More and more, marketers are being asked to measure the results of their efforts. But too often, what they do measure doesn’t show the full breadth of their influence. In the past marketers primarily looked at two numbers: how many leads were produced, and how many were converted to qualified leads. This limited measurement gives an inaccurate view of marketing’s role in the sales process and does little to determine what efforts are working and what needs to be changed.

Measuring only raw and qualified leads stops short of showing marketing’s value, if any, to top-line revenue. If qualified leads never convert to opportunities, was that marketing effort really worth the time and expense associated with it? At the same time, if a lead comes in through a salesperson’s personal network, but that prospect is educated and engaged through ongoing marketing campaigns, shouldn’t the marketing function be given some credit for these efforts?

In addition, by not measuring the cost per lead, cost per opportunity and cost per sale, it is impossible to know if your marketing efforts are adding significant value or actually costing the company money. It doesn’t take an economist to deduce that if the combined marketing and sales support efforts used to close a deal are more than the value of the deal, and this happens

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