected]

Eric EstrellaSpecializes in helping clients solve some of the most prevalent go-to-market problems in today’s complex selling world. Eric’s innovative go-to-market strategies help clients [email protected]

http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/register

http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/account

mailto:[email protected]






PERSPECTIVES

When marketers demonstrate success by pointing to market share increases, they are using a metric that marketing influences far less than sales. The market share increase may be at the expense of profitability. Or it may come from stealing market share, provoking a price war. Unless marketers show how their investments are effective, marketing is just another cost center vulnerable to the next budget cut.

The better indicator is revenue attribution because it proves the return on marketing investment by

Revenue Attribution or Market Share: Which Is Better for You?

tracing revenue back to the marketing efforts that influenced revenue gain. For example, market share may increase when a competitor exits. Revenue attribution identifies marketing achievements, pinpointing activities that led to the increase in market share—and in a profitable way because the attribution can be aligned with the marketing spend. Moreover, revenue attribution indicates whether discounting is even necessary. This is because marketing activities that emphasize value over price can be measured, and the resulting increase in deal sizes attributed to marketing. —Steve Loftness

Top 3 MetricsAre you tracking revenue attribution for these content marketing metrics? If not, it’s time to get started.

1. Content views and downloads by sales stage: The two most important roles for content are to propel a prospect through the buyer’s journey and to develop preference for your brand.

2. Call-to-action successes: Clicks, chats, phone calls, or other interactions associated with a specific piece of content drive engagement with your brand.

3. Social shares: The act of referring content to peers is a vote of confidence that also represents a marketing touchpoint.

—Vince Koehler

The Impact of Brand Awareness Nothing drives CEOs crazy like hearing a marketer tout brand awareness. But elite executives and sales leaders know the difference. Without strong brand awareness, your company is left fighting for scraps. Brand awareness gets you a seat at the table in competitive deals. It is the rising tide that lifts all marketing assets. One sales leader recently lamented, “We are always late to the deal. We need to get our name out there.” While the value of a great brand can be hard to attribute, its impact on revenue is crystal clear. Just ask IBM, Xerox, or Goldman Sachs. —Drew Zarges

Make the Case for Marketing Investments

It’s the season for your annual operating plan, and the CEO is tasked with growing revenues and cutting expenses. Now he or she must decide where to allocate precious company resources. Sales and product groups make their cases by reporting and forecasting revenue contributions. If you are still measuring marketing’s contribution with traditional metrics such as marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads, you are at a disadvantage. Without the ability to track marketing’s impact on revenue, you will be viewed as a cost center. See next page to learn more about adopting a revenue attribution model that makes the case for your marketing investments. —Bill Turner

PE

OP

LEIM

AG

ES

/IS

TO

CK


When the CFO is in the room, it’s critical to demonstrate that marketing is a revenue generator, not a cost center. By tying marketing efforts to closed/won deals, revenue attribution proves which marketing channels are driving results. In this issue, we explore five types of revenue attribution models, to suit the length and complexity of different buyers’ journeys.

• First-touch attribution: 100 percent revenue is credited to the first touchpoint, when a lead or contact interacts with your marketing message.

Keep the Expense Cops at Bay

How Marketing Proves the Impact of Every Dollar SpentRevenue attribution is the process of matching customer sales to marketing efforts, as shown in this example scenario.

• Last-touch attribution: 100 percent revenue is credited to the last marketing touchpoint.

• Linear attribution: Equal revenue is credited across all marketing touchpoints.

• Time-decay attribution: A sliding scale assigns the most revenue credit to the last marketing touchpoint, with less credit for remaining touches the earlier they were in the path.

• Multi-touch attribution: Customized algorithms analyze the relative weight for crediting each marketing touchpoint.

—Andy Hastings

Marketing-Delivered Opportunities

Big Opportunities Source Company Deal Size

Open

Opportunities

EmailCompany A $2.8M

Company B $1.2M

Trade ShowCompany C $8.4M

Company D $6.1M

Paid Search Company E $2.4M

Closed/Won

Opportunities

Organic Search Company F $1.1M

Email Company G $5.6M

Trade ShowCompany H $8.2M

Company I $5.4M

New Logo Revenue by Marketing Channel

Referral17%

Webinar33%

Paid Search4%

Organic Search8%

Email21%

Campaigns12%

Road Show5%

Closed/Won: Marketing-Attributed Revenue by Channel

Marketing Channel

Custom-Weighted Closed/Won

RevenueCustom-Weighted

Open Revenue

Custom-Weighted Closed/Lost

Revenue

Webinar $32M $85M $40M

Paid Search $4M $10M $6M

Organic Search $8M $20M $12M

Email $20M $70M $38M

Campaigns $12M $32M $18M

Road Show $5M $13M $6M

Referral $17M $51M $21M

Total $98M $281M $141M

4/24/2016AttendsEvent

4/25/2016SalesEmail

5/30/2016Sales Call: NoDirect Contact

6/18/2016SalesEmail

8/5/2016Campaign

Email

10/9/2016Campaign

Email

11/10/2016Campaign

Email

1/16/2017SalesEmail

1/20/2017Proposal

12/17/2016–2/10/2017

Sustained SalesCorrespondenceand Discussion

2/11/2017Closed/Won

New Logo: ACMETotal Purchase Cycle: 10 MonthsBookings Value: $350K

Closed/Won: Buyer’s Journey

INTRODUCING THE STUDIO

BOOK NOW

WHAT IS THE STUDIO?

The Studio is a multimillion-dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center located in Dallas, Texas. It was developed by SBI specifically for executive teams inside of companies with aggressive revenue growth goals, who don’t have a lot of time to waste, and have a lot on the line.




Proving the Business Value of Your Marketing Campaigns:LegalZoom’s scientific approach demonstrates how hyper-targeted campaigns generate revenue.PAGE 10

THOUGHTS

Why Some CEOs Are Skeptical About Revenue Attribution:Avoid the three cardinal sins when presenting an executive dashboard to report marketing performance.PAGE 22

INSIGHTS

IDEAS

Capitalizing on Revenue Attribution in Your Next Job Interview:The best answers to a CEO’s tough questions revolve around marketing’s impact on topline growth.PAGE 16

DN

Y5

9/I

ST

OC

K


THOUGHTS

SBI interviewed Laura Goldberg, chief marketing officer at LegalZoom. The provider of online legal solutions for American families and small businesses has helped more than 3.6 million customers meet their legal needs.

Goldberg’s perspective is highly relevant as a pioneer in making marketing scientific. With an undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Harvard, she has the foundation and experience to serve as an expert on this topic.

Campaigns are about capturing the attention of your target audience. Generating a return on marketing campaign dollars requires a clear objective, time line, budget, accurate lists, correct media mix, and compelling calls to action. Every market has a sweet spot. When focused directly on

Proving the Business Value of Your Marketing Campaigns

BIK

ER

IDE

RLO

ND

ON

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

LegalZoom’s scientific approach demonstrates how hyper-targeted campaigns generate revenue.By Vince Koehler


that sweet spot, campaigns and their budgets generate revenues. Campaigns that are not hyper-targeted do not.

Simplify Key Performance IndicatorsEffective planning is the foundation of proving business value for your marketing campaigns. It starts with identifying key performance indicators at the campaign level.

How does Goldberg simplify key performance indicators at the campaign level? “It’s imperative to at least, at a high level, have two or three goals that are the Holy Grail for your company. For LegalZoom, we look at customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and our net promoter score,” she says. “As we look at each campaign, we target a net margin and try and hit it. We may alter that net margin based on bigger goals but that’s what we try and do.”

Understand the Total Mix This is where marketing revenue attribution has a role to play. CMOs need to be able to trace each dollar of revenue back to the marketing or sales activity that originally sourced, converted, nurtured, and moved the opportunity through to a closed win. Understanding all the sales and marketing activities that helped influence revenue booking at the deal level provides the insight required to prove business value.

Goldberg shares an example of how the total mix of marketing activities plays a role. “On television, we look at traffic and then conversion of that traffic,” she says. “It’s hard because everything interplays together. If I have a strong television campaign, then my SEM net margin is going to be better. You can set the KPIs but then you just have to be mindful about how your different levers affect each other.”

Marketing revenue attribution plays a key role in determining the right media mix. Goldberg describes how not all marketing dollars are equal, yet play a role that is not as simple as optimizing by lowest cost. How does she select channels? “I would say two reasons. The dollars that you spend and the ROIs that you look at for TV are very different than the ones online,” Goldberg says. “The other problem with TV is it’s harder to measure but we start with the big buckets because we know that our business products really get driven from television and our personal products from a lesser extent.

“That [television spots] enhances our online [media performance]. I’ll get a better ROI on a start of your business product like forming an LLC or a corporation when I have TV running. The two work together. It’s also just for us an easier way to budget.”

LegalZoom’s television campaign, which buys space on CNBC and ESPN during prime viewing hours, has a substantial budget for paid media. LegalZoom also invests in content marketing for earned media, requiring LegalZoom to hire attorneys who write content to make it as relevant as possible. Goldberg explains how revenue attribution plays a role when juggling between paid and earned.

“One of the hardest challenges facing marketers today is attribution,” she says. “What drives what? Everything is so inextricably linked and then people will search on a question, go to their mobile phone, see an ad, and log into their desktop. We are like everyone struggling with that. We use third-party software to help us key in sophisticated modeling to piece that out.”

Walk Through Customer JourneysGoldberg described the creation of customer journeys that map out the various steps a prospect could walk through. This may start with seeing an ad, reading an article, watching a TV spot, and then buying a product. She looks at all the different ways that LegalZoom can close that loop and track folks. “Attribution is a huge challenge that we are constantly working on,” she says. Visit SBI online to hear Goldberg’s interview about results-oriented campaign planning at SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/CampaignResults.

“It’s imperative to at least, at a high level, have two or three goals that are the Holy Grail for your company.”

— Laura Goldberg Chief marketing officer LegalZoom

http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/CampaignResults

THOUGHTS

As marketing leader, you step into the CEO’s office with a preview of your presentation for the upcoming strategic planning meeting. You picture the conversation going one of two ways: The CEO congratulates you on speaking his language. Or he stops you halfway through and asks for a major rewrite. One scenario leaves you excited and confident; the other makes you question your job security.

Change the Conversation Revenue attribution begins with the end in mind. Value creation in financial terms balances revenue and cost. Revenue attribution bridges the two, changing the conversation with marketing from “How much does this cost?” to “How much more investment will yield X revenue?”

1. Take the model to its natural conclusion. Don’t stop at cost per channel or cost per campaign. Show example buyer journeys from recently won deals. This will reveal the role of content and early-stage touchpoints that move deals through the pipeline.

2. Be transparent, but not overwhelming. Keep detailed assumptions and alternate scenarios in your back pocket unless asked.

3. Drop the academics. Create a revenue attribution model that tracks each dollar of revenue back to the marketing and sales activities that sourced, converted, nurtured, and propelled opportunities. Present an overall view, and deal-level examples.

4. Consider upstream and downstream ramifications. Account for cross-functional impacts and obtain buy-in. Will inside sales need to ramp up for handling increased leads?

5. Get it right. Take the time you need to review and revise your model.

If successful, marketing’s revenue attribution model will be showcased. That puts your reputation on the line, and your CEO’s reputation, too.

BIK

ER

IDE

RLO

ND

ON

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

Building a Believable Revenue Attribution Model

Stay in the CEO’s good graces by developing a revenue attribution model that’s easy to tie to revenue impact.By Mike Spence

The keys to believable revenue attribution lie in language that your audience relates to and a model that is simple enough for them to understand. Any marketing director can put together a model that marketing pros would admire, but that no one outside marketing wants to read. And any marketing analyst can put together a model with scores of variables, metrics, scenarios, and customer data that is interesting, but doesn’t provide a commercial insight for the business.

Make Your CaseAs the saying goes, “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” Here are some tips for building trust with your CEO:


THOUGHTS

You’ve heard it before. “Marketing doesn’t get it. I need leads, not messaging.” Or, “The marketing guys don’t do anything for me. If they would just give me their budget, I could hire 15 more salespeople and make the number.”

