Marketing Interactions

Accountability is not Effectiveness...Or is it?

The advances in accessible technology and metrics software has resulted in B2B marketers being challenged to demonstrate quantifiable results. Everyone is talking about the need for ROI. The biggest problem I see with this is that numbers can be created to measure a lot of stuff. Not necessarily the stuff that matters.

As our digital environments evolve, what gets measured has to evolve in parallel or we end up measuring apples against pomegranates. Unfortunately, evolving in parallel is not as simple as it should be.

Marketing Automation platforms, web analytics software, trackable link services (BudURL, for example) Blog comments, Twitter followers and ReTweets, etc. have all provided more things we can measure. Then you have your old standards of clicks, pageviews, website inquiries, download forms, blah, blah, blah.

But, to what end?

Who cares if your white paper got downloaded 5,000 times if nobody takes the next step in their buying process with you?

So you have 12K followers on Twitter but no one is actually "talking" to you. To which you say, but wait, we got 14 RTs from that last link we posted. And that produced...???

As marketers, we not only need to be accountable, but also effective. To be effective means we need to have goals and objectives and then achieve them. Those objectives need to play a role in creating customers. Tracking marketing's role in customer acquisition is a direct reflection on both the accountability and effectiveness of our marketing programs. (and potentially our alignment with sales)

Did you notice the dependencies?

This means we have to plant a stake in the ground about what we're trying to achieve.

The interesting thing is that, since we're no longer in control of how our messages spread, the means to achieving our objectives can veer from the expected. And we may not know how to measure those shifts. Or worse, be unaware that they're happening. Don't panic if you can't account for everything right away. By paying attention to triggers you can often back into this knowledge.

Determine a defined number of triggers that play an obvious role in identifying prospects who actually become customers. Determine what caused these transitions to sales readiness. The goal then becomes to create initiatives that get our prospects to pull those triggers.

Start from the sale and work backwards. (Involving salespeople is wise.)

• What was the last online metric they hit before they purchased? (this could be after the handoff to sales, so look closely)
• How many pre-sale touch points can you track to that buyer prior to purchase? Are those interactions related or all over the map?
• How did each of those pre-sales touches originate? (proactively or prompted and from what source?)
• Try to define shifts in recency and frequency that occur at various buying stages across the buying cycle. Pinpoint the cause. (Did they read a white paper and then click on a hyperlink in the PDF and then read another resource linked to that content?)
• Which content did they access and spend time with? (random clicks vs. demonstrated topical interest)

What you're looking for is repetitive behavioral patterns initiated and extended by your marketing initiatives that helped produce a sale.

If you're using social media, is there a higher ratio of social dialogue or content interactions? Is one driving the other?

It's important to consider the length of the buying cycle. A complex sale is usually too long to only measure closed deals. But by focusing on reinforcing the patterns you uncover that pull buyers toward purchase decisions, marketers can set milestone objectives to measure pipeline progression.

This isn't easy and it takes time. You don't have to focus on all the triggers you identify at once. Choose a few well defined transition points and work on getting more prospects to move past those. By ensuring that accountability reinforces effectiveness, your marketing metrics will work to build credibility for your initiatives within your organization.

What are your B2B leads doing?

With B2B digital marketing, measuring KPIs has got to go beyond basic activity. Otherwise it's just clicks. Clicks won't get you anything unless they result in sales somewhere down the trail.

This focus on activity without regard to sales is most likely a carryover from the time when digital marketing meant a standalone email campaign that couldn't be tracked much farther. One addition to email clicks and opens might have been to monitor traffic to the URL specific to the marketing message—provided it wasn't otherwise accessible.

But, today, that's just not good enough. With marketing tasked to quantify business value delivery, they've got to reach much farther and prove impact to pipeline progression and, ultimately downstream revenues.

And, now—yes—I'm going to state again that it's important to use marketing automation technology. Without it, you can't track much that's relevant to those outcomes. Plus, many of these systems also integrate with CRM systems providing marketing visibility across the pipeline to the end result of wins, no decision or lost deals.

