Importance of Sales Reporting in Marketing

Some days it feel as if salespeople come from Mars and marketers come from Venus. In order to improve revenue, both departments need to share information, support common goals, and work to inhabit the same planet. Good sales reporting doesn't just benefit the sales team. 

Time after time, companies have found that better sales and marketing alignment leads to significantly higher revenue. The right data also provides critical information that the marketing department needs to produce leads that salespeople can convert.

How Marketing Can Benefit From Sales Data

Learn some key ways that the marketing department can work with sales data to improve their effectiveness:

Lead Attribution

Marketing reporting needs to encompass more than just which channels produce leads for the sales department. They also need to discover which channels provide the highest quality leads for their sales teams. By sending more qualified leads, marketers will help their partners in the sales department save time, close more sales, and improve relations between the two departments.

Learn sales outreach best practices. Read this blog.

In order to truly benefit a company's bottom line, marketers need to determine where the best leads come from and where the quality of leads could use improvement. This means that leads have to be tagged and tracked through the sales funnel, so they can be credited to the right channels. This information can help the marketing department make better use of their budgets and inform future marketing plans.

Target the Most Effective Titles

Who really makes buying decisions about the company's offers? For instance, should a B2B marketing campaign for managed IT services target small business owners, team leaders, or CIOs? Learning more about prospects who have converted can help marketers focus on the best prospects or tune their marketing materials and offers to a different audience.

The only way to understand who is and who isn't buying is to get this information from sales reporting. The sales department can help by providing input into the creation of buyer personas that represent typical customers, which marketing can in turn use for their targeting.

Learn Which Products or Services Sell Best

If marketers have focused upon products or services that seemed ideal but proven to be tough sells, it might be time to boost revenues by concentrating on other offers. Sales reports should tell marketers what's hot and what's not. Salespeople can also help marketers understand common objections and where prospects drop out of the sales funnel.

If the marketing team still believes the offer should sell, it's time to work with sales to figure out how to finetune the marketing message to bring in better prospects. If sales isn't closing offers, this could indicate a problem with the product, the message, or the way it gets delivered.

Redefine Marketing Messages

Do you know which of your email automation workflows convert best? Even if you know, you may want to probe deeper into the efficiency of each step in either generating repeat business or attracting new customers. Customers in different verticals can vary wildly. It's possible that different classes of customers should have their own workflows.

Customers might be separated by industry, job title, or their place in the sales funnel. For instance, customers who have just asked for a demo may be motivated by different offers than prospects who have just signed up for a white paper.

Sales report analysis should also let marketers know if customers respond better to social posts, phone calls, or voicemail messages. You can tailor your marketing by repeating your successes and refining or dropping those messages that haven't produced good results.

Improve Marketing ROI With Better Sales Data

Marketing and sales should not work as if they are operating on different planets. Sales reporting and marketing reporting are two sides of the same coin. Companies increase revenue when they reduce the gap between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead. Learn how your company can produce MQLs that your sales teams will love.