Forecasting B2B Marketing Activities to Meet Sales Goals

By Stephanie Carrillo, Senior Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing
It is typical for companies to be given a marketing budget before setting sales goals for the year. According to the article B2B Budget Benchmarks: how much should you be spending on average 9-10% of the company’s annual revenue is allocated towards marketing efforts. But often, when I work with clients, I see a big disconnect between the sales goal and the ability to drive enough lead volume to meet the sales goal with the marketing budget allocated.
Benchmarks
To avoid missing your sales goals, Marketing Managers must track your baseline benchmarks across marketing channels and measure the percentage of leads moving to the next stage in your lead and opportunity stages.  At a minimum, I recommend monitoring lead>opportunity and opportunity>close won rate.   If your organization is not tracking your funnel metrics, I recommend investing in a marketing automation platform, where you can develop your