Some of the measurements marketing needs to be able to show include:

• lead progression across buying stages
• impact on pipeline growth
• rate of contact-to-lead transition
• growth in lead-to-opportunity conversions (sales-accepted)
• individual vs. aggregate behavioral trends
• reduction in time to revenue
• increase in dollar volume - nurtured vs. not

In order to measure these types of metrics, they need to be built into your marketing campaigns before you launch them. In fact, I'd wager that any marketing program launched without a focus on something related to the above list will not help marketing prove the value they're delivering in relation to the related dollars the business is spending in hopes of achieving them.

Now, before you run screaming from the room, this stuff takes time. So, the sooner you get started, the better.

It won't work to try and achieve results reported by other companies. You've got to benchmark where you are now and work to beat your own numbers. Otherwise you'll make yourselves nuts by trying to compare persimmons to pecans.

That said, paying attention to what your B2B leads are doing is the first step in trying to get them to do more of it. How you structure your campaigns (read use content) will play a critical role. But as soon as you realize that all activity is not created with the same value, you're on the right track.

CMOs lack credibility with CEOs

The CMO Club recently polled its members about who has the most credibility with the CEO. Results show:

• 31% CFO
• 24% Head of Sales
• 13.8% CMO

While I'm not surprised to see CFO or Head of Sales ahead of the CMO, I am disappointed in the low percentage equated to CMOs—by CMOs. That said, I think CMOs are in a tough position where they've got to make the transition from vague marketing reports to hard-hitting proof points reflecting their contribution to business objectives on the CEO's agenda.

In response to the poll, The CMO Club asked respondents to provide some insight to their ratings. Their reasoning includes:

• CEO interest in the reports provided.
• Speaking the same language.

CEOs spend more time with CFOs and heads of sales because their priorities include managing the company's coffers and filling the company's coffers—ultimately increasing shareholder value.

If marketing wants to be considered a core pillar of their company's success, they need to pay some attention to perception. One of the best ways to do this is to build better relationships with those who do have the CEO's ear—the CFO and the head of sales.

Sort of like influencing the influencers.

Reports need to focus on things like:

• increase in sales-qualified leads
• increase in pipeline progression
• contribution to reduction of sales cycle 
• reduction in customer defections
• efficiency of budget spend related to outcomes produced

Focusing reports on lead generation numbers and growth in presumptive customer affinity doesn't mean anything unless it results in deals closed or customer contract renewals. For reports to merit attention, they must prove marketing initiatives are helping to produce business results.

This is why it's imperative for CMOs to work hand-in-glove with heads of sales. In order to gain insights that reflect high-impact contributions in reporting, marketing needs visibility across the sales process after the handoff. The farther into the pipeline marketing can provide assistance that enables sales to win more deals, faster, the more ammunition they have for hard-hitting reports CFOs will want to see.

When the CFO sees value in the efficiency of the budget spend in regards to the results produced, you've given them something to talk to the CEO about. And, you've safeguarded your budgets. When heads of sales can report higher sales, their professional status soars.

Think about this for a minute. Marketing spends a lot of time (or should) helping prospects and customers learn how to solve problems. In order to do that they learn the language thier buyers speak and they use it to increase relevance. They focus on high priority issues from the buyer's perspective.

Any of this ring a bell?

Well, why can't CMOs apply the same strategy to elevate their status with those who have the CEO's attention?

The more you help someone, the more they're inclined to repay the favor. That's human nature. Plus, they won't want you to stop.

If CMOs can get CFOs and heads of sales to sing their praises, CEOs will start taking notice of marketing as more than just a department that exists because, well, they're supposed to have one.

Update 5/12/09: suggested addition to report bullets up above by @treehousei via Twitter - hard dollar campaign ROI - Thanks Chris! Although often hard to do based on specific campaigns depending on sales cycle time if you're measuring throughput.

