đ”đ»ââïž GTM efficiency for long sales cycles.
Stop measuring GTM efficiency like a PLG startup. Here is a breakdown of key GTM metrics for long sales cycles.
The SaaS playbook we all know says tracking CAC, LTV:CAC ratio, and payback period to evaluate GTM efficiency. But if your sales cycle is above 12 months, these metrics will tell you that your GTM underperforms when itâs too late.
By that time, youâve already burned your budget and time on programs that donât work.
Today weâll share:
3 broken fundamentals that are killing enterprise GTM
The key metrics and reports to measure GTM efficiency for long sales cycles
How to introduce new metrics to leadership without starting an internal revolution
Paid media worked at $10k/month. You scaled to $30k. Lead quality dropped. Cost increased. And suddenly itâs unclear what actually needs to change to make growth predictable again.
But your CEO wants to know why cost-per-lead keeps climbing while quality pipeline is going down.
Matthis Janssen (VP Revenue Marketing at YOYABA, managing 50+ SaaS ad accounts like Personio and Cognism) and Adam Holmgren (CEO of Fibbler,) are hosting a free paid media masterclass to give you an answer.
đ When: February 12th (4:30PM CET - 10.30AM EST)
Sign up to learn:
Why your paid media metrics lie (and what to measure instead)
Channel strategy for each stage of complex B2B buyer journeys
Realistic benchmarks for what âgoodâ really looks like in your stage
Proven framework to scale paid media without losing lead quality and pipeline conversion
3 broken fundamentals that are killing enterprise GTM
Like every B2B CMO, I used to find workarounds for three fundamental GTM challenges instead of battling with leadership. But with hindsight, it never worked.
Every time the targets were missed, or the organizational changes happened, the leadership looked at the âconventionalâ SaaS metrics and last-click attribution. Then, the long-term programs that were showing traction and early pipeline impact were shut down.
The conversations ended up with:
âStop whatâs not scalable and whatâs not appearing in our analytics. Generate more leads next quarter and improve conversions while decreasing CACâ.
There are three fundamental GTM problems behind it.
1. Broken last-click attribution.
In B2C, PLG and low-cost B2B SaaS, last-click attribution makes sense. Both marketing and sales can capture the demand and drive conversions through one channel.
But if your sales cycle is 18 months with 417 touchpoints across multiple channels, thereâs no way a sales opportunity is created from one channel or touchpoint. There is a variety of marketing and sales touchpoints across multiple channels
But many B2B companies still blindly follow the âgolden SaaSâ metrics trying to attribute $100k+ deals similar to Netflix subscriptions.
Solution:
Move from last-click to blended attribution
You can get close to real picture of what created a sales opportunity by combining three sources of data:
Self-attribution: Ask buyers âHow did you hear about us?â in webforms and sales calls
End-to-end analytics: Track all touchpoints across marketing and sales automation, social engagement, CRM, website analytics, log offline conversations, etc.
Customer interviews: Ask CS team to interview buyers about their interactions with your company during onboarding calls
Learn more about how to fix attribution problem here:
2. Misaligned incentives with sales.
If sales has a revenue quota and marketing focuses on MQL targets, it will always create conflict. The company pushes marketing to hit MQL targets and increase conversion rates, assuming thereâs an easy way to push B2B buyers.
For decades, B2B tech companies were indoctrinated on a linear, funnel buyer journey and developed GTM strategy around this utopia.
We all know the truth: We canât push buyers, but we can influence them by staying top of mind and getting into their consideration set. This is only possible when marketing and sales work together across the entire journeyâfrom awareness to post-sales.
In this scenario, all teams should have only one North Star metricârevenue, which is allbound-sourced, not marketing or sales-sourced. When fixed, it fixes another absurdity: the war for credit.
Letâs be honest. Marketing never gets a bonus for pipeline or revenue generated. Why do we have these debates?
When marketing and sales work together on revenue generation, all credits should go to the account owners (SDRs + AEs). Marketing supports them in creating and winning deals.
Solution:
All deals where marketing and sales worked together should be attributed as allbound.
Deals with several marketing touchpoints but without coordinated focus should be marked as marketing-influenced.
To avoid any changes in sales compensation, the sales rep who owns the account gets commission credit. This stops the âmarketing vs sales-sourcedâ debate entirely. Instead of fighting over attribution, youâre measuring collaborative revenue generation.
Pre-order Full-Funnel B2B Marketing book before 5th May and get an implementation toolkit
Stop chasing MQLs that donât convert. Start building an enterprise pipeline that sales actually thanks you for: without massive budgets, organizational overhauls, or waiting for perfect conditions.