Sales VPs can be ruthless. I know. I was one of them and said many of the same things until my CMO explained how her campaigns and content drove revenue.

Winning Sales Over to The Value of Marketing

Bring visibility to all marketing activities tied to an opportunity and watch skepticism turn into belief. By Dan Perry

I was skeptical at first. But after truly understanding how the CMO attributed revenue to marketing efforts, I supported her revenue attribution model and gave marketing some of my budget to drive even more revenue. What convinced me was the way the CMO tracked revenue and how marketing efforts affected it.

Focus on Customer TouchpointsThe real need is tying marketing messages, campaigns, and content

to specific stages of the customer’s buying process. The revenue attribution model needs to look at the funnel from top to bottom and focus on where marketing contributions touch the customer.

Show the sales leader how each dollar of revenue booked is traced back to the marketing or sales activities that originally sourced, nurtured, converted, and propelled individual opportunities to a win.

The first step: Convince the sales leader of the value of marketing. Make sure you both agree on how and when to measure revenue. Otherwise, you may waste a ton of cycles trying to measure revenue in ways the sales leader doesn’t care about.

The revenue attribution model must benefit both teams. Measure everything from the total number of engagements all the way down to the percentage of revenue that closed with attribution to marketing-sourced opportunities. Continue discussions with the sales leader at a weekly cadence to build trust.

Keep Sales and Marketing on the Same Page Revenue attribution is one of the most important components of a CMO’s job. Sales teams are naturally skeptical because of all the poor marketers they have experienced in the past. Create a mutually beneficial way to track revenue that is attributed to marketing. Make weekly updates to keep you and the marketing team on the same page as sales.

PE

OP

LEIM

AG

ES

/IS

TO

CK


THOUGHTS

When a buyer finally signs a contract with your company, it’s a momentous occasion. It signals a competitive win, more revenue, and another shot at growth. If you interview the buyer, you’ll know that the road to the win was a long and winding one. Lots of self-education and some competitive comparison-shopping, punctuated by hard-hitting negotiation tactics.

So, if 100 percent of the credit doesn’t belong to sales, then who else collects a piece of the spoils, and how much does everyone get? This is the perpetually nagging question posed by revenue attribution. Marketing leaders deserve a lot of credit because they play a role in two major ways.

Product LaunchThe first customer touch occurs during product launch, with carefully crafted messages and positioning that typically come from product marketing. (Granted, this cannot be created in a vacuum, devoid of input from sales and product teams.) As a chief product officer recently explained, “A product doesn’t sell itself unless people understand what it does. They need to ‘get it’ almost immediately and connect the dots to a real business benefit.”

Bring Your Product Leader Around To the Value of Marketing

From product launch to ongoing life cycle management, an effective marketing engine sparks growth.By Dan Bernoske

That means educational building blocks must come from marketing. The messaging must be accurate and captivating based on the actual product offering. Therefore, a successful product launch cannot be achieved without significant attribution to the marketing team.

Product Life Cycle Management Customer touches continue throughout product life cycle management. Add-ons and upgrades offer ongoing events for a multi-touch relationship. Each touch is a uniquely direct line to the customer.

Every interaction provides an opportunity for the sales team to win more deals and for the product team to better understand the users. A steady cadence pulls buyers into deeper commitment with the brand. If it weren’t for continuous and effective promotional campaigns, differentiating product developments would go unnoticed. But as buyers want more, they learn more. As they learn more, they buy more. Marketing enables the product life cycle.Y

UR

I_A

RC

UR

S/I

ST

OC

K


THOUGHTS

Modern marketing organizations operate as revenue centers, not cost centers. CEOs at top-performing companies utilize revenue attribution to understand which activities produce revenue bookings. Revenue attribution models give executives a clear line of sight from the corporate strategy through customer touchpoints in the company’s product, marketing, and sales strategies.

Since nearly 90 percent of all CEOs have operational or financial backgrounds, it is imperative that CMOs provide their CEO with the critical insight needed to invest in marketing. CMOs who do this well lead companies that consistently outpace their market and their competitors. The CEOs in this group are delivering above-average revenue growth driven by a return on marketing investment (ROMI) of 20 to 25 percent revenue contribution.

Translate Your Marketing Budget into Revenue Growth Revenue attribution models give CEOs the critical insight they need to make effective budget allocations. By John Staples

How do marketing organizations begin to provide revenue attribution? Start by drawing up your brand ecosystem. Think of your brand at the center, and all the different mediums that communicate your brand externally. These may include the web, email, mobile, social platforms, print, PR, sales, and even the finance department that sends the bill with your company’s brand on it.

All these touchpoints can influence a customer’s decision to buy. That means revenue attribution modelers must collect and analyze data from these disparate channels to assess the impact of each campaign.

When the CEO has clarity into ROMI, he or she can confidently work with the CFO to properly allocate budget. In turn, the CMO uses revenue attribution to determine exactly where to place the budget to scale revenue growth.

Don’t confuse revenue attribution with pipeline influence. Revenue attribution is the methodology for assigning revenue dollars to marketing touchpoints that occur during the buyer’s journey. Marketing contribution is the methodology for tracking marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced leads through the funnel. See comparison at right. —Andrew Urteaga

Revenue Attribution Marketing Contribution

Track marketing contribution to the revenue goal No Yes

Trace marketing contribution to the opportunity pipeline No Yes

Capture full touchpoint activity across the entire buyer’s journey Yes No

Create visibility into marketing’s impact through every stage of the funnel Yes No

Distinguish marketing impact from sales impact Yes No

Optimize the marketing spend Yes, by complete touchpoint data

Yes, by lead source (high risk)

Optimize channels Yes No

Develop an understanding of where to invest more Yes No

Quantify the impact of marketing engagement on revenue Yes Limited view

Determine the impact of account-based marketing within key accounts Yes Limited view

Measure customer acquisition cost for marketing Yes Limited view

Track marketing KPIs clearly Yes (leading indicators explaining the “why”)

Yes (lagging indicators explaining the “what”)

CEO Cheat Sheet


IDEAS

Are you getting ready to interview for a CMO or vice president of marketing leadership position? Consider the following five questions, leveraging revenue attribution and buyer process maps, to nail the interview and land that big job.

1/ How have you contributed to the revenue growth of your employers?I know exactly how my marketing team contributes to revenue growth because I attribute revenue from closed/won deals to the individual marketing touchpoints that make up the buyer’s journey.

When it comes to measuring revenue attribution, we set milestones on the first marketing touch and weigh this attribution at 30 percent. When the lead becomes an opportunity, we attribute another 30 percent. We also weigh the last touch that occurs before a closed win at 30 percent. The other steps comprise the remaining 10 percent.

By tracking deals through the funnel to a closed win, we can review the account’s touchpoints across these milestones. Then we can determine the revenue growth that marketing impacted, and attribute revenue to specific touchpoints.

Capitalizing On Revenue Attribution in Your Next Job Interview

The best answers to a CEO’s tough questions revolve around marketing’s impact on topline growth. By Barry Witonsky

2/ How have you increased the number of leads generated?When I think about leads, it is not just the quantity but the quality. To improve quality, we study closed/won deals and determine the actions taken before a deal closed. I begin by identifying our audience, understanding what they care about, and determining what they need to know as they move through a buyer’s cycle.

This groundwork lays the foundation for our marketing efforts. Then we develop a marketing plan. I instill a mind-set of measurement and continuous improvement in my team because potential buyers and decision-makers have shifting tastes, sources of knowledge, and competitors coming at them.

MA

RV

EN

T/S

HU

TT

ER

ST

OC

K


I also interview customers who buy from us and prospects who do not. I often learn more from those who go to a competitor or do nothing. Losing deals to “do nothing” is a bigger issue than losing out to competitors. And while just about every buyer’s journey through this process is different, a lot of customers hit the same milestones. By tracking that milestone activity, I have been able to increase the quality of leads my marketing team passes to sales.

3/ How have you increased the pipeline? Increasing the pipeline includes driving qualified leads into the top of the funnel and propelling them through the different stages of the buying process. It’s about pipeline velocity

and conversion. To stimulate potential buyers who are not in the market, I identify the ideal customer profile and prioritize the personas to reach. This informs the marketing team about what problems personas are experiencing and how they refer to those problems in their own language.

We also study watering holes to understand where personas go and what information they consume on a regular basis so we can reach them with our message. Success is when the persona starts to ask, “Do I have a problem?” or “Can I be doing things better?” or “Is my competitor outpacing me by doing something smart?” We know this by monitoring what links are clicked and how we are moving personas from “not in the market” to “stimulated.”

4/ How have you determined the return on your marketing budget?Revenue attribution tracks marketing-sourced leads that have resulted in closed/won deals. This makes up the basis of the ROI formula with the total cost of marketing and the total revenue attribution. To make this work, the leads that are stimulated, qualified, nurtured, and transitioned to sales as a qualified opportunity must be tagged in the CRM and followed through the funnel. Every year I sit with the sales leader and together we come up with the percentage of revenue to attribute to marketing. We begin with the sales number for the year. Then we look at our past marketing performance and future plans to arrive at the marketing number.

Let’s say sales needs 200 new customers and I can deliver 30 percent of those, which we know is industry best practice. Then my marketing number is to source 60 new customers. We map the rest of the marketing activities to deliver the result required for success.

5/ How have you converted marketing from art to science?I’ve helped change the mind-set by demonstrating that marketing’s revenue attribution is in fact measurable. Through experimentation and evolution, I’ve led marketing to implement the most effective types of attribution measurement based on our maturity level. I’ve also shown the executive suite, through hard data, how marketing can be a revenue center and not just a cost center. Revenue attribution is at the heart of this capability.


IDEAS

Data drives insights that empower marketing leaders with the intelligence to make sound decisions. The best B2B marketing ops leaders identify key performance indicators that are critical to business success. They build reporting and systems strategies around those metrics.

SBI works across 20+ industries, helping marketing leaders optimize their efforts. In doing so we’ve identified five top marketing metrics that help accomplish that goal: percent of revenue contribution, percent of pipeline contribution, number of leads generated, lead quality, and revenue attribution by channel.

Percent of Revenue ContributionThe first metric measures marketing’s contribution to the topline growth number. Outstanding marketing ops leaders do not shy away from this metric. Rather, they embrace the opportunity to show and drive revenue contribution. They know that best-in-class marketing functions contribute upward of 30 percent revenue. This metric is critical to the business.

Percent of Pipeline Contribution The second metric tracks the percent of opportunities that were touched at least once by marketing during the sales process, regardless of whether that touchpoint occurs at the beginning or the end of the sales process. This is all about ensuring that marketing works with sales to close business.

Number of Leads Generated and Lead QualityThe third and fourth metrics work hand-in-hand. By measuring both, marketing ops leaders validate if sales is getting the right quantity and quality of leads.

Revenue Attribution by ChannelThe fifth metric attributes each dollar of revenue back to the marketing activities that sourced, converted, and propelled an opportunity to a win. Tracking attribution for all marketing activities that helped influence the revenue provides the clearest view of marketing impact. Marketing leaders make the most of their budget by putting more resources against the channels with the highest attribution.

World-class marketing ops leaders embrace these five metrics along with other telling performance indicators that provide vital insights into what drives business success for their company.E

VE

RY

TH

ING

PO

SS

IBLE

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

The Big 5 Marketing Metrics

World-class B2B marketing ops leaders track these KPIs as a critical measure of business success. By Daniel Korten


What Revenue Attribution Can Do for the Board

Comparing ROI generated by CMO and sales leader functions often leads to a shift in budget allocations—and more value creation from the associated revenue growth.By Aaron Bartels

Revenue attribution is one of the most important KPIs a board member can review. If your CMO is not currently reporting on revenue attribution, it’s imperative that they start immediately.

Revenue attribution involves two views that must be measured concurrently. Both views are essential to avoid skewing the marketing discussion in a way that hurts revenue growth:

• Trace each dollar of revenue back to the marketing or sales activity that originally sourced the opportunity.

a company’s sales team, marketing programs must move buyers along to that point. If marketing focuses too much on sourcing opportunities, buyers will be frustrated and revenue will suffer; if marketing overemphasizes sales influence, pipeline generation will suffer.

