Modern B2B Marketing

July 27, 2010

Revenue Stage Analytics: The Marketo Model

Posted by Jon Miller

In the past couple of posts, I have explained the methodology behind revenue cycle analytics, including the best practices and the importance of defining your revenue stages. In this post, I give a sample revenue stage model and dive into a more detail about the Marketo methodology.

Marketo’s revenue stage model first defines the “success path,” i.e. the traditional funnel that leads linearly from new lead to closed, won business.

This sample model has few opportunity stages; many companies may want to add additional Sales stages, and even model additional stages after Closed Won, to model the customer lifecycle.

Next, recognizing that not all leads follow a linear “success path,” the model also defines “detour stages” to capture leads that are not qualified, or that require a few rounds of nurturing before becoming ready. For example:

The final step in defining the revenue stage model is specifying the business rules (“transitions”) that determine when a prospect moves from one stage to the next (including how leads move from Detour Stages back to the Success Path). For example:

• A person may move from “Engaged” to “Prospect” if their company has revenue above $10 million a year and is in one of the target industries
• A “Prospect” may move to “Lead” when the lead score goes above 100 points
• A “Prospect” may move to “Inactive” if they have not responded to any campaigns or visited the website in more than six months
• Leads in “Inactive” may move back to “Prospect” if they respond to a new program