A Marketing Conversation with the CFO

Everywhere I look I see the mantra "Do More With Less." Budgets are being cut or re-purposed requiring CMOs to substantiate the effectiveness of marketing programs to make a valid case for continued funding for their marketing initiatives.

Last week, I wrote about Scott Santucci's new report, Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Sales Support. A conversation with the CFO was a component of that report and it got a lot of coverage during the webinar on the same subject. Forrester's CFO, Mike Doyle, was on the panel and provided some great insights to how CMOs can have effective conversations with their CFO.

Here are a few of the key points CMOs need to clarify for their CFOs:

• Show linkage between spending and outcomes.
  • Explain why and how.


• Discuss how each marketing program drives top line sales results.


• Highlight changes and refinements that create improved results over time.
  • Show movement and progress against goals.


• When a program is on the chopping block, be prepared to discuss both the short and long-term ramifications of losing it.
  • Delineate cause and effect.


• Tie all your marketing initiatives to strategic priorities defined by the CEO.

Essentially, the conversations that CMOs have with their CFOs need to focus on business priorities with proof points that marketing programs are helping to produce beneficial strategic outcomes.

Marketing needs to focus on measurement as it relates to business progression. It's not enough to say that your new marketing program generated 75% more clicks than your last one. You've got to reach farther than that to demonstrate cause and effect that moves the business closer to defined goals.

This is why every marketing program you create needs to have defined KPIs (key performance indicators) prior to launch. If one goal is to increase reach into prospect companies to create additional access points, then you should be able to show how much depth your campaign produced in the short term and follow that up with the longer-term business impact.

If you began with an average of one contact per prospect account and now have an average of three contacts per prospect account after the initiative, you've increased your reach to purchase influencers. The next step may be to show that marketing can motivate those influencers to help increase the momentum of overall prospect account conversion.

Think creatively about how you can evidence marketing outcomes and tie them to business priorities. Look at sales goals and demonstrate how marketing initiatives support them. An example may be that since marketing has now increased contact depth at prospect companies, salespeople are setting more meetings and demo requests are increasing.

Then tie resulting sales (longer-term goal) back into the short-term incremental results of the marketing program.

Learn from sales what changed / improved from that added depth.

• Shorter time to sale?
• Less objections for sales to overcome?
• Less education needed from sales reps?
• More conversational kudos across social networks producing higher credibility in your market?

For the CFO conversation, show the tie-in to achieving business priorities. And, as you'd expect me to say, marketing automation is a must-have to give marketers the information to generate the insights CFOs need to back up their CMOs.

Periodic Table of Inside Sales

Trish Bertuzzi and The Bridge Group have been doing some great research on what makes inside sales tick. But they've taken it a step farther and produced a really useful tool for comparing your company's metrics against benchmark metrics.

Because this is such a cool tool, I asked Trish to share a few insights salespeople can extract from the information in the table and apply to their company's inside sales efforts.

Ardath: Can you tell us the basis for the Periodic Table of Inside Sales?

Trish: The Periodic table is a summary sheet based on the data we collected from our Inside Sales and LeadGen Metrics and Compensation reports.  They are the result of surveys with 125 technology companies in North America.  The reports are 30 some odd pages long and executives often prefer the short version and that is what this is – a cheat sheet so to speak.

[You'll find both the reports available for download on the same page as the table.]

Ardath: There's a lot of meaty information in this table. Can you highlight what you see as the top 5 challenges facing inside sales teams today?

Trish: Here's where I see companies struggling in today's selling environment.

1. Productivity – Companies are being forced to do more with less. Reps are caught in the trap of trying to be everything to everyone.  Farmers are forced to hunt and hunters are forced to prospect more than they ever have before. 
   
   We no longer have the luxury of specialized sales teams and are forced to have our teams become “jack of all trades”.  This is impacting productivity dramatically as the reps fumble to acquire skills they either don’t have or have not used in a while.