Good CMOs report on metrics such as budget, lists, programs, leads, and so forth. They speak in qualitative terms with anecdotes about what’s working. Great CMOs carry metrics all the way through to pipeline generation and ultimately revenue contribution. They speak in quantitative terms presenting return on marketing investment, with an eye toward both sourcing and influencing revenue.

ROI RamificationsAn astute board understands the importance of revenue attribution and the associated value creation. It supports the CMO, knowing that revenue attribution is a directionally correct discussion. This board does not expect the CMO to tie every dollar of marketing to revenue, appreciating that exercise would not be worth the effort if it’s even possible.

By forcing an ROI discussion across both the CMO and the sales leader, the board can measure the returns each group is generating from its allocated investment dollars. Often this leads to the realization that the marketing function is producing greater returns than sales. As a result, the board allocates more budget to marketing and increases productivity per sales head count. The associated revenue growth creates value for the company and its shareholders.

• Understand all the sales and marketing activities that helped influence the revenue booking.

In this case, marketing activities include online advertising, trade shows, content assets, webinars, and podcasts; sales activities include prospecting, referrals, demos, and the like.

Value CreationValue is created only by capturing new revenue. That requires both sourcing and closing opportunities. Because customers complete over half their buyer’s journey before they engage

BIK

ER

IDE

RLO

ND

ON

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

IDEAS

GET THREE MONTHS OF WORK DONE IN THREE DAYS

BOOK A VISIT

WHY SHOULD I COME TO THE STUDIO?

Get a lot done in a short amount of time. A visit to The Studio typically results in getting three months of work done in three days.

Would you like a hand with revenue attribution to make marketing more scientific? Plan a workshop with the SBI team of marketing experts in Dallas at The Studio, SBI’s multimillion-dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center. The immersive sessions accelerate your adoption of revenue attribution and put you on the right path with a solution and implementation plan.


Greg Alexander, CEO


2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

23.6

Average CMO Tenure(Months)

23.5 23.2

26.828.4

34.7

4243

45 45

48

44

0044200 00552200


IDEAS

The Brand Premium

Attributing revenue to each brand-building touchpoint makes a convincing case for the value of marketing. By John Kearney

A strong brand increases win rates and exposes the sales team to more opportunities. Marketing leaders often don’t get the respect they deserve from executives. Efforts to strengthen the brand, its appeal, and its reach go unappreciated. Nevertheless, brand is important to the executive team for two reasons.

1. Pricing advantage: Increased brand premium enables you to charge a higher price for your offering than its corresponding

generic version. For example, if you took over the brand when it was selling Product A for $1.00 over the generic price, and the company is now able to sell it for $1.25 more than generic, you’ve contributed 25 percent of the revenue gain. This assumes all else is equal, so be prepared to explain the relative value of the brand premium to sales productivity improvements.

2. Customer acquisition cost: A strong brand helps reduce the cost

to acquire customers. Buyers seek out the strongest brands to solve their problems. Win rates increase. The selling shifts from uphill to downhill. Existing clients stop saying “I didn’t know you did that.” All these dynamics reduce the cost to acquire a customer.

Building a brand to the point of achieving these prizes takes time. Revenue attribution is the key to tracking success along the way as you build a brand. This is the process of assigning revenue back to every marketing touch. For each closed win, the touchpoints that moved a prospect along the buying journey are tracked and assigned value.

Revenue attribution for all marketing brand touchpoints helps make a convincing case, to ensure the executive team recognizes marketing’s influence as the brand is strengthened over time.

Average CMO Tenure DipsFor the first time in a decade, the tenure of CMOs has started to decline. This coincides with CEO feedback reporting growing frustration with marketing’s inability to tie marketing performance to topline revenue. CMOs can keep this a single-year anomaly by embracing revenue attribution models that connect activities to revenue bookings. —Jason Telmos

CHART SOURCE: SPENCERSTUART, 2016 CMO SUMMIT SURVEY


INSIGHTS

Marketing leaders are stymied by CEOs who don’t understand marketing and have unrealistic expectations about what marketing can deliver. This shouldn’t surprise anyone since so few CEOs come up through the sales and marketing ranks. Executive teams have little patience for marketing to produce results when they don’t see a direct tie between spend and topline revenue.

When things are going great, the CEO keeps the marketing line item intact. After all, he or she knows that marketing is a necessary expense. But when things get tough, and a revenue target is missed, the marketing budget looks like one thing: EBITDA relief. Not just relief, but instant relief. In reality, the decision to cut marketing from an effective team is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

But how do you prove marketing’s contribution to revenue bookings? Leverage the articles in this issue of the magazine to put revenue attribution in place for your marketing team. You’re on solid ground with attribution capabilities combined with the essential blocking and tackling of B2B funnel contribution to the pipeline and wins. However, it’s not enough to present new facts. You have to change the perception of marketing and build confidence with the CEO. Make it a priority to own changing the CEO’s perception of marketing. It’s the most important campaign you will run this year.

Why is the CEO skeptical about marketing and why do your attempts to reverse this perception continue to get thwarted? It’s simple and something you can overcome with a focused effort. Think of the saying, “You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into.” Your CEO has likely been exposed to years of corrupted marketing reports. Marketing has been constantly compared to other functional areas that have more straightforward data, with tangible and timely output.

Why Some CEOs Are Skeptical About Revenue Attribution

Avoid the three cardinal sins when presenting an executive dashboard to report marketing performance. By Vince Koehler

To overcome your CEO’s skepticism and build confidence in the marketing function, steer clear of the three cardinal sins in presenting an executive dashboard for marketing performance.

1/ Data Error It never fails. The marketing dashboard appears perfect and is ready to walk through with the CEO. There’s almost always at least one error, sometimes a simple math or labeling mistake. Or during the discussion comes the realization that a certain data set was not included, or should have been excluded. The shame of it is that the error or oversight is usually small, and does not change the insight or story. Nonetheless, it cuts at the heart of the CEO’s

GR

AD

YR

EE

SE

/IS

TO

CK


confidence in everything else. Patience wears thin and marketing stands out like a sore thumb because other functional areas just don’t make those kinds of mistakes.

The best practice is to pre-wire the executive presentation with a trusted peer on the executive team from a different functional area. If you don’t have a peer with that level of trust, then you have bigger problems.

2/ A Bridge Too FarOne of the biggest bones of contention is marketing’s claim on contribution. Usually during a marketing presentation, marketing claims at least one deal that someone cries foul about. A client review I

participated in a while back comes to mind. As the marketing leader presented contributed wins in a recent client review, the sales leader identified one that came in the door because of a personal relationship. Whether marketing played a role or not, the point is that someone can always pick at the list of contributed wins.

The best practice is to objectively define the rules of the game, and have a regular dialogue with sales on the accounts being identified for contribution.

3/ Too Much InformationFinally, marketing leaders are guilty of sharing too much. Not all marketing

data is perfect. At times, marketing leaders can divulge too many details that are not consequential to the overall story being presented. In one such meeting, the presentation to the CEO was going extremely well until the CMO mentioned, “These numbers would be even better if we were able to report on some of the activities where we don’t have a closed loop.” That sidetracked the conversation and drove the meeting into a rat hole discussion. It also seeded doubt about how something so trivial could have been missed.

The best practice is to share facts and be prepared to go deeper, but don’t offer them up unless asked. Just like on a sales call, too much information can kill the sale.


INSIGHTS

The best marketing teams have risen above being a cost center and moved on to become a revenue driver. Making that transition is no easy task in today’s business environment of shrinking marketing budgets and extraordinary channel noise. Organizations need a clear understanding of what channels and programs are performing to allocate budgets correctly.

Judging success purely on open rates, website visits, content downloads, or even marketing-qualified leads no longer cuts it with your peers in sales—and certainly not in the corner office. To truly measure impact and value, you must demonstrate how marketing’s contribution to revenue ties back to the collective and individual touchpoints in the buying process. That means pushing the envelope with industry-leading strategies and technologies.

Measuring Revenue Attribution A dizzying array of tools is at your disposal—as many as 3,874 marketing technology solutions, according to cheifmartech.com. But few of them allow you to track, or even predict, marketing’s contribution to revenue. Tracking revenue attribution with standard CRM reporting or even marketing automation platforms can be difficult if not seemingly impossible.

It’s high time to rise above spreadsheets and reports that are cobbled together from disparate systems. Here’s a snapshot of two tools that can help you effectively measure marketing’s impact on revenue. Both platforms are designed to integrate with existing CRM and marketing automation systems, and provide reporting and analytical power that in the past have been all but absent in the B2B marketing space.

BrightFunnel: Plan Future Actions to Optimize Revenue Creation BrightFunnel has taken a step beyond reporting results and attributing revenue to marketing efforts. It also aids in planning future actions and optimizing for revenue creation. By evaluating KPIs such as funnel velocity, conversion rates, and average sales price, BrightFunnel harnesses the power of predictive analytics to make the most of campaigns and tactics.

Bizible: Track Revenue Back to Exact Marketing Sources Bizible is a marketing analytics technology that allows companies to accurately track revenue dollars back to the exact marketing sources along the buyer’s journey. Easily measure and optimize marketing by return on investment.

Realizing the Benefits Technology is never a replacement for good strategy and flawless execution. Know you’re signing up for disciplined tagging of campaigns across all channels to realize the benefits. Technology tied to great strategy and execution can bring forth meaningful insights into the total marketing impact.

PR

ES

SM

AS

TE

R/S

HU

TT

ER

ST

OC

K

Tools of the Trade

Adopt the right technology stack to accurately attribute revenue to marketing’s full impact.By J.T. Bricker


INSIGHTS

Stop the CFO from Pillaging Your Marketing Budget

Revenue attribution helps secure and increase the investment in marketing by proving how much that spend drives growth.By J.T. Bricker

The days of Don Draper and Mad Men are gone. A profession that once revolved around big ideas, attractive models, and generating a buzz has transformed. It’s now about big data, predictive models, and generating a buck. Marketing departments no longer enjoy budget allocations that are based on a percentage of revenue or a certain level of market presence. As a marketer, you must now speak the language of your partners in sales, finance, and most importantly, the corner office: revenue.

How to Fend Off RaidsYou are reporting marketing’s contribution to pipeline and revenue, but when times get tough, it’s your marketing budget that is raided first. Why? Because the high-level contribution numbers don’t quantify the elements of marketing at the individual touchpoint level. When the CFO eyes line items, you have no grounds to determine whether or not budget cuts would impact marketing contribution. Cracking that code is the key to proving the effectiveness of marketing activities.

Revenue attribution is the process of tracing each dollar of revenue back to the activity that originally sourced the revenue opportunity. The interactions may include marketing touchpoints such as trade shows, content assets, webinars, and podcasts. Understanding how all the touchpoints collectively and individually help influence the booking of revenue enables you to show the impact of marketing efforts. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Why It’s Imperative to Embrace Data-Driven Marketing Realities Data has both empowered and crippled marketers at the same time. Data-driven marketing has become an imperative. It’s here, and it’s real. If you have not jumped aboard, be prepared to see your marketing budget shrink year over year.

By harnessing the power of data to measure revenue attribution, you can prove the value of the marketing spend—and demonstrate how investments in marketing spur revenue growth.

SH

IRO

NO

SO

V/I

ST

OC

K

EXCLUSIVEACCESS

BOOK A VISIT

AMPLIFY YOUR BUSINESS

The Studio is the only place where clients have unlimited access to Greg Alexander, SBI’s CEO, the firm’s partners, and their handpicked team of marketing experts. The very best SBI has to offer, such as the latest data, emerging best practices, and all the firm’s intellectual property, get delivered, personally, by the firm’s most senior people.

Plan a workshop with the SBI team of marketing experts to accelerate your adoption of revenue attribution and put you on the right path.

SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/TheStudio Greg Alexander, CEO



INSIGHTS

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein’s famous aphorism originally applied to scientific principles but it’s valuable in many walks of life. For example, as a B2B marketer you want to track revenue attribution. Return on marketing investment (ROMI) is the key performance indicator.

