This week, Kathleen and I sat down and talked about how important a transparent reporting framework is key to sales and marketing alignment, with a focus on:

• Why many businesses avoid reporting 
• What you should be reporting on
• How much you should be reporting
• The best reporting platforms
• And more... 

Listen to the episode to hear it all, or read the show notes below.

Read the Show Notes:

Today we’re talking about reporting, a topic Kathleen recently hosted a webinar on. (FYI, we host a monthly webinar series!) During the webinar, she discussed the importance of reporting, as well as what metrics should be tracked. Then she had a call with a client later in the week, and our discussion touched again upon reporting. Specifically true closed-loop reporting. To do that, you have to be able to say how many visits you really had, how many of those visitors converted on an offer, and then how many of those leads turned into customers.

The conversation surprised Kathleen. They said, “Why would we want to do that? Our sales team for closing our leads.” They went on to say that their sales team might think they’re trying to take credit for those closed leads, or they’re not going to be happy with the number - creating a problem where one doesn’t exist. 

It’s an understandable concern. But Kathleen also thinks it’s the wrong approach.

Misconceptions About Reporting

You’ve got to have that information. Because if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it or make it better. In fact, she doesn’t see another way to really align sales and marketing without starting with a solid, comprehensive reporting foundation.

I totally agree with her - it’s the key to alignment. It’s the key to smart decision-making. And any hesitations or resistance is usually rooted within the fear of accountability. Often people are taking credit for another’s accomplishment or believe something is one way, when in reality it’s another.

Let’s look at it from a sales perspective. According to the recently-released State of Inbound from HubSpot, only one in five sales reps contact a prospect leveraging the data captured through marketing automation. That means 80 percent of reps are reaching out to prospects without the valuable information we all know is readily collected and available.

I have to believe a lack of reporting is at the heart of this issue.

Why Else Do Businesses Resist Transparent Reporting?

Kathleen agrees that, in some cases, a fear of accountability is the root cause. Because if you’re reporting on everything, it might expose weaknesses. Whereas if someone can report on what they want, they can paint the story they want.

But she does disagree. There’s a second reason people resist reporting. Their organization is not currently designed to encourage alignment between marketing sales. And to put reporting in place on sales and marketing would highlight that. So it’s more of them not wanting to tackle an organizational weakness they’re not ready to tackle.

Having to say good results are due to the two teams playing well together can sometimes be scary. Because you’re sharing credit. When you don’t have that kind of transparent accountability, someone can say a great success was because of sales exclusively - or even marketing.

A unified reporting framework means you have to share the credit. But how do you solve that?

It All Starts With Having the Framework

What are some of the things that companies should look at and measure to achieve this unified reporting? Kathleen says it starts with just putting that type of reporting framework place - whether you’re trying to gloss over bad performances or misattribute credit for great successes.

Having objective reporting is the only solution if you want to build a healthy, sustainable organization. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting good results or bad results. If you’re getting good results, you need to know what you’re doing right. If you’re getting bad results, you need to know the real reason why so you can properly address the issue (or issues).

The bottom line is that you need to force this alignment. It’s kind of like a marriage. You can’t have a marriage that works when one partner is super happy and the other is super miserable.

Another challenge is that often we look at activity and consider a measurement of activity to be proof of true productivity or results. Ultimately it takes confidence to look at the metrics that really matter and see the true picture of what’s really going on.

What (And How Much) Should You Be Measuring?

But what should you be taking a look at in your reporting? Before you do anything, keep in mind that your reporting needs to be transparent and understandable - meaning people should know what data they’re looking at, what it means, and where it came from easily. Most importantly your data on your dashboard should tell a story that is actionable.

How many elements should be on a reporting dashboard? Kathleen says there is no right number. I, of course, totally disagree. I say no more than five, because the human memory can only chunk out and digest four to five pieces of information out at a time. So that’s why I say no more than five. You can have more than five, but only have four or five be the ones you report on to others.

Kathleen’s argument against that is, if you have group of people looking at the same dashboard with the same information on a regular basis, the point isn’t for them to remember each data point every single time. The point of the dashboard is to tell a story, and that’s what they need to remember. And the story of a business cannot be captured in only four to five pieces of data.

For example, Kathleen says you need:

• A marketing funnel report showing the number of opportunities in each stage (lead, MQL, SQL, etc.)
• A sales funnel report showing prospects at each stage of the sales process
• A report charting the best converting pieces of content
• A sources report telling me my strongest sources for visitor-to-lead conversion
• And more…

I say that you can have those reports, but they don’t need to be included in your snapshot dashboard. Kathleen says you do, because if you get a funnel report without the background information, you have no idea why something is happening. And the most important, actionable takeaway from any report should be the why.

If you’re not diving deeper to look your data, you’ll miss out on important information. For example, what if you have cyclical business that is only coming to light through certain reports? That means, by the time the next cycle comes around, you’ll be caught off guard with the repeated downward trend. Kathleen says that’s an example of why you need to look at a second-level of reporting data.

In this case, we’re going to agree to disagree.

But again, what are some of the data points you should track?

• The funnel, on both sides (marketing and sales)
• An activity tracker, since some metrics - especially in sales - are based on benchmarks
• A deal revenue leaderboard - a great way to leverage gamification to motivate sales reps

One point that’s worth making through all of this is, if you do not have a reporting dashboard in

place - and you know it - there can be some analysis paralysis that exists. So start small! Start with the most rudimentary data points.

Because even measuring one data point is better than measuring none. Then, when you’re ready, add a second. And then a third. But then don’t go beyond four or five, no matter what Kathleen says! (Just kidding! Sort of…)

What Are the Best Reporting Platforms?

If you’re interested in learning more, again, check out the on-demand version of our reporting webinar. Kathleen gives a ton of great, specific examples of what you could (and should) be measuring for your business, as well as four examples of software tools that you can use to build these dashboards, including:

• HubSpot’s reporting add-on
• Data Hero, which integrates with HubSpot
• Cyfe
• Microsoft Power BI, free for Office 365 users

Kathleen says that she does agree with me on one point today - you have to start somewhere. Which is kind of annoying to her, since the whole point of this podcast was for us to have a platform to hash out all of our disagreements publicly, and most of time we totally agree with each other.

But yes, you have to start somewhere, and then share what you find with everyone in your organization. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

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