2. Performance – 64% of all inside sales teams and 72% of all leadgen teams achieve quota.  Doesn’t sound bad BUT you have to remember…these are averages and there are quite a number of reps that perform below acceptable rates. 
   
   The real question is why and there are two possible explanations – either the goal was wrong to begin with or the reps are not being provided with the tools and training they need to adapt in this selling climate.  Each company has to figure out which it is and make changes and investments accordingly.


3. Motivation – Selling is not for sissy’s – now more than ever.  How do you keep your team motivated when they not only suffer massive rejection every day but also lose deals because of layoffs and budget cuts?  It is not an easy task especially with limited funds for traditional spifs and contests. 
   
   What you can do is get creative.  All reps want to learn – invest time in mentoring and coaching.  You have the skills to share so take the time to do so and it will pay off in spades.


4. Training – What is the one thing that gets cut when times are tough – training.  What is the one thing that shouldn’t get cut when times are tough – training.  Need I say more?


5. Systems – Implementing your CRM used to be a daunting task but with the advent of SAAS, it has become a non-issue, well almost anyway.  But what has emerged as a problem is integrating your CRM with all the great Sales 2.0 technologies that are out there. 
   
   The tools that are meant to increase productivity are starting to impact productivity because of lack of integration.  On a daily basis, our team uses: salesforce.com, InsideView, Zoominfo, Jjigsaw and LinkedIn just for pre-call planning! 
   
   Each and every one of these tools is amazing, but how do you seamlessly link them and develop a process so that your reps are efficiently selling and not spending too much time in research mode? That is the challenge.  Add to it all the back office systems that need to be integrated and you can see the problem.

Ardath: I can see how each of these challenges plays off another. If you had to choose, what would you say are the top metrics that inside sales should start focusing on to improve their outcomes?

Trish: I'd suggest starting with these three metrics to increase productivity:

1. Make sure your reps are using live conversations with your prospects to drive the sales process.  Email is not a substitute and does not allow for effective qualification or closing to take place. 


2. It takes multiple touches to move a suspect to a prospect and a prospect to a win.  Not all of these have to be “human” touches so make sure sales and marketing have developed an integrated strategy for getting it done.


3. Pay attention to your conversion ratios.  If you don’t have a grasp on the numbers detailed in the Periodic Table then you can’t control your results.

Ardath: That's some great information for us to use in conjunction with your Periodic Table for Inside Sales. Any final words for my readers?

Trish: Inside Sales is not magic...it’s not art…it is science.  You need to create the formula that works for your organization and then execute flawlessly!

***
Go get your copy of the Periodic Table for Inside Sales. And, while you're there, get copies of the research reports that go with the tool.

After you review it, let me know your thoughts.
Did you find metrics that surprised you?
Are there any your company is beating?
Which ones do you find the most challenging to address?

Thanks to Trish for the great information!

Marketing Mismatch on Data Needs

Over coffee this morning, I was reading the article From Data to Dollars in the Spring 2009 issue of 1to1 Magazine and saw a disconnect in thinking that made me scratch my head.

On the page was a chart in answer to the question:

What Customer Data Would You Like to Collect That You Don't Now?

Psychographic - 11%
Demographic - 9%
NONE - 9%
Competitive information - 6%
Customer needs and preferences - 6%
Web activity - 5%

On the next page is a graph that shows:

The Top 5 Uses of Customer Data:

Understanding customer value/profitability - 47%
Crafting marketing messaging - 47%
Creating up/cross-sell offers - 46%
Segmentation - 34%
Pricing - 20%

Now, maybe I need more caffeine this morning, but it seems to me that if you want to understand customer value/profitability and craft effective marketing messaging, then you need to know customer needs and preferences. How can you even attempt to create up/cross-sell offers if you have no idea of needs?

Additionally, knowing more about website activity can also help you pinpoint interests and levels of engagement to help you increase the relevance and value of your messaging.

