Achieving accurate, meaningful performance reporting can seem like an insurmountable task. As a result, many organizations simply de-prioritize this critical task. However, as we shared in a previous blog post “If You Can’t Show It, Did It Really Happen? The Need for Effective B2B SaaS Reporting”, establishing and tracking metrics that are accepted by your whole GTM organization is an absolute necessity for successful growth. To get started, here are the basic metrics most B2B SaaS companies use to measure inbound funnel performance.
New Users – A ‘new user’ is a visitor who, according to Google’s tracking snippet, is initiating their first session on your site (Source: Google Analytics)
Leads – A user who submits their contact information on your website (i.e. usually via a form fill) and is added as a new contact to your database. (Source: CRM/Salesforce)
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) – A marketing-generated lead, with legitimate contact information, that is ready to be passed on to the sales team. Companies with high inbound lead volume may wait until a lead has demonstrated sufficient engagement and interest (i.e. opened several emails, visited the website multiple times, filled out a “request a demo” form on your website, etc) before passing it to the sales team. (Source: CRM/Salesforce)
Note: For simplicity’s sake, we will assume all leads are coming in from your website. (In reality, there may be other sources of inbound leads such as LinkedIn Lead Gen forms).
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) – A qualified marketing-generated lead that also “passes” the sales team’s demographic and firmographic qualification criteria. For organizations with BDR/SDR teams, this is also when a lead gets assigned to a salesperson (Source: CRM/Salesforce)
Opportunities – The criteria for turning a lead into an opportunity varies widely across organizations, but the sales team needs to (1) successfully connect and communicate with the lead; (2) verify that the lead has secured budget, sufficient authority, and a need that the company can address; (3) confirm lead is an active buyer (i.e. able/willing/ready to purchase a solution) Source: CRM/Salesforce
New Deals – An opportunity that has been closed and won to acquire a new customer.
(Source: CRM/Salesforce)
Pipeline – The sales “pipeline” refers to the total number of opportunities with a high likelihood to close by a certain date in the near future and the expected revenue these opportunities represent. In other words, a pipeline is a good way to forecast future sales. (Source: CRM/Salesforce)
TL;DR
Developing performance reporting can be overwhelming. To get started, share this list of core metrics with your go-to-market team and ensure there is agreement on what you should be measuring. Then, take time to achieve alignment around the definition and source for each metric. Once you start tracking these metrics with consistency, you can start to get a clearer picture of funnel performance today and over time. We will address interpreting core performance metrics in part 2 of this post.
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