Track Engagement Points The first input in calculating ROMI is to track spending and investments. You can easily accomplish this with sound cost-accounting principles. The challenge is to measure the results of your campaigns. To do this, you need to establish a “chain of custody” that tracks where people engaged with your content. Attribute revenue to content that started and advanced the buyer on his or her journey.

According to a 2016 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs survey, direct mail and offline promotions are still the second-largest campaign expense for

Capture credible data from your non-digital channels.

By Fred Penteado

Attributing Revenue to Non-Digital Interactions

The Revenue Attribution Technology Landscape

B2B firms. The best way to gauge the response to these good, old-fashioned analog options is leveraging channels such as microsites (vanity URLs), customized 800 numbers, and unique email addresses.

Demonstrate ROMI These channels can communicate with your marketing automation systems, saving your marketing managers the manual effort of attributing revenue to a specific piece of content. If you are engaged in account-based marketing, you can make additional investments such as personalized URLs or microsites for targeted personas.

This process will help you capture credible data from your digital and analog channels, continuing the evolution of B2B marketing as a science. Ultimately, it will help demonstrate ROMI to justify your marketing investments with the executive leadership team.

Who are the leaders in marketing revenue attribution technology? It’s a confusing landscape. In a short time the number of vendors has tripled, confirming the rising importance to prove marketing’s true impact on revenue. Here is a starting point to identify and evaluate candidates for your technology stack. —John Koehler

SHARE YOUR EXPERTISE WITH SBI’S PRESTIGIOUS COMMUNITYCONTRIBUTE TO AS WELL AS TAKE FROM A BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

SBI’s heritage in benchmarking dictates the need to continuously add to the collective body of knowledge. As a guest of The Studio, you have the opportunity to broadcast your expertise to fellow industry leaders. Recorded in our state-of-the-art on-site studio, our popular TV episodes, podcasts, and blogs elevate your thought-leadership status within the industry.

BOOK A VISITSalesBenchmarkIndex.com/TheStudio



Piloting Revenue Attribution

How top-flight CMOs prove that each new marketing dollar they invest drives organic revenue growth. By Vince Koehler


The buyer’s journey does not follow a linear course. Without revenue attribution, you are exposed—unable to allocate time, money, and resources to the marketing efforts that produce topline results. If you can’t quantify the collective impact of marketing touchpoints, you are left guessing. And that eventually gets you fired, when you guess wrong.

Revenue attribution is a tough issue to scope out. But it’s well worth the effort. Forrester research analyst Tina Moffett states, “B2B companies are seeing an average of 15 to 18 percent lift in revenue as a result of implementing a closed-loop attribution system and then optimizing marketing programs based on the more sophisticated analysis.” The size of the prize, a 15 to 18 percent lift, makes revenue attribution worth pursuing. That’s a game changer.

Take us with you. Explore your favorite topics with personalized access to SBI insights, publications, podcasts, videos, research findings, and more. All from your iPhone or iPad.

SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/SBI-App

The SBI App

ILLU

ST

RA

TIO

N:

RA

YM

ON

D B

ON

ILLA

And it’s none too soon. CEOs and boards have put chief marketing officers under the gun to prove the ROI for marketing expenses. Unfortunately, as CMOs share more data to become more accountable, this has had the opposite effect. All too often, members of the C-suite find unexplainable discrepancies and gaps in marketing data.

Worse yet is when marketing explains discrepancies in a way that shows the C-suite that marketing data is not as reliable as data from the other functions. One CMO candidly shared, “Every time I have what I think is bulletproof evidence of marketing ROI, I find myself exposed when someone on the executive team pulls on a thread that I can’t explain. Each time this happens, it’s more difficult to come back to a skeptical audience.”

CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and boards rarely understand marketing and commonly view it as a drain on EBITDA. While executive teams accept marketing as a necessary function, they have little patience for the marketing budget discipline because they don’t see a clear connection to revenue.

Adopting revenue attribution enables marketing leaders to change the conversation, using language the C-suite understands. By tracking marketing contribution and revenue attribution in a way that proves marketing’s impact on topline growth, CMOs take a crucial step toward building confidence and trust. (See “How to Report Revenue Attribution in a Quarterly Business Review” on page 33.)

COVER STORY

http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/SBI-App

Understanding Revenue Attribution Let’s begin by establishing a common definition to bring clarity to the discussion. Revenue attribution is the methodology for assigning revenue dollars to marketing touchpoints that occur during the buyer’s journey. It involves connecting marketing and sales data to measure the impact of marketing efforts on revenue from closed/won deals. This practice allocates credit to all marketing touchpoints, across all channels, that ultimately produce the desired customer action.

The foundation of the new terminology points to accountability. But thought leaders and vendors have inundated marketers with a barrage of attribution-like terms. To make matters more confusing, analyst firms are seeking to brand specific expressions rather than help establish a shared lexicon.

Before we start fleshing out revenue attribution, let’s go through some common misconceptions.

What’s the difference between marketing contribution and revenue attribution?Marketing contribution is the methodology for tracking marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced leads through the funnel. The key to this measurement is that contribution is tracked as leads are delivered from marketing to sales, and never from closed wins back to marketing.

“Revenue attribution is the methodology for assigning revenue dollars to marketing touchpoints that occur during the buyer’s journey. It involves connecting marketing and sales data to measure the impact of marketing efforts on revenue from closed/won deals.”

JOH

NN

YG

RE

IG/I

ST

OC

K


PILOTING REVENUE ATTRIBUTIONCOVER STORY /

As a B2B marketing leader, your No. 1 goal is to help drive

revenue. When you stand in front of the executive team, the

most important customer in the room is the sales leader.

Your alignment with him or her is paramount to the success

of the organization.

Revenue attribution dashboard: This summary example traces revenue back to the types of marketing activities that produced the revenue opportunity.

How to Report Revenue Attribution in a Quarterly Business Review

To help guide your next quarterly business review, create

a dashboard that reports attribution for total closed/won

revenue and pipeline opportunities generated through

marketing campaigns and programs. —Josh Horstmann

Pipeline Opportunities

Marketing Channel Field Sales Inside Sales Partners All

Direct to Website.com $6,330,692 $123,079 $320,892 $6,774,663

Organic Search $8,472,238 $191,868 $8,408 $8,672,514

Paid Search $9,605,349 $44,143 $53,738 $9,703,230

Webinar $4,786,540 $512 $136,914 $4,923,966

Trade Show or Conference $4,254,588 $0 $0 $4,254,588

Email $814,169 $4,090 $1,010 $819,269

Content Syndication $628,274 $1,764 $364 $630,402

Hospitality Events $389,972 $0 $0 $389,972

Web Referral $99,015 $25,294 $5,173 $129,482

Display $12,500 $0 $0 $12,500

Total $35,393,337 $390,750 $526,499 $36,310,586

Closed/Won Revenue

Marketing Channel First-Touch Attribution Multi-Touch Attribution

Direct to Website.com $10,341,113 $12,641,573

Webinar $6,641,839 $6,350,928

Email $52,236 $2,634,367

Trade Show or Conference $1,046,986 $1,067,223

Paid Search $320,113 $485,556

Web Referral $332,665 $402,943

Organic Search $263,567 $315,747

Content Syndication $92,156 $190,963

Hospitality Events $115,878 $123,610

Organic Social $0 $31,679

Display $0 $18,000

Collaboration Survey $6,760 $6,760

Paid Social $2,400 $2,400

Total $19,215,713 $24,271,749

2017 Marketing Funnel Metrics Marketing Revenue Contribution

Mar

keti

ng Im

pac

t 10,0004% Impression Conversion

5,00050% MQL Conversion

2,00040% SAL Conversion

85043% SQL Conversion

250,000Impressions

Marketing-QualifiedLeads

Sales-AcceptedLeads

Sales-QualifiedLeads

Opportunities

112% ($24M)80%

90%

100%

110%

120%

Q1 2017 Q2 2017 Q3 2017 Q4 2017

$5.5M $6.0M $3.5M $9.0M


The best practice for determining your marketing contribution is to capture the primary source of each marketing-sourced or marketing-influenced lead. Then track qualified leads in the CRM all the way through the funnel as they convert to pipeline opportunities and closed/won revenue. Do this, and you have a believable marketing contribution KPI.

Marketers lose credibility when they take the list of closed/won deals and then gold-dig their way back to past email and trade show interactions, for example. That is sheer happenstance, not cause and effect. The CEO and sales leader are experts at sniffing out this shell game.

Pipeline and closed/won revenue numbers are the bookends to a robust marketing ROI. Marketing contribution to the pipeline and revenue should be the top KPIs of a B2B marketing team.

How does marketing contribution interlock with revenue attribution?Marketing contribution and revenue attribution are two different types of measurements, and you need both. The value of the contribution KPI is that it quantifies the impact of marketing. The value of revenue attribution is that it tells you the “why” behind marketing contribution: what’s working, what’s not working, and where to allocate budget.

Without revenue attribution, marketing contribution metrics can become unwieldy at the pace of growth expected by management. As the marketing function shifts from activity metrics to hard-hitting revenue and pipeline contribution metrics, marketers struggle to scale their efforts in proportion to incremental budget investments.

First, when some marketing channels are proven to work, they cannot be scaled at the same rate of acquisition cost. The reason is inventory limitations and increased costs per activity as you go deeper. Examples include search keywords, social ads, and vertical industry email blasts.

Second, marketers can’t legitimately pinpoint with precision what marketing actions caused the result. This causes marketers to overstate the impact of integrated campaigns since the orchestration of touchpoints had an impact overall—and if you can’t isolate the exact elements, you must give the whole campaign credit.

What’s the difference between BI visualization tools and revenue attribution?Business intelligence (BI) visualization tools such as Domo, Tableau, and GoodData help you see and understand your data better. These tools can be used to bring disparate data sources together and then displayed

PE

OP

LEIM

AG

ES

/IS

TO

CK


to tell a story. BI visualization tools help enable the assembly and display of revenue attribution data. But they require a guiding strategy.

How do BI visualization tools relate to revenue attribution?Think of revenue attribution as the brain and BI tools as the arms that the brain controls. Vendors for BI tools will talk about revenue attribution because the attribution revenue reported by the BI tool has value to the buyer.

When buying a BI visualization tool, you may see a promise of revenue attribution. Make sure you read this complete issue to uncover all the groundwork you must do to perform the necessary inputs before the BI visualization tool can spit out a revenue attribution report.

Planning Your Implementation Revenue attribution is an advanced form of tracking that must be built upon a solid foundation of basic tracking fundamentals and accurate CRM data. Technology vendors serving this space oversimplify the implementation. Conference presenters minimize the day-to-day trench warfare necessary to do revenue attribution right. This is a task that requires a lot of effort and discipline. But it’s worth it. Just ask Thomas. (See “A Cautionary Tale: From Rock Star to Has-Been” on next page.)

“The value of revenue attribution is that it tells you the ‘why’ behind marketing contribution: what’s working, what’s not working, and where to allocate budget. Without revenue attribution, marketing contribution metrics can become unwieldy at the pace of growth expected by management.”


As the new marketing chief, Thomas

guided a transformation from soft activity

metrics to hard metrics of pipeline and

revenue contribution. He became an

instant rock star at his first sales kick-off

when he presented a marketing plan

focused on pipeline contribution and

sales enablement tools. This was in sharp

contrast to past marketing presentations

that highlighted website statistics and

social shares, without a direct tie-in to

what sales needed in qualified leads.

The first three years were nothing short

of phenomenal for Thomas, when he

became known as the golden boy of

the company. The sales team absolutely

loved him, his team loved him, and the

executive team loved him. The success

continued; last year the board of

directors increased the marketing budget

and asked him to make it rain. What a

vote of confidence! Thomas was excited

and his team rolled up their sleeves.

The topline sales revenue goal was set

based on marketing’s new accelerated

level of contribution expected in the new

year. Unfortunately, this is where the

story starts to take a downward turn.

Changing the Mix and CadenceAs Thomas began planning the new year,

he expected that not all tactics could

scale. And he knew that some of the best

converting channels were tapped out and

couldn’t be expanded. So he reduced

expectations, anticipating a reduction in

cost per lead and cost per acquisition.