I'm sorry, but I'm lost with this disconnect about what marketers think they need to accomplish what they want. Especially in this market where the buyer is taking control of their buying process.

Don't get me wrong, psychographic and demographic information is great, but without determining needs and preferences, really, who cares? Just because they could be your customer doesn't mean they have an urgent priority to become your customer.

The 9% who don't want to collect any more customer data either have this one handled or can't effectively use the data they already have. I wonder what the split was...

**The graphs sourced from 1to1 Media's Spring Data Survey

Putting my riff above aside, the article offered some valuable tips marketers should consider when crafting a strategy to leverage the data they're collecting.

For Sales & Marketing - remember they use data in different ways. "The key is in provisioning data to divisions so that each can look at the same data in their own way." I'd take that even further and stipulate that it would be helpful for marketing to present data in a way that enables salespeople.

Reducing Customer Churn: "With the right data and analysis, most any company can take steps to reduce turnover before it happens." Customer retention is high on the list for most companies in this economy. Go look at the activity history of customers that've defected recently and start connecting the dots. Then apply that insight to take proactive steps to reduce any other customers indicating less than total satisfaction.

Leverage Web analytics: "Right now Web analytics can be highly lucrative. With experimentation companies can make messages more relevant and track which are most effective." Oh, so true. It's all in how you look at the data and scale your view from an aggregate or segment view to that an individual prospect.

It's a given that technology enables marketers to collect a lot of data. The trick is in having a plan for how you'll use it. Otherwise, well, it's just data.        

Marketing Metrics: The Hard and The Soft

There's a huge amount of discussion lately about measuring marketing based on ROI. And there seem to be two camps—Hard and Soft.

The Hard Marketing Camp wants to tie everything to sales metrics saying anything that doesn't result in a revenue measurement doesn't count.

The Soft Marketing Camp is focused on initiatives that drive engagement, conversations, interactions, awareness and brand.

Some of this distinction is tied to getting the respect of the executive team which translates into higher budgets.

However, I can't understand the dichotomy. In my opinion, you need both. In a B2B complex sale, [actually any sale] you can't get to revenue without Soft Camp initiatives. In fact, the more "social" marketing becomes, the higher a degree of Soft will be needed to generate Hard results.

This is why I'm such a big fan of marketing automation technology and the ability to score behavior and demographics, as well as shine a light on how prospects turn into buyers. What marketing ultimately needs are progressive metrics that help them prove Soft initiatives drive Hard results. That's what creates solid ROI.

What matters is being able to show, measure and evaluate how each outcome you track feeds into the sales process and, ultimately, impacts the generation of downstream revenues.

In fact, I'd say that proving exactly how marketing is driving demand and displaying that you have the knowledge to consistently move the needle holds more merit than just pointing to the end result without being able to definitively prove how you got there.

With marketing measurement becoming more sophisticated, imagine the ability for marketers to know the factors that cause buyers in specific segments to become sales ready. With integration into CRM, those metrics can be extended to show what happens on the other side of the funnel, as well.

The more visibility marketers have, the less focus will be spent on quantity and the more on quality. The Soft initiatives are what help determine quality—as long as you can measure them. The Hard revenue metrics are what tells you that the quality equation is correct.

For example, what if marketing could prove that Persona A has a 70% probability of buying after exhibiting these behaviors within their activity history (not necessarily in this order):

• specific white paper downloaded


• 3 personal interactions (comments left on blog and responded to, Twitter exchanges, replies to email sends of thought leadership content, etc.)


• opt in for related subject matter email program and they click through on 60% or greater of the sends.


• viewed on-demand demo for their vertical

By discovering specific patterns of behavior, marketers can tweak scoring to measure for their occurrence.  In fact, they could even drive those actions to occur once the pattern has been discovered. Think about the improvement to pipeline forecast accuracy and what that could mean for your company.