Built from 50+ enterprise ABM programs across companies from $10M to $1B+ ARR, this book gives you the systematic approach that helped dozens of B2B marketing leaders:
Fix the broken GTM playbook and drive millions of revenue from new programs developed and tested over a couple of quarters
Quickly provie impact of new marketing programs with 90-day pilots to earn runway for longer-term brand and demand programs
Create repeatable playbooks that work within the constraints most B2B CMOs face: long sales cycles, skeptical executives, misaligned incentives with sales, and quarterly pressure to hit pipeline targets
Get leadership buy-in for changing marketing playbooks without asking for additional budget or resources
Deploy AI to refine and accelerate proven playbooks, not just âdo more with lessâ
Align marketing and sales around revenue and pipeline generation (not leads)to stop working in silos
Scale proven playbooks (what works) across the organization
Systematically move strategic accounts through the buyer journey:from unaware to sales opportunities
No matter where you are:
running on a âquarterly MQL hamster wheelâ, unsuccessfully trying to optimize within impossible constraints,
dealing with frustrated sales teams,
fighting attribution battles with leadership,
or simply knowing your GTM playbook is broken but not being sure how to fix it
this book gives you the blueprint to transform your marketing function without internal revolution, starting from today.
3. Volume over effectiveness.
In the AI era, all teams are just one click away from creating hundreds of pieces of content, emailing thousands of prospects with âpersonalizedâ pitches, creating hundreds of âpersonalizedâ landing pages.
But does it move the needle?
Well, if we still see declining CMO tenure and mass SDR layoffs, the answer is probably no.
Solution:
Shift your reporting.
OLD: âMarketing generated 500 MQLs this monthâ
NEW: âWe moved together 8 strategic accounts into active focus working on sales opportunities representing $1.6M in potential pipeline.â
The dashboard shifts:
FROM: MQLs, MQL-to-SQL conversion, marketing-sourced pipeline
TO: Account velocity stages, account-to-pipeline ratio, pipeline velocity by segment
Learn more about marketing metrics representing the buyer journey here:
Logically, at this point youâd ask:
But how are we going to report to leadership and show GTM efficiency?
Here is what we are going to cover next.
BECOME A FULL-FUNNEL B2B MARKETER
Full-Funnel Academy is a comprehensive B2B marketing training and Slack community for B2B marketers who care about revenue and want to move the needle.
Academy includes:
All our B2B marketing courses including ABM playbook, Demand Gen Playbook, LinkedIn Allbound marketing playbook and 11 more courses that arenât available publicly + all upcoming courses.
Private Slack community to answer all your questions
Personalized learning plan. If you are not sure what skills youâd develop in the first place and how to get maximum from the program, we can create a personalized learning plan accordingly to the time you can dedicate to education.
Behind-the-scenes sessions. See whatâs working and what doesnât work and why on the âbehind the scenesâ sessions where we review the campaigns we are running for our clients and us.
Learn more and join the academy here.
The key metrics and reports to measure GTM efficiency for long sales cycles.
If you canât measure it, you canât improve it. Here are the three enterprise GTM metrics for long sales cycles.
1. Account velocity.
Account velocity measures how quickly you move ICP accounts through the buyer journey and pipeline creation stages: from completely unaware ICP accounts to sales opportunity.
Take a look at this dashboard.
In 7 weeks (from 1st Aug to 12th Sep) we moved:
5 accounts to Active Focus list working on opportunity creation with sales
7 accounts to Future Pipeline list where we work on buying committee engagement and account research
Identified 14 new accounts that fit our account qualification criteria (Cluster ICP list) and demonstrated early engagement/signals
Quick definitions:
Cluster ICP: Cold accounts that fit ICP criteria with an early engagement (website visits, LinkedIn profile views or content likes)
Future Pipeline: Accounts that hit your engagement threshold and you have a relationship with one of the buying committee members. For example, the sales team met one of the buyers at the conference, one of the buyers signed up for your recent webinar. There were three âBook a demoâ account visits in the last 60 days.
Active Focus: Accounts with known needs and good relationships where marketing and sales work on deal creation via 1:1 plans. These are PRE-pipeline accounts with high conversion likelihood.
Pipeline: Qualified accounts after discovery call with assigned pipeline value.H
How to choose your engagement threshold: Start with a conversation with sales. What behavior should an account demonstrate before you have an actual discovery call or sales opportunity created? What will tell you to double down right now on this account with full personalization and multithreading?
Some companies struggle with booking discovery callsâespecially when dealing with a small TAM. For them, accounts requesting demos or discovery will be the key threshold.
Other companies book calls easily but struggle with account development when TAM is bigger. For them, accounts sitting in the pipeline without progression will be the focus.
How to present it to your leadership:
Share the stats from Pavilionâs B2B Buying Disconnect Report:
â86% of enterprise B2B buyers prioritize known vendors before they enter the market. We want to ensure we get into their consideration set.â
Leadership sees accounts moving through pipeline creation stages and understands GTM team productivity.
How to track account velocity:
Start with a simple Google Sheets dashboard and define with sales account segmentation criteria.
Once the model is proven and youâre ready to scale, operationalize it in HubSpot by adding custom company properties for pipeline stages and engagement thresholds, then build reports to track progression.
See our example.
How to use account velocity metric:
Every week look at how many accounts you are actually moving between the lists. If you donât increase the number of active focus accounts, you need to improve the ABM playbook.
