When I meet other CEOs or CROs to share ideas about scaling revenue, we always talk about how closed-won deals really start at the very top of your “Marketing & Sales Funnel” and the starting point on the timeline is typically about 3x-5x of your Sales Cycle (i.e. the “Win Cycle”). Of course I am referring to the benchmarks I’ve seen fairly consistently in B2B SaaS where the sales team focuses on Larger-SMB (100-500) or the Mid-Market (500-2,000) size deals where the average $ACV (Annual Contract Value …or $ASP if we use classic tech sales terminology). What this means is that you have to start really early on and in advance of the time when you will need to hit your sales number. This is all about planning ahead – starting with your annual Sales Strategy or the Operating Plan for the Sales Team (and it includes everything like the Capacity Planning, the sales operating model in Excel that is very bottoms-up but guided by the top-down analyses.
Here is an example of the point of sales and how it all starts at the top. Our Google Analytics (and especially the organic search which had the most direct correlation to Qualified Leads that converted best to our Sales Opportunities)…and it’s impact all the way downstream to the actual sales revenue growth.