What Thomas didn’t realize is that his

overall marketing plan for the previous

three years had a specific mix and cadence

of channel touchpoints that worked

together. As he scaled up the spend, he

didn’t have insights into the full impact

of marketing touchpoints on the buying

process. So Thomas increased spend on

the channels that were most effective at

driving leads into the top of the funnel,

and kept all other marketing efforts at the

previous rate of spend. His thinking was to

drive more into the marketing machine.

A Cautionary Tale: From Rock Star to Has-Been

Thomas was the vice president of marketing at a $200 million B2B technology company. This is a true story, but we have changed the names to share these learnings with other marketing leaders.

MA

RT

IN G

OO

D/S

HU

TT

ER

ST

OC

K


COVER STORY

Thomas suffered from a massive blind

spot because he didn’t know how

the touchpoints worked in concert to

guide the customer toward a purchase.

His new spend allocation was the

equivalent of the New York Philharmonic

haphazardly tripling the number of

trumpets in a score because their notes

were the most distinguishable. Once the

mix is out of balance, the orchestra goes

from beautiful harmony to a jarring mess.

The series of marketing touchpoints that

occurs through the buying process is

similar to the balance of instruments

in an orchestra. The oboe may be

overlooked because it blends in so

easily. But a conductor would miss it.

Hitting the RocksThe new year starts out with a strong Q1,

but that was a reflection of the previous

year’s quarter. Q2 is a different story. The

extra lift expected from the expanded

marketing investment doesn’t materialize.

Both marketing and sales miss their

numbers for the first time in three years.

The golden boy starts to tarnish. He exits

Q2 determined to radically change the

mix, doubling-down on channels that he

believes will drive the needed results.

However, Thomas is still flying blind. The

number of top-of-funnel leads reaches an

all-time high—great! But the conversion

mid-funnel falls to a three-year low. The

marketing mix is a hot mess. Thomas

can’t attribute revenue back to every

marketing touch for each account. He

can only make assumptions about which

touchpoints move a prospect along the

buyer’s journey. The lack of a revenue

attribution model ran marketing into the

ditch. With a six-month sales cycle, the

year was toast.

Finding the Right ChordsThomas reaches out to peers and

learns that he has a blind spot in

revenue attribution. He had tracked

all the touches, but he didn’t have the

methodology in place to tie revenue back

to the collective touches. He quickly

rallies his team to put tracking into

place to capture revenue attribution at

the touch level. After studying different

approaches, he selects the linear

attribution model. This captures value

across all the touchpoints, and keeps

things simple by giving each touchpoint

an equal weighting.

Thomas knows he can customize the

weightings later. He is racing against

the clock and by the end of Q3, he has

a full picture of revenue attribution. He

can see clearly, albeit too late, how the

expanded marketing spend overlooked

key propelling touchpoints, and therefore

suffered at the mid-funnel conversion.

However, Thomas is out of runway to

save the year. The Q3 QBR has the

ambience of a funeral. Sales managers

missed their bonuses the previous

three quarters and the gloves are off.

The CEO recognizes the sales team

shouldn’t suffer from the marketing miss

and provides quota relief to keep sales

motivated and close the year strong. The

expanded marketing investment over the

past nine months is lost.

With revenue attribution tracking in

place, Thomas presents a plan to

re-allocate marketing spend in Q4. It is

a solid plan, but the executive team has

lost confidence. They begin to wonder

if Thomas just got lucky by being in the

right place at the right time. The reality

is that Thomas is now a better marketer

than he’s ever been. He’s learned from

his mistake. But Thomas can’t overcome

a belief in the executive suite that he is in

over his skis, and he is dismissed at the

end of the year.

Orchestrating GrowthA new head of marketing is selected after

careful screening by a B2B marketing

search expert. Her arrival is timed

perfectly to coincide with the results

from Thomas’s Q4 adjustment. Results

bounce back and marketing results are

rolling in again.

The CEO starts to regain confidence

in the combination of marketing

contribution and revenue attribution

reports. The two views give him a

complete picture. Mary, his new

marketing VP, sets him at ease with

clarity in her presentation of the

reviews. The CEO’s favorite dashboard

report has become the revenue

attribution overall, with the ability to

click into won deals and see the

touchpoint analysis.


I interviewed B2B marketing leaders who have successfully implemented revenue attribution, asking them to rate their confidence in the data on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “highly accurate.” Surprisingly, even these capable marketing leaders rated the accuracy of their attribution models at only an average 3.6.

Leo Tucker, senior vice president of global marketing at PGi, focused his team on revenue attribution and implemented it successfully. When asked about the top challenges, he stated, “The attribution data is only as valuable as the data in the CRM system that can be appended. A close second was getting tracking in place around the globe with my international marketing teams. I didn’t want this to be a North American view. It was important to have a global view of revenue attribution.” Tucker uses revenue attribution reports to allocate budget with confidence, knowing the precise marketing touchpoints that are moving customers through the buying process.

When I spoke with each CMO, I also dove deeper with the member of the team who was involved in the implementation. When vendors say they integrate seamlessly with your CRM, realize that’s only half the battle. Integration with your CRM and marketing automation is the price of entry for the technology provider.

Companies fall into the trap of adopting an attractive technology and then letting the technology dictate the solution. The best practice for implementing revenue attribution takes careful planning to determine your requirements for the technology.

How do I provide visibility into touchpoints?You may be ready to go, but chances are your initial steps will involve getting your house in order. After the marketing leader establishes the project charter, have marketing operations map all the marketing touchpoints, both digital and physical. Indicate a status for each one:

• We currently track consistently worldwide• We currently track consistently in some regions,

but not worldwide• We do not track, but can with the right tagging or

reporting (physical sources)• We do not track, and do not have the capability

to track with existing systems

In a working session with marketing operations, map each planned marketing touchpoint to the corresponding status. You’ll identify many gaps such as content syndication, field marketing, international campaigns, and so on. Closing these gaps requires training, process, and discipline.

The result of this exercise is readiness for implementation. If you’re thinking this is too hard, remember—if you don’t close the gaps, you’ll have reduced visibility into the series of touchpoints that drives leads through the funnel.

How do I establish a marketing-to-sales handshake?It’s gut check time. Is there a solid service-level agreement between sales and marketing on how to manage marketing-sourced leads? Has it been adopted? Every sales force has a few lone wolves. But as a whole, do sales and marketing cooperate enough to make this work? If the foundation is weak, stop any effort to pursue revenue attribution right now. Your peer in sales must require his or her sales team to work from the marketing-sourced contact records in the CRM.


“The attribution data is only as valuable as the data in the CRM system that can be appended. A close second was getting tracking in place around the globe with my international marketing teams. I didn’t want this to be a North American view. It was important to have a global view of revenue attribution.”

— Leo Tucker Senior vice president of global marketing PGi

(Continued from page 35)


Revenue Attribution Models: One Size Does Not Fit All Different revenue attribution models suit different business needs, depending on the length and complexity of the buyer’s journey.

First-TouchAttribution

All revenue credit for the conversion goes to the first touchpoint, when a lead or contact interacts with your marketing message.

Last-TouchAttribution

All revenue credit for the conversion goes to the last touchpoint, when a lead or contact interacts with your marketing message.

LinearAttribution

Equal revenue credit is distributed across all marketing touchpoints with a lead or contact.

Time-DecayAttribution

A sliding scale assigns the most revenue credit to the last marketing touchpoint closest to the conversion; the remaining touchpoints get less credit the earlier they were in the path. This sliding scale can also be reversed.

AlgorithmicAttribution

Customized algorithms analyze the relative value of each marketing touchpoint, and constantly refine themselves to optimize revenue credit allocation.

For example, marketing-sourced qualified leads should be provided to sales. Then that lead record should be converted to an opportunity record, and later a closed/won deal. Through the duration of the prospect’s life cycle, sales and marketing should work in concert from the same CRM record. All bets are off when sales closes a lead, and opens a net-new opportunity.

The same principle is true for sales opportunities that marketing affects. Marketing’s influence should be attributed to the sales opportunity record. Matching up sales wins after the fact is a recipe for corrupted cause and effect.

The opportunity and sales history data in CRM systems doesn’t lend itself to revenue attribution without some level of manual effort. Companies that do this really well have some level of manual validation. World-class companies have a regular cadence of meetings between sales operations and marketing operations to review opportunities and wins and validate proper revenue attribution.

Without a firm sales and marketing handshake, the attribution model is sunk. For revenue attribution to be believable, it must be developed on the foundation of a common CRM record between marketing and sales. Break this cardinal rule and you’ll be left with a sales team that doesn’t believe the attribution numbers. Yes, it’s unfair, but it’s reality. World-class marketing leaders embrace it.

How do I select the right revenue attribution model? There are five main attribution models for assigning revenue dollars to marketing touchpoints that occur during the buyer’s journey. (See “Revenue Attribution Models: One Size Does Not Fit All.”)


After reviewing these models, your first thought must be, “What dunce wouldn’t pick multi-touch?” With a great foundation of tracking and data, that may be the case. However, the right model depends on the fit to your particular business needs. There are five variables to evaluate when selecting a model: buying process dynamics, market influences, capability, capacity, and data integrity.

Buying process dynamics. The complexity, length, and number of decision-makers involved in your buying process influence whether you adopt a simple model or a more complex, multi-touch approach that provides visibility into the entire series of interactions.

Companies with a single decision-maker and a fast-moving buying process may focus on simpler models, knowing that what’s most important is getting a first-time visitor right to sales. In contrast, a complex ERP software company, for example, will benefit from a more complex multi-touch attribution model that captures the entire series of touchpoints.

Market influences. The attribution model should be fit to match the largest challenges you face in filling the top of the funnel and converting eyeballs through the mid-stages of the funnel. If your company is in a fast-paced market and you have a known brand, then your challenges aren’t first touch at the top of the funnel. You are going to focus your attribution model on the difficult work of converting mid-funnel, or maybe even focus on the last touch.

Capability. Match the model selection to your ability to execute. Do you have the foundational systems and the capabilities on your team for a more complex model? Don’t bite off more than you can chew by having the attribution model extract more value than it provides. Attribution modeling is an advanced capability that should not take precedence over foundational efforts to get the marketing team on track.

Capacity. Even if the marketing team has the capability, it must have the bandwidth to execute. Running a lean team requires you to consider the value of the insights offered by each model in the context of the resources you can deploy. It’s a tough call.

Data integrity. The condition of your data must be solid before you even think about overlaying a revenue attribution model on top. Your foundation of tracking, reporting, and contact record management must be at a sufficient level to consider complex models. If data integrity is weak or in question, then start with a simple approach.

Fitting Business NeedsSomething worth noting: Two of the most advanced marketing leaders I interviewed for this article favored simplicity, even though they had the capability to implement a more sophisticated model. One chose first-touch revenue attribution and the other started with last touch.

Nicholas Miller, head of marketing operations at Phillips 66, selected first-touch revenue attribution for his B2B marketing effort. “First touch is the more valued method for our organization,” says Miller. “In my experience, understanding when a prospect first raises their hand is critical as it allows us to truly optimize our spend around filling the funnel. While last touch does show the conversion point, it does not reflect what created that initial interest.


“In my experience, understanding when a prospect first raises their hand is critical as it allows us to truly optimize our spend around filling the funnel. While last touch does show the conversion point, it does not reflect what created that initial interest.”

— Nicholas Miller Head of marketing operations Phillips 66


First-Touch AttributionA company is entering a new market

with little awareness, and has staffed

a full sales team to win market share.

Their win rate is solid and the sales

leader wants to achieve as many

at-bats as she can for the sales team.

The company selects first-touch

attribution to emphasize the importance

of identifying early-stage interest.

Last-Touch AttributionA company with tremendous brand

recognition in a high-growth market

experiences a large quantity of inbound

inquiries. The company selects last-

touch attribution to identify the greatest

impact marketing can make on the

buying process.

Linear AttributionA SaaS company with a single buyer, a

low monthly price point, and a rapid

sales process has a sales team to feed.

