Time to revenue is a fundamental metric for any go-to-market team, yet most businesses lack the tracking capability to trace where the original demand for an account originated. For Stephen Hedebrandt, CMO and co-founder of revenue-attribution platform DreamData, the way forward is actionable analysis of the entire B2B customer journey.
“The DreamData platform is basically set up to help you understand every touch that happens on every account from the first touch through the sales funnel,” says Hedebrandt. “When you have this information, you are able to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.”
Hedebrandt spoke enthusiastically about the importance of knowing the right timing of revenue for an episode of CMO Talks in November 2022 with ITWC CMO von Annan, a podcast series designed by ITWC that focuses on marketing and competing through the intersection Demonstrates strategies to gain an edge in technology. The lively session began with advice on focusing on marketing spend – a strategy that, in just three years, has established DreamData from a young Copenhagen startup to a leader in the customer journey analysis software category.
Identifying a Strategic North Star
“I would advise any company to identify the ideal customer profile for their product and ensure that it truly becomes a strategic north star across the entire organization,” Hedebrandt said. “This means that marketing tries to generate demand from these types of people, sales tries to sell only to these types of leads, and the product team builds products only for what they identify as ideal customers. “
Moving on to the discussion of DreamData’s revenue model, Headbrand announced that the company is about to launch a free product that allows potential customers to start paying when they see value. The overall idea, he said, is that users will purchase a license that can be used by everyone in the organization, rather than being owned by just one person.
challenging misconceptions
Responding to a question about Annan’s level of understanding of where companies start their deals, Headbrand referenced some B2B go-to-market benchmarks in a recent DreamData report. “The best way to put it is that people don’t know what they don’t know,” he said. “Salespeople get contracts signed and they work with accounts, but the truth is, it’s a much more complex journey that happens and it’s a much longer journey than people typically expect.”
According to Hedebrandt, most companies measure the customer journey from the time the customer entered their system to the time the account was won. However, the benchmarks in the DreamData report paint a very different picture by tracking the time customers spend in the research phase before a company enters orbit. “If you think your sales journey is ninety days when it is actually one hundred and eighty days, it matters a lot how you budget and reverse the sales goals,” he explained.
additional insight
A true idea of time to revenue also highlights the touches needed to close a deal, with a benchmark of approximately 32 for each new deal, not including events that are not tracked, such as Whether it’s a LinkedIn chat, a casual phone conversation or a chat conference.
The DreamData benchmark also challenges traditional notions of the number of stakeholders involved in the customer journey. Although research puts the number at two, Hedbrandt said this is only the tip of the iceberg. From their perspective, failing to understand the number of people involved and the roles they play in the company could result in a lost deal.
greatest impact gauging
The episode ended with some final words from Headbrand on the importance of spending time on things known to generate revenue for the company. “Don’t create new product features if no one is willing to pay for them. Don’t run ads that don’t provide any returns, and don’t chase people who aren’t going to buy,” he warned.
The trick, of course, is knowing which products aren’t wanted, which ads won’t work, and which aren’t likely to close a deal. And that’s where DreamData comes in by helping B2B growth leaders connect their spend to revenue.
