Why Plugging Pipeline Leakage Is A Question Of Marketing Science

In a world of data and analytics, marketing is supposed to be a science. In theory, marketeers should know how may leads any given campaign will deliver – and how many of these leads will eventually turn into sales opportunities. In practice, the world doesn’t seem to work quite so neatly; new research suggests many marketing executives are frustrated.

In a survey conducted by start-up RevSure.AI, 71% of marketers complained they lacked confidence about their ability to ensure their businesses are able to convert leads into sales. Even more, 75%, said they were currently devoting too much time to addressing business leaders’ questions about conversion rates and projections.

“In today’s economy, pipeline generation is the number one source of new growth for many businesses,” says Deepinder Singh, founder and CEO of RevSure. “But everyone is having the same conversation about how they tackle the problem of pipeline leakage.”

For those confused by the jargon, a business’s pipeline is its supply of sales opportunities – leads that the sales team has a realistic prospect of converting into paying customers. Pipeline generation is therefore the work done by marketing to assess and process leads that come in from campaigns such as advertising, events and networking; these initial leads must be moved through a funnel to generate the company’s pipeline.

Therein lies the problem according to RevSure’s research. “Marketers face significant challenges when faced with generating a healthy pipeline,” Singh warns. “Each of these challenges feeds into the other, creating a cycle of roadblocks to success that marketers continuously struggle to overcome.”

The most significant problems identified in RevSure’s research will be familiar to many in marketing. They include complaints about shortages of adequate data to base effective decisions on, an inability to scale demand generation programs efficiently, misunderstandings around ideal customer profiles and buying personas, and issues converting buyers across channels and campaigns.

Many of those surveyed also point to budget allocation challenges. In other words, the marketing function is not sure about where to spend its money most effectively in order to generate leads and pipeline most effectively. For example, one campaign might bring in more leads, but of lower quality, resulting in less pipeline generation than an alternative campaign that delivered fewer leads but of higher quality as a starting point.

“One of the more concerning things we learned from the study is that marketers lack confidence in their ability to convert throughout the entirety of the marketing funnel because they are struggling to predict pipeline contributions and outcomes,” Singh adds. “Gaining better insight into their pipeline is a priority for them in 2023.”

Naturally, RevSure is not an entirely disinterested party in this debate. Founded last year, the business claims its artificial intelligence-powered platform will help marketers make much better-informed decisions in this process.

The platform drags in data from across a company’s sales and marketing systems, applies its algorithms, and provides a read-out on how to improve pipeline generation. The analysis focuses on improving the conversion rate from lead to sales opportunity, and on identifying which of those opportunities should be prioritised. It can also provide intelligence on which campaigns will generate the best leads in the first place.

“It’s really about moving the art of marketing into a science,” Singh insists. “The critical thing for any marketing function is what it can hand over to the sales team, in terms of both quality and quantity of opportunity.”

To translate theory into practice, RevSure’s research suggests that 50% of businesses that are able to fully predict marketing’s pipeline contributions enjoyed a significant increase in their sales revenues last year. By contrast, just 16% of businesses lacking this ability were able to deliver similar success.

“Sales teams have always had access to good sales forecasting tools, but the equivalent tools have never been available to marketers,” Singh says. “Our goal is to give them that superpower.”