They couldn't answer the board of directors.

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Fri(yay) - and that means it’s time for your Revenue Play - an issue where I share some stories from my career in this wonderful digital space and how I helped drive revenue, justify numbers, and fix things.

Because I’ve been called a fixer. Apparently, that’s what I do.

Today, I’ll share a story about a massive company - with a B ($) - that couldn’t explain MQL to SQL conversions to the board.

Spoiler: it was not a technology problem.

Let’s dive in.

When I started working with this company, the biggest question was - “We’re driving leads in marketing, but I can’t tell you how many of those converted. And when I look at my reports, I’m seeing no SQLs from marketing. Where did they go?!”

Great question.

Marketing teams did one thing. The sales team did another. No one really talked to each other. And the best thing? HubSpot was set up on default settings.

So when marketing got called up to present monthly performance numbers to the board, it was pure crickets.

When you’re working across multiple teams, they all need to speak the same language. It was the internal architecture. While marketing was relying on MQL to SQL conversion, sales were skipping right over SQL and going straight into opportunity.

The two teams were describing the same contacts using different languages, and the data reflected none of it. Zero process on what the heck was going on.

Sometimes, you have to go back to basics. And that’s what I did. I stripped out the Lead stage entirely since this client wanted every true lead entering at MQL for immediate nurture. Then we rebuilt the SQL and Opportunity definitions from scratch with both teams in the room. Once the definitions were agreed upon, we built automations to populate lifecycle stages based on actual contact activity, removing the manual guesswork and the gaps.

100% fill rate every time. No need to ask sales to do more.

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Once the data was cleaned up, the numbers looked significantly different. SQLs came in about 7% higher than their internal benchmarks - the benchmarks they had set for themselves and that the board was holding them accountable to.

Marketing had been generating more qualified pipeline than anyone could prove. The board finally had a breakdown they could read. Sales and marketing were, for the first time, working from the same source of truth.

The best part? A $20,000,000 deal opportunity was sitting with a lead attribution of organic SEO marketing. Marketing and sales just celebrated a huge collab win.

TL;DR

Bad data does not lie. It just stays quiet until someone asks the board a question.