The market is competitive and the

marketing team is tasked with bringing

the buyer through the early stages

until it is ready to speak with sales. In

the future, the path to purchase will

vary significantly from buyer to buyer.

The company selects linear attribution

to capture the value of the entire

engagement by marketing.

Time-Decay AttributionA company with a complex buyer’s

journey drives a great deal of attention

through inbound marketing. Audiences

are driven to content of interest that

Business ScenariosWhich revenue attribution model is the best fit for your company? It depends. Consider the following example scenarios.

may or may not indicate prospects

are engaged in the buying process.

The company selects time-decay

attribution to devalue broad-based,

early-stage interactions that occur

in such high quantity, to favor the

deeper interactions that are naturally

more recent.

Multi-Touch Attribution (Algorithmic)A company with a complex buyer’s

journey requires marketing to source

top-of-funnel leads, qualify the

opportunity, and help nurture multiple

decision-makers through the sales

process. The company selects

multi-touch attribution, capturing

the full engagement of marketing

to be successful.

XIJ

IAN

/IS

TO

CK



“In a world that is flooded with marketing propaganda, a prospect’s journey is typically not decided by one source, but multiple. Once on the radar, we focus on moving the prospect through the funnel via solid nurturing campaigns,” says Miller.

Mark Goloboy, vice president of demand generation at Brainshark, selected last-touch revenue attribution. “We chose last touch because it’s easier to tell the story from a business perspective—makes sense to everyone,” says Goloboy. “First touch doesn’t inspire confidence, and requires a leap of faith for the business to see the tie to revenue.” He also decided to start with a last-touch attribution model to minimize implementation risk.

Brainshark recently implemented a multi-touch approach, and has started to transition its measurement from last-touch to multi-touch attribution, for the planning value those insights will bring marketing. See “Business Scenarios” on page 41 for an example of how different revenue attribution models map to various business requirements.

Proving How Marketing Investments Generate Revenue The C-suite looks skeptically at the meaty marketing budget, and it’s largely a mystery to them. CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and boards know that marketing has a role to play; they just

need a better tie-in to the revenue. They want to believe, but without revenue attribution it requires a leap of faith.

Marketing leaders are met with skepticism when they present the executive team with a waterfall report of marketing-contributed pipeline and wins. This view doesn’t show what marketing and sales teams are doing along the buyer’s journey, and it does not account for the totality of effort. Worse yet, the contribution approach is undermined when someone identifies one win in the list of contributions that had nothing to do with marketing.

Revenue attribution provides the executive team with a complete view of how marketing and sales work together. This results in a greater appreciation for the value of marketing’s total effort to generate revenue.

Clint Poole, senior vice president of marketing at Lionbridge, used revenue attribution to make marketing tangible to the executive team. “Revenue attribution started a whole new conversation,” Poole says. “They [executive team and board] wanted a customer-centric understanding of the marketing and sales interaction. Non-sales and marketing execs started to have deep dialogue about the whole journey.”

Revenue attribution gives you the ability to have a very different dialogue with the CEO and board. Take the time to review specific examples of buyers who came through the funnel. Break down all the marketing and sales touchpoints along a time line to illustrate the buyer’s journey. These examples show the totality of effort. Seeing real examples helps the executive team understand the whole buyer’s journey, and makes a skeptical audience believe.

In the past, you may have cited buyer research indicating that over half the customer’s purchasing journey occurs before a prospect reaches sales. Revenue attribution enables you to prove that point and connect it to revenue. Now you can demonstrate how each marketing dollar spent generates revenue. This results in the board, and the CEO, giving you more marketing budget to invest. And with each new dollar invested, organic revenue growth accelerates.

“Revenue attribution started a whole new conversation. They [executive team and board] wanted a customer-centric understanding of the marketing and sales interaction. Non-sales and marketing execs started to have deep dialogue about the whole journey.”

— Clint Poole Senior vice president of marketing Lionbridge

SBI LAUNCHES THE STUDIO

BOOK NOW

WHAT IS THE STUDIO?

The Studio, SBI’s multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art executive briefing center has opened for business. Get three months of work done in three days by

getting unlimited access to all of SBI’s experts under one roof, at one time.




Account for the Length and Complexity of the Buying Process

Multi-touch revenue attribution tracks different interactions throughout the buyer’s journey, assigning a weighted credit to each. By Randall LaVeau


years to get in front of. “Our buyers enter and exit at least three campaigns and consume over 15 pieces of content before we consider them sales-ready,” says the CMO at a Fortune 500 supply-chain software company based in

TIN

PIX

ELS

/IS

TO

CK

As marketers, we spend countless hours on understanding our buyers and their journey toward making a purchase. Along their way, we meticulously identify the actions they take, the questions they ask, and the content they read.

At every step we anticipate buyer needs, serving up the best content we can produce in the format they prefer and through the channel they want. After multiple revisions and a long series of A/B testing, we finally get it. A targeted buyer enters our funnel, consumes our content, opens our emails, enters a sales cycle, and converts to a customer. All that hard work has paid off.

But wait: I just ran multiple campaigns, produced countless pieces of content, introduced the buyer to a business development rep, invited them to two webinars, and passed them to a sales rep for a demo. Who gets credit? That determination is one of the biggest challenges for today’s marketing leaders: creating the best revenue attribution model for their company.

Mapping the Path to PurchaseIn reality, the path to purchase is not linear. In many cases it happens over a series of trigger events that can take months to understand and sometimes



The SBI App



MULTI-TOUCH ATTRIBUTIONFEATURE /

the San Francisco Bay Area. “We are always working to map out the buyer’s journey. However, with so many touchpoints, we still struggle to determine exactly what prompted the buyer to engage and agree to meet with our sales team.”

Single-Touch AttributionOver the years I have seen many marketing leaders default to a single-touch attribution model, essentially awarding 100 percent of the revenue credit to a single marketing touchpoint. In most cases it is the first or last touch. While single-touch attribution is very straightforward, this method doesn’t account for all the content and interactions that take place in between.

Buyers consume multiple pieces of content, attend events, respond to

“Our buyers enter and exit at least three campaigns and consume over 15 pieces of content before we consider them sales-ready. We are always working to map out the buyer’s journey. However, with so many touchpoints, we still struggle to determine exactly what prompted the buyer to engage and agree to meet with our sales team.”

— CMO at Fortune 500 supply-chain software company

emails, view targeted advertisements, and more. Can we really be so bold as to say that just one of those touchpoints was responsible? If so, should we have spent budget and resources on all the other tactics? The answer is clearly no.

Multi-Touch AttributionMulti-touch attribution tracks a number of different touchpoints throughout the buyer’s journey and marketing funnel, and assigns a weighted revenue credit to each. This method enables us to realize credit for all the interactions, not just one.

Best-in-class marketers implement multi-touch revenue attribution in different ways. Read on to determine whether some of these emerging best practices can be put to good use at your organization.

BIK

ER

IDE

RLO

ND

ON

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK


Determining the Right Revenue Attribution Model Like most marketing solutions, a one-size-fits-all revenue attribution model does not exist. The determining factor is the length and complexity of the buying process. Short, uncomplicated sales cycles call for a simplified model; long, complex sales cycles need a more advanced approach.

• Short Sales Cycle: 5–10 touchpoints, 30–60 days

• Medium Sales Cycle: 10–20 touchpoints, 60–120 days

• Long Sales Cycle: 20–50+ touchpoints, 120–365+ days

Short Sales Cycle: Linear Attribution“Why muddy the waters?” says the vice president of marketing at one leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution provider based in San Jose, California. “We know that our solution is a must-have in most B2B companies. We have excellent brand awareness and a cost-effective solution that can be sold in less than 60 days.” As a result, the linear attribution model is the best fit.

Equal credit. The linear attribution model gives equal credit to each

“We are reaching many different buyers who enter the funnel in multiple ways. However, once we capture a lead we know the story to tell. That typically takes four interactions with our content.”

— Vice president of marketing at leading SaaS solution provider

individual touchpoint within the buyer’s journey. For example, if your buyer experiences four touchpoints, each one would be given 25 percent of the revenue credit. “We are reaching many different buyers who enter the funnel in multiple ways,” says the SaaS marketing VP. “However, once we capture a lead we know the story to tell. That typically takes four interactions with our content.”

For this reason, the company assigns the same value to each interaction, knowing they are all important to convert their leads to customers. The cadence of the touchpoints likely changes from buyer to buyer, but the percentage of revenue attached to each is very similar. The key here is to determine which touchpoints will assist the buyer and then plot them accordingly. With a short, simple sales cycle, you can be agile in your approach to distributing the touchpoints and assigning credit to each.

Medium Sales Cycle: U-Shaped AttributionWith a more traditional sales cycle of 60–120 days, it is important to weight the touchpoints differently. For instance, it may be more difficult to


MULTI-TOUCH ATTRIBUTIONFEATURE /

bring prospects through the door and then convert them than it is to advance prospects through the funnel. If this resembles your situation, the U-shaped attribution model is right for you.

Front- and back-loaded credit. The U-shaped attribution model attributes high revenue percentages to the first and last touch, with a small amount of attribution percentages allocated to the touches in between. “We have a very difficult time getting prospects to engage with our sales reps. They are highly technical and don’t consume content or respond to campaigns like a traditional line-of-business customer,” says a director of demand generation at one software security business based in Chicago. “However, once we capture their attention, it is easy to get them to view a demo and read our long-form content.”

Many companies that lack brand awareness as a preferred solution within their space struggle with this

type of situation. Equally difficult is getting a timid buyer to convert to a sales-ready lead. Both highly technical and timid buyers are often reluctant to disclose information about a specific project, budget, or time line. So when you are able to attract and then convert them, you need to emphasize the percentage of revenue attribution at the front and back end. For example, in the U-shaped attribution model, the first and last touch may each receive 40 percent of attributable revenue while the touchpoints in between would receive a nominal amount.

The U-shaped model allows you to prioritize your efforts on the touchpoints that matter the most: capture and convert. As a result, you should spend your resources developing and executing on the best way to get the customer’s attention, and then turning that attention to engagement with your sales force. You will need to research what

“We have a very difficult time getting prospects to engage with our sales reps. They are highly technical and don’t consume content or respond to campaigns like a traditional line-of-business customer. However, once we capture their attention, it is easy to get them to view a demo and read our long-form content.”

— Director of demand generation at software security business

matters most at the beginning and end of the lead life cycle, and distribute credit appropriately.

Long Sales Cycle: Time-Decay AttributionThis is often the most complex multi-touch attribution model to develop. Your buyers may be engaged for months before they show interest in advancing to the next buying stage. Marketing tactics in a long sales cycle often focus on satisfying the information needs of your content subscribers rather than developing leads off a single piece of content. An actively engaged subscriber may consume a large amount of content over the course of many months and then react with increased interest or fall out of the buyer’s journey altogether. For this reason, the time-decay attribution model is appropriate.

Sliding-scale credit. In the time-decay model, buyers advance through the journey very slowly, while incrementally increasing their purchase intent.

Early content consumption is attributable in this scenario, but the weighting is very low compared to attribution given to the touchpoint applied at the point of conversion. A social media post may be enough to get the buyer to subscribe to your content, but the client reference is reserved for buyers who are in the late stages of their purchase decision. For example, the social media post may receive 2 percent of the revenue attribution while the client reference may receive 30 percent, with the


revenue attribution percentage for each touchpoint in between rising incrementally.

“It can take us three quarters to get a lead to convert from our touchpoints. In many cases we had forgotten the initial touchpoint,” says the vice president of marketing at one of the leading ERP vendors in the world. “We knew that first touchpoint was important. However, it was not nearly as important as the touchpoint that got the buyer to convert.”

The illustration groups typical touchpoints into three buckets,

representing top-of-funnel awareness, middle-of-funnel engagement, and bottom-of-funnel conversion. In the time-decay model, multiple pieces of content and touchpoints reside in each bucket and can be used over the course of multiple campaigns directed at multiple buyers. For that reason, it is important to use a sliding scale to assign revenue attribution.

