For many marketing leaders at the helm of B2B software companies, especially those in sub-$100M ARR growth stages, there is unnecessary and arguably detrimental-to-the-business distance in their proximity to the annual revenue and sales plan. For many of these businesses, the revenue plan may start in Finance, with Sales leadership weighing in on particulars such as hiring, quotas, and revenue forecasts by quarter.

Marketing leaders often only get plugged into a piece of this: Their top-of-funnel pipeline contribution. How much does marketing expect to contribute to revenue by month or by quarter? That’s pretty straightforward, obvious, and necessary for marketing’s accountability.

However, go-to-market and revenue plans are far more detailed and nuanced (or at least should be) than simple projections based on a percentage growth assumption quarter over quarter. It doesn’t make sense to dictate to Marketing what you expect their contribution to be each month or quarter if you’re not taking into account Marketing’s seasonality and resourcing. 

Marketing’s Own Cycle Time

Marketing has its own ramp times and lead times to “fire up” the pipeline engine, and that marketing ramp needs to be tacked on to your timing:

• Third-party event schedules are not in Marketing’s control – For companies that find success in attending or sponsoring conferences or other networking functions, they need to consider that timing in their forecasting. Lead generation from those events won’t start until that event occurs, and depending on where it falls in the year, may not impact numbers until even the next fiscal year.
• Campaigns take time to plan – Sure, you can fire off an email blast today if you want. But thoughtful and truly engaging campaigns, tied to great content or a great call to action, take time to get off the ground. Even a webinar needs at least one month of lead time if you want to hit a minimum standard for good content and good promotion time to drive attendance.
• Not everything’s a winner – Earlier-stage companies are often still experimenting with what works better. Similar to the sales organization, Marketing may need to recalibrate (messaging, packaging, targeting), do some testing, or abandon failed tactics. For example, lower-than-expected performance on a search advertising campaign or with a new promotion partner impacts the Marketing-sourced pipeline generation numbers that were originally expected.
• Marketing staff must also ramp – Whether it’s in-house team members who are newly hired or agencies or consultants that you engage, even the most experienced people need time to get up to speed on your business and the particulars of your market. This also includes the need to learn what inputs are most important to pay attention to and to keep an eye on your position relative to how competitors are going to market.

With all of that in mind, it’s clear that Marketing leadership must be thoughtful about their own monthly forecast for pipeline contribution, including what buffer they include to account for misses. On the positive side, over-performance actuals vs. Marketing’s plan should also get reflected through a re-forecasting update. 

But that’s not where Marketing’s involvement in the revenue plan should end. There needs to be strong communication and collaboration with Sales and Finance stakeholders to holistically look at the big goals for the fiscal year to improve planning accuracy and effectiveness. 

Bridge the Marketing-GTM Plan Gap

Key areas of the GTM plan that may get overlooked in terms of Marketing’s input and/or advanced awareness include the following:

Expansion into New Markets

Bluntly, this should never be a surprise or last-minute piece of information conveyed to Marketing. An example: If your fiscal year starts in January, and marketing doesn’t get confirmation until one month prior (when the plan is approved by the board) that you will be hiring sales for the first time in the Germany/DACH region at the end of Q1, you’re already behind. Expecting that sales rep to carry that burden without localized Marketing support is a recipe for strain and likely failure, especially if there isn’t enough Marketing budget to try to make up some gaps. Marketing should see this coming at least two quarters before.

Re-Organizing or Changing the Sales Team Makeup

Imagine a situation where current AEs are at capacity in the amount of pipeline they can cover (a good thing!), so you’re going to add more AEs than what’s in the plan. This will require more pipeline from Marketing, but it wasn’t in Marketing’s forecast, budget, or reflected in the campaigns they have in motion (refer to the Marketing ramp discussion at the beginning of this blog).

Or Sales has decided it’s time to separate an Enterprise segment from a mid-market segment, which will now need Marketing to align to support each segment. Whether the Enterprise or Mid-Market segment is the new focus emphasis, in either case you will be targeting different ICPs and perhaps also different persona types within those segments. This will require the Marketing plan to execute a different and expanded mix of events, tactics, messages, and campaigns to support each segment, which again, all require ramp time, team resources, and budget.

Sales Hiring and Ramp Times

Getting an accurate picture of how long it really takes to have any given sales AE who is hired to ramp up to various quota attainment levels is great for Marketing to know. If Marketing is producing excess pipeline for an AE who isn’t ready to cover it, that’s marketing ROI down the tubes. Conversely, if an AE ramps faster and doesn’t have enough pipeline being generated by Marketing, that’s going to present a burden and gap in actual sales production and attainment down the line.

Or, if sales decides to move sales hires up earlier in the plan – or later (or hiring is taking longer), that should also be communicated with Marketing as soon as possible.

Summary: It’s a Team Effort

It’s not realistic that in every one of these cases discussed, the Marketing-Sales collective is going to be able to make up the gaps if things go “off plan.” But all parties do need to know early enough if you have the buffer baked into your plan to absorb these bumps in the road or if you need to huddle-up as an executive team to discuss the impacts and re-adjust plans and forecasts moving forward.

It’s also critical that Marketing is not seen as an afterthought or as simply a supplier in your revenue pipeline value chain that can be turned up or down on a dime.

One of the great things about a solution like Revcast is that it makes the revenue plan and its actual performance status so transparent. All the key stakeholders – including Marketing – can clearly see what’s coming up in the plan well ahead of time. But even better, when actuals deviate, whether favorably or unfavorably, you can drill-down to understand the “why.” You have the context and from there can make recommendations on what changes should or could be made.

Let’s set up a 30-minute walk-through showing how this transparency and GTM stakeholder alignment happens in Revcast.

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