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Revenue Analytics

Marketing plays a huge role in generating revenue; in fact in today's online and social world, marketing influences nearly 70% of the entire buying process. In order to generate revenue, it is important that marketing and sales, work is alignment. This is the new approach towards revenue creation which seeks for new metrics and analytics.

The new measurement process thus formulated is termed as “Revenue Cycle Analytics”, and the new approach is called “Revenue Performance Management”. The first and foremost step in Revenue Analytics is to outline the entire revenue cycle and its varied stages. These stages start with plausible buyer awareness, scroll through marketing and sales, and loop around closed business and beyond that. To create a strong base for a set of sound revenue metrics, it's important that marketing and sales collaborate with each other to work through each stage. Along with this, there are clearly stated business rules needed, that will certify the possible switch from one stage to the next.

How to Define Stages of Revenue Cycle?

There has formed a unique revenue methodology to define and develop the stages of revenue cycle. There are few traditional sales methodologies like SPIN Selling and Miller Heiman that provide gauges as standard of achievement. These systems also give best practices for sales function, which further forms the base for best sales analytics. At the core, this cycle gets broken into stages, following the methodology and allows the sales executives track movement through the different stages. This is the reason why the base of Revenue Analytics lies in these varied stages and business rules for knowing how the potential business crawls through stages.

Different companies follow different Revenue cycles, but the most famous among such models is Marketo's Revenue Cycle. Below given is the list of popular stages and their description:

• All Names- As an entry point for everyone, the individuals here are not leads.
• Engaged- The individuals at this stage display real engagement like going to a webinar, reading some content from site or even clicking the link in an email send as marketing purpose.
• Prospect- This stage numerates the individuals who show the signs of purchasing but are not yet into engagement with sale process. This is the first metric which is reported to sale executives and the sales board to follow the leads. These individuals are prospect buyers who have gone beyond the engagement stage.
• Lead- This stage depicts those prospect customers who show behavioral engagement or item buying intention. At this stage, a direct call can be given to those particular leads.
• Sales Lead- At this stage, leads have been passed as 'ready for sales' by the sales executives.
• Opportunity- At this stage, the leads have been certified by sales team and termed as a deal to work on.
• Customer- This stage closes the deal and initiates the new customer business.

Generally there are three main categories of the specific stages stated under the revenue analytics. These are:

• Inventory stages
• Gate Stages
• SLA Stages