Allocating Resources That Make the Most ImpactRevenue attribution is crucial for making the right decisions about budget allocations, to focus your marketing team’s precious time and

SEO/SEM*Rich Media

Advertising

SocialPosts

PressReleases

Articles

Infographics

Newsletters

Ebooks

CollateralEbooks

TradeShows

Lunchand Learns

ROICalculator

WhitePapers

CaseStudies

WhiteboardVideo

Testimonials

SolutionDemo

Third-PartyResearch

References

TCOCalculator

Pricing

Pur

chas

e In

tent

High

Low

AnalystReports

SuspectsAudience Goal: EducationMarketing Goal: AwarenessConsumption Score: Low

ProspectsAudience Goal: ResearchMarketing Goal: EngagementConsumption Score: Medium

OpportunitiesAudience Goal: SelectionMarketing Goal: ConversionConsumption Score: High

Not in Market Stimulate Interest Define Problem Evaluate Options Recommend Approve Purchase Implement Solution

Customer Buying Stage*Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing

Webinars

Time-decay attribution models assign a weighted revenue credit to each piece of content and touchpoint throughout the buyer’s journey.

limited resources on the highest-impact touchpoints. Determining the right attribution model provides visibility into marketing’s impact along the buyer’s journey.

Before selecting a revenue attribution model, always be sure to take your buyer preferences into account along with the length and complexity of your sales cycle. Of course, more complex attribution models are more difficult to implement. However, the benefit gained from knowing what to produce and when to engage the buyer with each piece will pay off immensely.


Improve Your Relationship with Sales

Time-decay revenue attribution deepens insights into the monetary impact of marketing actions.By Eric Bauer

PE

OP

LEIM

AG

ES

/IS

TO

CK


Revenue attribution is a challenging topic. Marketers are always looking for ways to demonstrate that their investments are connected to revenue generation. New tools allow marketers to leverage metrics that show how various marketing investments impact the company. Attribution modeling is a data-driven approach to measure the monetary impact on lead conversion, opportunity creation, and revenue generation.

When used correctly, time-decay revenue attribution assigns credit proportionally to each touchpoint according to its influence on the customer’s conversion or final purchase decision. The goal of attribution modeling is to determine which touchpoints are producing a positive result, in terms of revenue. By extension, this allows marketers to build business plans based on projected revenue impact.

Bridging the Gap Between Sales and MarketingI recently spoke with a friend from our previous mutual employer. He’s currently leading the marketing team at a midmarket software company. He agreed to speak with

me off the record. Since my only context was the shared experience at our previous company, I was surprised to hear what he had to say.

“Things here are amazing. I’ve never seen better alignment between sales and marketing.” He went on to describe how various sales and marketing team members were friends outside work. They shared experiences together and cultivated a mutual respect for one another that contributed to success in the workplace.

“When used correctly, time-decay revenue attribution assigns credit proportionally to each touchpoint according to its influence on the customer’s conversion or final purchase decision.”



The SBI App


“At our former company, we used to call the salespeople knuckleheads and they would say similar things about us in marketing. Here, mutual respect is one of the keys to our success.”

Achieving that respect hasn’t always been easy. Gaining agreement on an attribution model helped bridge the gap between sales and marketing and create better alignment.


In this example of time-decay revenue attribution, the most credit is given to the touchpoint that is closest to the customer’s conversion or final purchase decision.

Trade Show Attend Respond to Watch Download Scan Webinar Email Offer Online Demo White Paper

35%

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%

Rev

enue

Att

rib

utio

n

For now, they are using a last-touch attribution model. “We review the closed/won data and look back to the last marketing action that led to the conversion of a marketing-qualified lead. Based on that attribution model, marketing is recognized for 40 to 50 percent of the closed/won opportunities.”

“What does sales think of that statistic?” I asked.

“They agree with it. They’re big fans of marketing because they know we are generating quality leads. Salesforce.com is our single source of truth so there’s no debating the data.”

Working in Sync to Advance the Buyer’s Journey He admitted the shortcomings of the last-touch attribution model. “A more sophisticated model would expose more of the buying process and show where marketing and sales are tightly aligned and working in sync to advance the buyer’s journey. It would give us better insights about where to invest our dollars.”

Last-touch attribution is a very simple method that assigns 100 percent of the credit to the last interaction. In the case of my friend’s company, 60 percent of the attribution is given to the website. That statistic didn’t surprise me given the kind of buyer they serve. However, by using the last-touch attribution model, they are missing out on deeper insights about other touchpoints along the buyer’s journey.


TIME-DECAY ATTRIBUTIONFEATURE /

Pros Cons

Customizable algorithm allows marketers to adjust weighting and align to the sales process and brand drivers. Time-decay parameters are subjective.

Commonsense approach recognizes that more recent actions are more influential in conversion to a lead or opportunity.

Without customization, early interactions are discounted regardless of impact; as time decay occurs, the impact of older actions erodes systematically.

Attribution approach is easily understood by sales. Frequency is ignored as a factor in attribution.

Model imitates prospect behavior by providing higher weighting to actions later in the consideration cycle.

Time-decay attribution models are better suited to some companies than others.

Exploring Time-Decay AttributionTime decay is a sophisticated revenue attribution model that looks at the most recent touchpoints to assign credit to appropriate activities. As with last-touch attribution, the time-decay model considers recency. But it looks at the collection of activities in a given period of time, not just the last interaction.

The time-decay attribution model uses an algorithm that gives the most credit (or percentage points) to the interaction that is closest to the conversion. Consequently, it gives less credit to other touchpoints based on the amount of time that has elapsed, or decayed, between the interaction and the conversion. This means that as a prospect progresses through the consideration cycle and becomes a more qualified lead, whatever touchpoint results in passing the prospect to sales gets the most credit for the conversion.

A time-decay model isn’t for everyone. Consider the case of a B2B technology hardware company that I investigated. Their sales cycle averages 180 days. Marketing and sales are tightly aligned, coordinating the go-to-market investments each fiscal year. Together they prioritize various marketing tactics that support the annual revenue goal. They use a time-decay attribution model but need to adjust the algorithm to count interactions

that stimulate the first contact six months before conversion. Without tuning the model, a standard time-decay approach would reduce the impact of those older touchpoints to zero.

On the other hand, a marketing leader inside a B2B software company I talked with has a sales cycle that averages 45 days. She can tightly correlate marketing actions that are attributable to lead and opportunity conversion. A simple, straightforward time-decay algorithm provides the needed insights without customization. “Now we have the ability to optimize,” she says. “We can track what prospects consume along their journey while still giving the most credit to the activity that resulted in a lead conversion.”

Making the Case for an Advanced Attribution Model My friend closed the conversation by making the case for time-decay attribution. “Using a more sophisticated attribution model is tough but I can see the benefit in doing so,” he said. “Currently we are having great success and sales is very happy with marketing. But we know that’s not always the case.

“As we continue to mature, we’ll need to look at a more advanced method of measuring marketing’s impact. I could see time decay as a way to advance our reporting and keep our relationship with sales on track.”


FEATURE

Optimize Your Demand-Generation Spend

First-touch revenue attribution focuses on the signal rather than the noise.By Stephen Trask

If your company is not using a revenue attribution model, you are not alone. But it’s time to get started.

Revenue attribution models the process for measuring the revenue credit associated with each marketing effort. There is no single best approach. This article helps determine whether first-touch attribution is optimal for demonstrating the value of your campaigns.

Take football as an example. Last October 30 was a gray day here in Washington, D.C. My 9-year-old son Ben and I were watching a game together. Quarterback Matt Ryan threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Mohamed Sanu with 31 seconds remaining, rallying the Atlanta Falcons to a 33–32 victory over Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.

I leaned over and asked Ben, “Who gets credit for that touchdown?”

“Sanu gets credit,” Ben replied.

“What about the quarterback?” Ben said, “Yeah, him too.” Before I could even ask about the center or the tackles Ben piped up, “Everyone had a role.”

So here’s the thing: A 9-year-old’s first response was to give credit to the last person who touched the ball. This is an example of single-touch attribution. Specifically, it is a last-touch attribution model. The example where “everyone had a role” is a multi-touch attribution model.

ELN

UR

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

If Ben had told me that the center deserves the credit, that would be an example of first-touch attribution. The fact that I cannot even remember the name of that center illustrates how rarely we give credit in first-touch attribution models when an outcome lies significantly down the line.

First-touch attribution models are simple and support new logo acquisition.The first-touch attribution model allocates all the value to the first program that touched the deal. Typically, this is the lead source.

If you care about topline growth, you need new logos to fill your pipeline. A first-touch attribution model will tell you what channels are generating leads that close the fastest, the most often, and at the highest dollar amounts.

Single-touch models are also the easiest to implement. They are typically not very complex but the trade-off is accuracy. As in the football metaphor, a lot of things



The SBI App



happen after the first touch. Assigning all credit to the first touch can be potentially dangerous. But if you need more new logos, then you need to know where to get them most efficiently.

Many executives are cautious about finding the right entry point into the world of attribution modeling. When I spoke with Kristen Luck, growth strategist and strategic advisor to CMOs at more than a half-dozen different companies, she said, “Nine out of 10 executives I work with who should understand attribution models simply have never considered them, and don’t understand them.”

If you want to get ahead of your competition and grow faster than your market, a revenue attribution model is a good place to start.

Revenue attribution models require alignment of sales and marketing. According to MarketingProfs, organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions experience 36 percent higher customer retention rates and 38 percent higher sales win rates than organizations with misaligned sales and marketing functions.

There’s no better way to get a sales team excited about marketing than to show the results of marketing investments. This shouldn’t be a once-a-year exercise. As often as your organization is sharing pipeline results and revenue information, review data on the most successful marketing campaigns as well as which ones are

DO

TS

HO

CK

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK


FIRST-TOUCH ATTRIBUTIONFEATURE /

falling short. You’ll find that your sales team becomes much more engaged and supportive of marketing initiatives. Keep feeding the machine and showing results, and you’ll have a happy sales team.

After alignment, you need to focus on data integration. Marketers must be able to analyze data that sits on different systems and in different locations, in a wide range of forms and formats—including structured and unstructured data sets. They must be able to collect data from channels such as websites and mobile apps, and to connect to outside sources via APIs and other methods. In addition, marketers need ways to manage and filter data and metadata so they can explore patterns and apply meaningful data to improve marketing and advertising results.

Dmitri Adler, founder of Data Society, told us, “Analytics platforms must do more than report results. They must provide ways for users to explore data with visualization and other tools, and to manipulate it to provide better insight into where your revenue is coming from.”

Measuring the impact of your marketing investment on revenue is valuable only if you utilize that information to drive future decisions.It can be challenging to determine which programs are working and which are not. Sometimes it’s just easier to continue with the status quo. However, following that path leads not only to inefficiencies and wasted money, but also to poor results.

“Nine out of 10 executives I work with who should understand attribution models simply have never considered them, and don’t understand them.”

— Kristen Luck Growth strategist and strategic advisor

To figure out how your marketing activities interact to drive purchases, start by gathering data. Many companies we’ve worked with claim at first that they lack the required data in-house. That is almost never the case. Companies are awash in data, albeit dispersed—and often, unintentionally hidden. Relevant data typically exists within sales, finance, customer service, distribution, and other functions outside marketing.

First-touch revenue attribution helps you focus on the signal rather than the noise. By applying this model, you will be able to remove the programs that are generating zero new logos or minimal revenues. These funds can then be redirected to generate more savings for your organization or redeployed to increase topline growth.

Our clients who have employed these models have often seen a 20 percent increase in new logos over as short a time as six months.

To make your number in 2017, start modeling revenue attribution now.If you are thinking that you need to wait until you have more data, your failure to apply revenue attribution will likely make you miss your number this year. Of course, more data is usually better, but that should not stop you. A wealth of third-party data providers can help fill any gaps.

Determine the value of your total marketing effort. Prove what’s driving revenue and what didn’t work by demonstrating the return on investment your organization needs.


Measure Your Impact on Delivering Quality Opportunities

Every C-level executive cares about the return on invested capital. Measuring the efficacy of your marketing spend determines whether your team is pulling the right levers to grow revenue. But gaining consensus on a believable approach to revenue attribution is no easy task for marketing organizations.

