But it doesn’t have to be so dark. Woods, Chief Technology Officer at Eloqua and co-Author of the new book, Revenue Engine: Why Revenue Performance Management is the Next Frontier of Competitive Advantage, argues, both here and in the book, that Revenue Performance Management sheds light on the once dark arts of marketing, revealing where and how investments throughout the pipeline lead to revenue growth. Now is the time for the C-suite to adopt Revenue Performance Management – and in the video below Steve gives 5 reasons why.
1. Big money goes into sales and marketing. For a typical organization, about 30% to 40% of top-line spend goes into generating revenue. With so much money being poured into these investments, Woods suggests that they be strategic investments.
2. Revenue doesn’t just happen with a closed sale. A lot of companies can see what happened at the last slice of the sales funnel when a deal closes. But to truly understand why that deal closed, you need to view the buyer’s entire journey and all the touch points that influenced the sale along the way. With RPM, you can.
3. Revenue Performance Management gives you the ability to plan ahead. Once you know what investments are pushing leads through your sales and marketing funnel, you can start measuring the impact of your investments two or three quarters out. It’s not just about reacting. It’s about actively planning ahead.
4. You can identify your biggest problems. Instincts might tell you to hire more field sales reps, but is the clog you’re experiencing really at the bottom of your sales funnel? RPM is about pinpointing the pain in your sales cycle so that the investments you make are solving the actual issues, not adding to them.
5. You can see how you stack up against your peers. Without solid, ongoing analysis, it’s difficult to measure performance. You might feel like your sales cycle is too long, but how do you know? Benchmarking, both externally and internally, is a critical component of Revenue Performance Management. Get it down and you can get a grip on the velocity of your sales cycles.
“Now is the time, in 2011, for C-level officers to start looking at the revenue engine of their business in the same way they’ve historically looked at the supply chain and the manufacturing floor,” says Woods.
Woods, and co-Author Alex Shootman, Chief Revenue Officer at Eloqua, will be making several stops along the 2011 Online Marketing Summit Tour. Be sure to stop by and say hello.
