https://jamiecatherinebarnett.medium.com/manage-the-living-s-out-of-your-pipeline-a-how-to-and-sample-model-for-b2b-marketers-bf1b83ee3bd6
Dear B2B marketing peeps,
If you want to be good at your job but don’t model your pipeline within an inch of its life, measure the crap out of it, and refine it frequently, you’re doing it wrong!
This isn’t rocket science, but it does require some diligence. If you really get good at it, you can even get proactive (and, dare I say, predictive?) enough to smooth out your marketing-delivered pipeline when the stuff hits the fan (which never happens, of course!). Here are seven practical steps and a sample model.
Note: These are simplified versions of my models, but with the numbers changed and generic program names. I’d love to find a more elegant approach, either through more sophisticated modeling or a clever tool that won’t cost me an arm and a leg. If you have ideas, send them my way.
Step 1. Get in sync with your sales leader
Be totally in sync with your sales leader. Don’t even keep separate models! Work off of the same bookings requirements (whether over-assigned or straight) and agree on stages, stage definitions, and decision gates. Be on the same page when it comes to assumptions, including average selling prices (ASPs), conversion percentage and timing, and marketing vs. sales contribution. If you disagree on things, duke it out or bring it to the big boss. (On second thought, that will piss her off, so just work it out.)
Step 2. Build a bottoms-up model
Build a bottoms-up model for each product or segment. For this exercise, we will use these stages: 1. Lead. A suspect at the top of the funnel like a website visitor; 2. Marketing qualified lead (MQL). A lead that marketing believes meets your criteria to be a viable prospect based on demographics (role, industry, account size, implemented technology) and intent (they took some action like downloaded a white paper, attended a webinar, or filled out a contact form); 3. Sales accepted lead (SAL). A lead or contact that sales believes meets your criteria to be a viable prospect; and 4. Sales qualified lead (SQL). A lead that sales confirms is qualified to be considered an opportunity based on your criteria (typically because they have the budget, authority, and need to purchase your product, and plan to do so in a specified timeline (such as within the next six to 12 months).
Start with bookings and calculate how many deals you need based on your ASP assumptions.
Now that you know how many opportunities you need to have in each quarter, figure out how many opportunities you need to generate in each quarter. This is where your conversion timing assumptions come into play. I organize mine like this in a separate tab.
Go back to your original tab and, for each quarter, calculate how many SQLs you need to generate for that quarter and future quarters based on your SQL-to-close timing assumptions.