Now, all that said, I believe the Hard and the Soft is all one big Combo Camp. Ultimately, if the Soft Camp can't get to related revenue metrics, there's a problem. In a complex sale environment with a longer selling cycle, you've got to measure all the progressive steps to revenue. There are a lot of places along the way that could impact the end result you're after.

Without establishing buying process measurements that track from lead generation throughout sales activities, you'll have a really hard time figuring out just where those gaps exist. Let alone be able to close them.

Being able to show progressive behavior across the pipeline holds merit. In fact, if you can prove marketing is increasing the number of conversations and interactions during each stage—and that those activities lead to active demand—then your revenue numbers will follow suit.

Conversion Metrics Aren't the Whole Meal

[And, rounding out my food motif for this week...I promise I'll get back to normal next week...well, maybe.]

With all this talk about quantifying marketing value many companies are like lasers focused on conversions to sales as the be all, end all metric. But, unless you apply plenty of thought into all the other metrics and steps that influence conversions you might be missing out on optimizing how many you can actually generate—even during an economic downturn.

Here's why.

A complex sale requires many steps before the buyer arrives at a purchase decision. If your company is only focused on the conversion metric, how will you improve it? Would you even know what can trigger a change?

Consider all the stages of the buying process and measure incremental progress through the pipeline. Are prospects stalling along the way? If you can pinpoint hesitations and develop provoking content that helps to move them over the hump, you'll increase conversion.

Consider which sources attract the most prospects to engage with you. Are there new audiences expressing interest that will move faster if you tailor content just for them? And, are you providing a continuous supply of content to the best origination sources or treating all of them as equal opportunities? When's the last time you looked?

How many days does the average prospect spend with marketing? How many with sales? Are you seeing a decrease in these numbers over time? An increase?

Same with contacts or touch points. Is it taking more content and communications to get progression? Consider the content you're using and audit it for value and relevance. If you're not creating your content for specific audiences start with one segment and measure the changes. Then branch out to other segments once you've got the hang of it.

How are you measuring progress? Do you do tele-prospecting to add a personal touch and inquire? Have you mapped content to buying stages and tuned the process to closely match how your prospects move forward at each step? Are you asking incremental questions for high-value content downloads or webinar registrations?

Is sales seeing less effort to connect with the qualified prospects marketing is giving them? If not, is the messaging they're using consistent with the marketing story those prospects have been told thus far?

The point is that conversion doesn't happen on it's own without other influences. You have to work on all the factors that play into producing that desired result. When you do, you'll find you can lift that conversion number skyward.

How effectively are you using B2B data?

Last week, I wrote a post, Lift Revenues 70% By Cleaning Up Dirty B2B Data. Vaibhav Domkundwar from Ready Contacts posted a comment which included this statement:

"Every SFDC customer who adopted web-based CRM over the last 1-5 years is at a point where they are realizing how out-of-control their data is and how critical it is for them to get it in order."

His comment inspired me to think about not just the cleanliness of data, but how effectively we're using what we collect in our sales and marketing efforts. 

Given the growth in the amount of data we can collect—and how "out of control" it's getting—we need to start thinking about which of it is most important to the outcomes it can help us achieve. We only have so much time and we're being charged to do more than ever with our marketing and sales efforts.

Data is pretty much the holy grail for e-marketing where how well you're able to  monitor behavior and read between the clicks and dialogue of online interactions plays an increasingly important role in the success of your marketing efforts. How we pass those insights on to sales and circle back to learn what they've done impacts what marketing actually contributes to company objectives.

Funnily, this process has become how we get to "know" our prospects. So it makes sense that it's kept up-to-date and that we use the information wisely.

Based on our goals of offering better experiences because we actually "know" our prospects well enough to offer relevant and valuable content they need, we need to focus on paying attention to the information that helps us meet that goal, as well as sets us up for the next one.

Different goals require specific insights. In order to reduce information overload to an actionable data set, we need to start thinking strategically about which information will help us achieve each goal. Otherwise we can lose the trees in the forest.