Sales leaders say, “My team executed on the play I called. That’s why sales won the deal.” Marketing leaders counter with, “If we hadn’t pitched that ball to sales in the first place, you never would have had the chance at bat to hit a home run.” Believe me, I’ve watched this conversation transpire in the boardroom many times. The honest answer: Both sales and marketing leaders are right.

We are all looking for the same outcome: profitable revenue growth. But there are only so many sales and marketing dollars to spread around. So the allocation of that money is a paramount concern. That’s why alignment across the two functions is key.

The only way to obtain alignment is through the right measurement. That requires tools (technology), data, people, and time to accurately determine the amount or percentage of revenue that is attributable to marketing content or activities.

BIK

ER

IDE

RLO

ND

ON

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

Last-touch revenue attribution credits the most recent marketing interaction before lead or opportunity conversion. By Eric Estrella



The SBI App



There are several different ways to approach revenue attribution. Some are more complex than others, and each has particular pros and cons. Last-touch attribution measures marketing’s impact on converting leads that produce quality opportunities.

Last-Touch Attribution ScenarioThe last-touch revenue attribution model gives all credit to the most recent marketing action or content touchpoint before lead or opportunity conversion. Let’s explore a real-world scenario demonstrating how this approach would be applied.

You are marketing enterprise software. A prospect matching your buying persona first learned about your company through a search engine that directed him to your website. He navigated to your site and downloaded a white paper.

Then he was dormant for a month or so before responding to a webinar invite. After attending the webinar, the prospect was contacted by a lead development rep who was unsuccessful in securing an appointment with a salesperson. Lastly, your buyer attended a trade show and stopped by your booth. A week later, he reached out to schedule an appointment with a salesperson. This lead was then converted to an opportunity.

“We are all looking for the same outcome: profitable revenue growth. But there are only so many sales and marketing dollars to spread around. So the allocation of that money is a paramount concern. That’s why alignment across the two functions is key.”


LAST-TOUCH ATTRIBUTIONFEATURE /

The buyer had a multichannel and multi-touch journey including your website, white paper content, webinar, and trade show booth. In reality, the webinar may have been the most influential tool in winning over the prospect. But a last-touch revenue attribution model gives the trade show all credit for the conversion because it was the most recent marketing interaction with the buyer.

That’s the downside of a last-touch attribution model. One channel, event, or piece of content may be more influential in progressing the buyer’s journey than the last interaction.

But right or wrong, we lose that aspect. The beauty of the last-touch attribution model lies in its simplicity.

Business Model ConsiderationsA marketer’s nirvana is to accurately measure multi-touch, multichannel revenue attribution. A multi-touch attribution model that weighs marketing activities and content appropriately across the entire buyer’s journey gives full visibility into the efficacy of your marketing spend. Ideal, but difficult to implement.

Kandace Proud, director of revenue marketing at TeleSign, is a talented and experienced demand-generation leader. “At marketing automation technology conferences, everyone shows beautiful attribution models,” she says. “But no one talks about how hard this is. I have a lean team and can’t dedicate a number of resources to do this right. So single-touch attribution gives me the insight I need without the heavy lifting of a more complicated model.”

To Proud’s point, the marketing team needs to have all the right processes, tools, and data in place to do revenue attribution right. As a sales strategy and operations leader, I know the state of data in a typical sales and marketing organization is terrible at best. This leads to incomplete or inconclusive findings.

“At marketing automation technology conferences, everyone shows beautiful attribution models. But no one talks about how hard this is. I have a lean team … So single-touch attribution gives me the insight I need without the heavy lifting of a more complicated model.”

— Kandace Proud Director of revenue marketing at TeleSign

Pros Cons

Last touch is the most believable approach for organizations trying to build credibility with executive leadership and sales.

A single-threaded attribution model rewards only one marketing touch.

A single-touch attribution model is well-suited to a lean organization because it requires less staff to support implementation and measurement.

All marketing channels, events, and content are not created equal. The last marketing touch may not be the one that progressed the buyer.

The less complicated the model, the more straightforward your marketing attribution numbers will be.

An organization may overinvest in a particular type of marketing activity based on a trend it sees using last-touch attribution. In addition, it may underinvest in activities required to source and nurture a prospect.

A last-touch revenue attribution model is simple, but subject to error in assigning credit to the most influential marketing interaction.


How do you determine whether last-touch attribution is the right fit for your organization? The decision hinges on your marketing strategy and selling motions. Consider the following insights from companies that find last-touch attribution works well for their particular business models.

Complex Selling ProcessCompany A has a complex selling process, involving big deals with multiple stakeholders on a buying decision team. In these environments, sales enablement is typically more important than top-of-funnel activities. In other words, marketing’s contribution to the revenue engine focuses on the development of tools that increase deal size and win rate. Needless to say, this is a perfect scenario for last-touch revenue attribution.

Fast-Moving Buyer’s JourneyCompany B is a software company that sells to the SMB market. This company relies on top-of-funnel activity, but also a significant amount of lead-to-opportunity conversion. Because the buying process moves pretty quickly, first-touch or last-touch revenue attribution is the best fit.

That would essentially measure what takes buyers into the funnel—or more importantly, the last thing buyers do or look at that moves them over the hump to conversion. This company gravitates toward the last-touch model because that feels most relevant to the business and provides better visibility into the return on marketing investment.

Strategic Marketing ContributionsThe key in revenue attribution is being able to measure the impact your marketing dollars have on topline growth. Dissecting your marketing strategy to understand the most important contributions will steer you toward the attribution model that best fits your company’s needs.

PE

OP

LEIM

AG

ES

/IS

TO

CK


What you wear to work matters. The line has blurred between professional and business casual. How do you know what’s appropriate for the new business casual?

Your appearance is just as important as the work you provide to your clients, prospects, or future employer. Most people want to be known as a premium brand. Recognize that your appearance, like your work product, must reflect your brand. And be brand-consistent.

Overcoming the Dilemma: Dress Business Casual or Professional?

Your image should exude who you are: credible, trustworthy, and professional. By Lynne Sharrers

SFI

O C

RA

CH

O/S

HU

TT

ER

ST

OC

K


LIFESTYLE

Here are a few tips to help determine how to put your best foot forward at the next business meeting.

Always Dress the PartDress according to your profession and position. If you are in construction, you don’t wear a suit. Your client would expect to see you in jeans and a hard hat. In a professional business environment, suit up and look sharp. You get only one chance to make a first impression.

• Men: Wear a crisp, tailored suit with a modern tie and shined shoes. If you choose not to wear a tie, make sure this reflects your business environment. You never get in trouble for being a little overdressed. It shows you care. The same cannot be said if you are underdressed.

• Women: Same rules apply. A conservative, professional look calls for a tailored suit jacket with a skirt or dress pants. If you wear a skirt, be sure the length is not too short and the slit in the back does not go up too high. A dress shirt or blouse pairs perfectly with a suit, as long as it does not plunge too low or reveal too much.

Whether you don a three-piece suit or a blazer with jeans, your attire should always be clean, pressed, and tailored. Off-the-rack clothing is no longer good enough. You don’t have to spend a fortune on proper tailoring. But you do need to invest in looking the part and dressing the part. A pant hem that is too short or bunches up at the bottom is not a clean, sharp look. This matters regardless of how casual or professional the environment.

Personalize Your StyleA professional look does not have to be boring. Make sure your personal brand shows in your style. You can accomplish this in a lot of ways. For men, a classic sport coat with a bold tie or bow tie and sweater combo is perfect. Add a pocket square to offset your tie. A V-neck is the proper men’s undershirt; avoid T-shirts that show the collar. And no colored undershirts, please. Keep it simple, keep it white.

ALD

OM

UR

ILLO

/IS

TO

CK

Women can always add a tie. Attach a scarf to your briefcase as an accessory. If your dress is conservative, you can still be professional with a print or colored blazer. Custom-fit your clothes for a polished, professional style.

Groom Head to ToeYour appearance goes head to toe. Keep on top of your grooming. Men need a clean shave or well-groomed facial hair—and two eyebrows, not one. Clean nails are a must. For women, makeup should be minimal and natural. Clean nails as well and apply a natural shade of color if polished.

Shoes should never be ignored. You can’t pair that great tailored suit with cheap shoes. Make sure your shoes are polished and always the same tone or darker than your pants. Women, make sure the style and height of your shoe is appropriate for the boardroom.

Accessories can polish up a look while still showing your personal style. Men, think about a classic wristwatch that makes a statement when you rest your hands during a meeting. Women, a non-distracting yet stylish piece of jewelry can help you stand out in a good way.

Now What?Hours are spent prepping your work for your client, prospect, or future employer. Don’t waste those hours by not looking the part. Put just as much effort into your style as you do into your work. Always dress to impress.

“A professional look does not have to be boring. Make sure your personal brand shows in your style.”


ACCESS: THE STUDIO

Welcome to The Studio!

The Studio is a multimillion-dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center located in Dallas, Texas. It was developed by SBI specifically for executive teams inside companies with aggressive revenue growth goals, who don’t have a lot of time to waste, and have a lot on the line.

Guest: Pandora Commercial Sales Team

Pandora’s Customized Agenda HighlightsWednesday Night7:30 pm A record crew from Pandora—14 guests—takes flight to Dallas from the East and West Coasts. We kick off the visit with a casual and festive al fresco dining experience at Savor Gastropub, a true gem located in Dallas’s Klyde Warren Park.

Thursday9:00 am Pandora team arrives at The Studio. The coffee is hot and aromatic. First, a must-do tour to get acquainted.

9:30 am The Pandora and SBI teams roll up their sleeves for an immersive work session to 10x their SBI experience. Peers engage in relevant dialogue to present specific business challenges, while developing customized solutions and execution strategies in real time as they collaborate with the SBI delivery team, including CEO Greg Alexander.

5:30 pm The team gleefully spills out into happy hour at Big Ren’s Bar, after a full day of energized sessions filled

SBI officially opened the doors in January 2017 and achieved instant notoriety with clients and business partners. A highly customized visit to The Studio is specifically designed to be productive and painless for our guests. In this month’s highlight, the Pandora Commercial Sales Team gave SBI an insider’s perspective of their unique business trials and successes.

with furious whiteboard demos of SBI-designed activities on how to help Pandora make the number.

6:00 pm Lights, Camera, Action. Brian Mikalis, Pandora’s head of sales (center photo, left), and Steven Turacek, Pandora’s head of sales operations (middle), accepted the prestigious invitation to be featured on SBI media. They joined Greg on set to share their expertise with our thousands of readers, listeners, and viewers. The SBI podcast and web TV show are produced internally and filmed at The Studio. Get exclusive access to this valuable content at SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/SBI-App.

6:30 pm Everyone unwound and enjoyed the evening over a mouthwatering Texas barbeque with Pandora’s Hipster Cocktail Party pumping in the background.

10:00 pm Bellies full, both teams reluctantly departed from The Studio with mutual respect, a better relationship, and an amplified experience.

Visit SBI online to see Brian and Steven’s interview at SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/Pandora.

By Melissa Valdez

PE

TE

LA

CK

ER


http://SalesBenchmarkIndex.com/Pandora

BACKSTAGE PASS TO SBI

BOOK A VISIT

SPEND TIME WITH GREG ALEXANDER, THE CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF SBI, AND HIS HANDPICKED TEAM OF EXPERTS

Would you like a hand with revenue attribution to make marketing more scientific? Plan a workshop with the SBI team of marketing experts in Dallas at The Studio, SBI’s multimillion-dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center.


Greg Alexander, CEO


ANNOUNCING THE OPENING OF THE STUDIO

BOOK NOW

WHAT IS THE STUDIO?

The Studio is SBI’s new executive briefing center. This one-of-a-kind, multimillion-dollar facility allows clients to get access to all of SBI’s subject-matter experts under one roof. Plan a workshop with the SBI team of marketing experts to accelerate your adoption of revenue attribution.


Greg Alexander, CEO


special issue: revenue attribution - sales benchmark index · 2017-11-08 · multi-touch revenue...

Documents