Marketing activity and sales results should never be reviewed separately. Owners need to trace leads from marketing spend through the CRM to actual customers and revenue—or impressive-looking reports can hide a costly disconnect.
I’ve been in business for more than 20 years, and it still amazes me how long it can take to see certain things clearly.
We’ve now been operating our recently acquired property management businesses for more than 90 days. The dust has settled enough for us to look beyond the immediate demands of taking over six franchise locations and begin examining what is actually working.
That process recently exposed something I’ve also seen in businesses I’ve coached over the years.
A company hires a marketing vendor to manage its pay-per-click advertising, SEO, or another part of its lead generation. The relationship settles into a routine.
They meet periodically. The vendor presents the numbers. There are plenty of clicks, impressions, leads, and activity. The charts look encouraging. Everyone feels reasonably good. A few adjustments are discussed, and the meeting ends.
Then someone eventually looks closely at the CRM.
That’s where the story can change.
In our case, the marketing data appeared to show a great deal of activity. But when we compared it with the sales activity and converted leads inside the CRM, the results did not line up the way we expected.
We haven’t gotten completely to the bottom of it yet, but we’re getting closer.
The problem may involve attribution, lead quality, definitions, follow-up, the handoff between systems, or some combination of those things. I’m not ready to point a finger at one person or one vendor.
But I can already see the larger lesson.
Marketing and sales can both stay extremely busy without anyone confirming that they are actually connected.
Marketing reports on what it produced. Sales reports on what it worked. Both groups may feel good about their activity.
Meanwhile, the owner is looking at the financial results and wondering why all that activity isn’t producing more revenue.
A marketing report is not a sales result.
The owner needs to be able to follow the same prospect from the money spent to generate the lead, through the sales process, and ultimately to the revenue produced. When those pieces live in separate reports, separate meetings, or separate conversations, it becomes easy for a serious gap to remain hidden.
Ideally, marketing and sales data should be compared weekly or every other week. Monthly may be more realistic for many companies, but someone still needs to place the numbers side by side and ask:
Are these leads reaching the CRM?
Are they qualified?
Are we following up quickly?
Are they becoming real conversations, proposals, and customers?
And can we trace the result back to what we spent?
After more than two decades in business, I’m beginning to believe that some of the most dangerous numbers aren’t necessarily wrong.
They’re simply being viewed alone.
What reports in your business are telling you everything looks fine—and what might you discover if you compared them with the next step in the process?
Mike