And, it goes without saying that if it's information you have to ask for, your prospects' willingness to fill you in has limits. Remember that actions often speak louder than words. Plus actions may be all you have to go on until the prospect decides to engage in dialogue.

There's an abundance of data that can be collected and behaviors that can be monitored. What's important is the contribution the data makes to the effectiveness of your initiative.

For each campaign you plan, you need to determine which data will help you achieve your stated goal. You may think you know a whole lot about your prospects, but demographic information isn't necessarily the most actionable.

Consider these data observation points:

Recency - When was the last time the prospect accessed your information? If you haven't seen them in 5-6 months, it's likely your short-term value has diminished for them.

Frequency - Does their behavior indicate they find continuous value in your content, or was it just that one white paper download?

Depth - Do they read just the content at the end of the link you send them or do they reach farther into your expertise on related topics?

Participation - Do they comment on your blog, reply to your emails or submit inquiries on your website? Do they fill in the "optional" fields on your webinar registration forms? And, do they actually attend the events?

Breadth - Do you have more than one contact at that company who's given permission for you to send them email? How do the behaviors between all of these contacts match up?

That lift of 70% in revenues based on clean data isn't just because it's clean. It's based on how well you can take action that validates what you think you know by creating valuable interactions embraced by the prospect on the other end.

Lift Revenues 70% By Cleaning Up Dirty B2B Data

Yep. It's true. Based on data quality improvements alone, an organization that pays constant vigilance to the accuracy and quality of their database information can gain a huge upside. And, in this market, you need every advantage you can get...right?

Sirius Decisions released the results of a recent study where they "found that from 10 to 25 percent of b-to-b marketing database contacts contain critical errors—ranging from incorrect demographic data to lack of information concerning current status in the buying cycle."

The problem seems to be that dirty data is easier to sweep under the rug than to clean up. It's not sexy, it's not social and—most of all—it's not cheap. But it's one of those tasks companies need to roll up their sleeves and address. Especially if one of this year's goals is to get conversational and increase relevance to aid in shortening sales cycles.

Read this again, just to stay focused:

"...a strong organization will realize nearly 70 percent more revenue than an average organization purely based on data quality."

And, just in case you want to start pointing fingers and slough this task off to another department, consider that impacts were found across the buying journey. This means that the organization as a whole needs to take this on, but at a minimum, it makes the case for better alignment and feedback loops between marketing and sales.

An example of the breadth of impact across the sales cycle from data quality improvements includes:

• 25% increase in conversions from inquiry to qualified marketing leads
• 12.5% increase in transitioning qualified leads to sales opportunity when you unify data from disparate sources
• 5% reduction in selling time

But reaping these rewards doesn't come easily. It's not a once-and-done kind of thing.

B2B databases double in size every year or so, increasing the probability of data errors. People change jobs and roles. Their buying behavior speeds up and slows down due to constant shifts in priorities based on trigger events. Conversations that aren't recorded can impact your credibility based on foot-in-mouth syndrome if you're not up to date on previous dialogue and interactions.

Data is about the most important thing you've got to work with in a digital business environment. Being out of tune with your prospects and customers hinders your ability to create the consistency and competence that buyers require from their vendors.

Buyers are taking control of their buying process. The closer you can get to them, the more accurately you know their situations, the higher the opportunity for you to be consistently relevant and valuable.

Better quality data means you'll have better:

• persona and profile information
• segmentation capabilities for personalization
• higher engagement due to content relevance (based on insights)
• more accurate sales forecasts
• better delivery for email campaigns
• a more accurate gauge of interest levels
• higher credibility
• valuable conversations
• and so much more...

It may not be glamorous, but data cleanliness is critical to creating sustainable growth. If knowledge is power, you're only as powerful as the quality of that knowledge. When your data is dirty, chances are that it'll be hard to build the credibility you need to generate relationships that produce mutual value.

Why in the world would you leave that to chance?