Lead Gen Metrics That Matter

Nice post yesterday on Craig Rosenberg's Funnelholic blog, where he discusses what he feels are the key metrics to look at when judging campaign effectiveness. I don't think they're the exclusive metrics to measure (I don't think Craig feels that way either) but I agree they are important KPI's to monitor:

• Lead-to-opportunity conversion: For every lead you create, how many turn into sales opportunities?
• Cost per opportunity: Instead of CPL, calculate the lead-generation costs and divide by sales opportunities created. This should include lead development/ qualification costs and nurturing costs.
• Total pipeline created: How much sales pipeline has been created by your leads?

He goes on to mention that CPL (Cost Per Lead) has become less relevant as a meaningful metric, because it doesn't tell you if the lead actually resulted in pipeline or revenue. You could have a very low CPL and be creating leads that mean absolutely nothing to your sales team.

As well, he makes a good point re: ROI. In the big picture the executive team wants to know which leads resulted in how much closed/booked revenue. But that does loop in sales performance into the measurement of marketing performance. If the marketing team delivers a BANT-scored, sales-ready, teed up lead, which ultimately is not closed due to sales dropping the ball, is it right to say that the marketing team has failed? Good point to ponder.