How do I create an SLA when I don’t know conversion rates?

[JonPayne]

Not all of us have access to a complete data set to be able to calculate our conversion rates to set an SLA between marketing and sales. Join the discussion to get advice on how to create your SLA based on industry estimates.

*To learn more about this, check out the Holding Your Teams Accountable With an SLA lesson via HubSpot Academy. 

[degreeplus]

We're a small company experimenting with HubSpot, but haven't properly set it up yet. We only collect contacts without moving them through the sales pipeline. Hence, we don't have good enough numbers for conversion rate. That's what I hope to fix after taking this course.

[STripathi4]

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[DTrujillo]

The broader issue I face in our organization is that there isn't really a marketing team to rely. Marketing as a whole is pushed to the side and not deemed to be valuable or a critical asset. All inbound leads are 100% of each individual sales person, including content creation, messaging, etc. On the rare chance someone does submit an online request, we don't have an efficient system in place to contact them in a timely manner. 

So in this dynamic, how does one even begin to look at developing an SLA? Or getting ownership to understand the importance of a dedicated and experienced marketing team?

[Stefanos_GR]

sounds like you need to define opeational KPIs.

1. leads created

2.qualified leads

3. contacted

4. converted

you probab;y need these KPI with a historical view so to monitor flunctuations and undertands patters.

ALso,regarding conversion you need also to emasure team performance with a rations like top2bottom.

[KClancy9]

In my experience, you have to start researching the data and start to pull reports to help you start to SLA process. This can take some time and needs to reviewed on a monthly basis.

[PFerrero]

In my experience, there's a company that doesn't have a problem setting the SLA, but they have a wide variation in onboarding cycle time that it's challenging to forecast sales.  I also think that defining the portfolio of leads will help level-load onboarding. 

[EmmaPeep]

What do you do when prices and products haven't been consistent? We have approx. 2 years of data but the prices have changed every 3-4 months (this is a problem in and of itself, I know). We now have 4 sales reps and one self-taught marketer, and me (sales rep and now charged with becoming self-taught sales enablement lead!). I still need to set up lead scoring, too. Feeling stuck and overwhelmed. Thanks!

[JonPayne]

Hello @EmmaPeep 🙂  You'll be glad to hear this is a reasonably common problem. You're far from the only one.

I'd suggest moving from a revenue / profit focussed set of goals and targets - you won't take your eye of these completely (that would be dumb) and anyway most companies will measure these anyway in HubSpot Dashboards.

Look to target growth around:

1. Number of new contacts
2. Number of MQLs
3. Number of SQLs
4. Number of Closed Won deals

Producing content and improving processes to remove friction for your buyer and your sales team while focusing on those numbers should do it. 

Lead Scoring is difficult to set up if you can't look back at revenue from particular sectors of your customers. But, using customer profiles means you can score people based on their liklehood to buy https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-profiling. Talk with your sales team to create these profiles and ask them which ones should score more highly.

Hope this is useful. 

[joepod700]

Our business is a B2B parts provider that often speaks to the same customers many times per month, even multiple times per day.  The sales cycle is typically one phone call to order needed parts in a very high call center environment, so there's no long cycle of decision-making with buyers.  The challenge I face is knowing how to reset and score the current customer base as a "lead" when launching a new product or promotional campaign and even more so defining what a "lead" is.  This gives me pause in understanding how to first set an SLA and then how to measure the effectiveness of the "lead". 

[JonPayne]

Hi @joepod700 - it can be really difficult in fast paced environments! One of the ways we've helped some of our HubSpot customers to solve this is to look beyond Lifecycle stages for this and use Lead Status. Using Lead Status as a sub section of Lifecycle stage might help.

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/use-lifecycle-stages

We've automated updates to Lead Status in the past, based on progess of deals through the pipeline - however short that is.

Typically we combine this sort of work with setting targets around

1. New Business from new clients
2. Increasing Average Order Value from existing clients
3. Increasing Order Frequency from existing clients

You can then set SLAs around marketing delivering calls / enquiries where the existing customers are requesting a wider portfolio of products and where sales actively up-sell / cross-sell.

This is kind of vague as I don't know anything about your business but hopefully it gives you some ideas.

[JonPayne]

Hey @joepod700  - Not to replace @Ajax1000's excellent answer but to build upon it...

We several clients, we've recommended they report on Annual Value or Lifetime Value of a customer. Then you could measure campaigns by the number of new customers won, the increase in Annual Value of existing customers and agree an SLA on that basis. Get both marketing and sales to agree goals for both metrics. Often transformational 👍

[Ajax1000]

Hey Joe, 

With a rapid transaction rate on the sales side, that's occurring without much friction currently, I understand your objective to be increased marketing velocity & accountability as a result of the SLA?

As a thought - do you have the systems in place to tag and categorize current customers based on behaviours and preferences? 

You could define the segmented audiences based on expected behaviours and demographics and create those audiences using existing customers. With those ICPs defined, you could establish new campaigns with audience-specific content & offers. Tech permitting, you could develop dedicated landing pages for each campaign; scoring could then be defined for each campaign with dedicated content & funnels for each, aligned with behaviours for each ICP, enabling lead value to be defined. 

Easier said than done, of course 🙂 - but you could then report on the lead source, lead value by content & campaign, average deal value (new vs. existing), and pipeline velocity. VIPs could also be identified and placed on a secondary campaign for "high-spenders" or "frequent spenders" or the ultra-desired "blend of both". 

[schristm]

Yes!

[FKhadraoui]

...

[Huich3n]

great stuff!

[SDavis8]

I recommend the 50% rule.  I would look at the revenue you are aiming for and then use the 50% rule to reverse engineer the results.  For example, If I have 100 MQL's, sales will connect with 50 and close 25 at the average sales value of $1000 per sale.   You then can determine that it takes 100 MQL's to generate 25k in sales.  If your revenue goal was 100k then you would need to generate 400 MQL's.  The 50% rule is a good starting point when no previous data is available and allows you to move the % at each phase of the sales funnel as you require more data and analytics.  

[JonPayne]

Brilliant stuff, Shannon 😎 Sounds like you speak from experience... am I right?

[SDavis8]

A little😉!  

[DHeron]

How many people do you need at the company to have a SLA?

When is it needed?

[JonPayne]

We've helped small start ups of two people to create an SLA, @DHeron - a good SLA will enable the person (or team) responsible for marketing to agree with the person (or team) responsible for sales / revenue what a good opportunity looks like.  On the other side, the person or team responsible for sales commits to a rigourous follow up process, that aligns with the buyer journey.

For even small companies it can be transformative to the growth trajectory. If a company has a marketing and a sales function, then I'd heartily recommend sorting out an SLA as outlined in the lesson here.