Key Sales, Marketing Metrics for a QBR

Often in QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews), I see a big difference in how sales and marketing organizations present their metrics. Sales organizations primarily focus on lagging indicators, whereas marketing spends too much time on leading indicators. And both don’t spend enough time on what I call the “Most Valuable” indicators.

Typically, sales organization goes into details about pipeline, bookings performance , sales rep productivity, key wins/loss metrics etc. in the QBRs.  But they should also be looking at leading indicators that are a likely measure of how they are expected to perform in future quarters.  These include pipeline velocity, demo or trial request trends, product usage metrics (for PLG companies for up-sell and cross-sell rates), on-boarding success rate (for future retention and account growth), % of reps that are fully enabled, Sales rep churn rates etc.

On the contrary marketing tends to focus too much of their QBR on leading indicators such as SQLs, web traffic, content engagement, social engagement etc.  I would like them to spend more time in the QBR reviewing some key lagging indicators such as conversion by marketing mix and key learnings from it, performance of top 3 programs and why, review of top 3 non-performing programs, velocity of pipeline attributed to marketing etc.

Finally, both groups should be reviewing these ‘Most Valuable” metrics, since these are the important determinants of a SaaS business’s future health:

• Bookings performance vs. plan by product/region/industry
• Pipeline velocity by sales, channel and marketing attribution
• CAC (Customer acquisition cost) and trends by key segments/regions. This metric should be a key marketing discussion.
• MRR attributed to top planned marketing programs and top sales plays.
• Gross Retention Rate (%) performance vs target
• Net Retention Rate ($$) performance vs target
• NPS or Customer sat score by segment and region.

If you have more questions or need some help with revenue analytics, please reach out to me via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/applicationsmarketing/