If you donât increase the number of Future Pipeline accounts, you need to improve targeting and demand gen playbooks.
Learn more about ABM and demand generation for long sales cycles in our step-by-step course.
Whatâs included with the course access:
12 modules covering step-by-step ABM strategy development: goal decomposition, ICP, account list building, ABM team, warm-up and activation playbooks, reporting, scaling ABM and building a cohesive ABM & demand gen function.
Short explanation videos and âhow toâ examples. We believe itâs better one time to see a practical example then listen to the theory hundreds of times.
5 orchestrated and ready-to-use ABM playbooks and a detailed explanation
Report dashboard for 4 types of ABM programs: new revenue, pipeline acceleration, expansion and churn prevention
Live case studies and examples of the campaigns we implemented with the clients of Fullfunnel.io in the past few years
17 templates to simplify your ABM strategy launch: ICP, revenue analysis, intent data tracking, account warm-up cadence, customer research, account scoring and prioritization, ABM budget planning and forecasting, account planning, reports, personalized offers, and many more.
Planning & Presenting a Pilot ABM Program to Execs and Sales Framework
Minimal viable stack recommendation and guidelines on how to use it to avoid ramping up budget and being pressured to show ROI for the purchased $50k software
2. Account-to-pipeline ratio.
Account-to-pipeline ratio shows how many accounts youâve selected to work together with sales are actually converted into sales opportunities.
We usually measure a conversion from both Future Pipeline and Active Focus lists (if there are just a few accounts in the active focus list when you start). Or only an active focus list because these are the accounts we spend most of the time on.
Letâs look at this example.
Basic analysis shows it takes more time to generate pipeline with ABM (280-day cycle vs 225 for MQLs). But ABM generates better opportunities with higher win rates and a much higher account-to-pipeline conversion rateâ13.3% vs 2.2% for MQLs and 1.3% for outbound.
The MQL program generates pipeline faster, but the pipeline quality is worse: lower ACV and lower win rates.
Sales outbound with 400 Tier 2 accounts produces only 1.3% account-to-pipeline conversion. It means youâre burning sales capacity chasing accounts that arenât sales-ready.
How to present it to your leadership:
Prepare a similar comparison report and present it to leadership. In our example, ABM with just 15 accounts generates $353k in annual pipeline velocity which is 1.75X the velocity of MQLs despite working 92% fewer accounts. Itâs also higher than outbound working 27X more accounts.
With this data you can explain that focus on volume is counterproductive. It burns out your TAM and leverages your GTM resources ineffectively.
If you want to dive deeper, you can also include:
ROI comparison across programs
GTM team productivity (time spent on program vs pipeline value created)
Budget efficiency per dollar spent (including compensation)
How to use account-to-pipeline metric:
I measure account-to-pipeline ratio to get an unbiased report on what works for generating pipeline.
It helps marketing and sales teams focus on detailed campaign planning and account selection instead of just targeting the total addressable market (TAM) and playing the numbers game.
Track your ratio quarterly to spot trendsâis it improving, declining, or flat?
If itâs declining, ask: Are we targeting the right accounts? Are we engaging with actual buying committee members or just anyone who responds? Are we trying to engage and nurture our buyers or just pitching?
Compare your ratio across account tiers, verticals, use cases or regions to identify where to double down vs where to focus less.
3. Sales pipeline velocity.
I briefly mentioned sales pipeline velocity in the previous point. It is a single metric that combines all the revenue metrics: (opportunities, ACV, win rate, and sales cycle length) and shows annual revenue trajectory. You get a clear answer to one of the most important forecasting questions:
If our revenue metrics remain the same, what revenue will we generate at the end of the year?
Sales pipeline velocity formula is simple:
Win Rate Ă ACV Ă # of Qualified Sales Opportunities / Sales Cycle Length (in Days).
Example:
If you have 35 open qualified opportunities at $475k ACV, 17% win rate, and 540-day sales cycle, your projected annual revenue based on current pipeline velocity is $1.9M.
This tells you whether your pipeline is healthy enough to hit revenue targets. You can play with different metrics to see how it impacts your revenue.
For example:
How will our revenue change if we increase our win rate to 23%?
Look at Feb column: 6% increase in win rate changes sales pipeline velocity to $2.53 mln bringing additional $600k in revenue without generating new sales opportunities.
How to use sales pipeline velocity:
Review sales pipeline velocity monthly. Pay attention to changes in revenue metrics. Is your win rate going up or down? Why? What are the main reasons?
For example, you see the win rate is going down in February. Analyze the lost deals with sales. Often you uncover that opportunities were created either with low-quality accounts or because certain accounts have a use case or requirements your product doesnât address well.
Add it to account disqualification criteria. Re-qualify all accounts youâre currently targeting with sales.
If your sales cycle is increasing, dig into where deals are getting stuck. Is it procurement? Is it lack of multi-threading with a buying committee? Is it product gaps? Each bottleneck requires a different fix.
Similar to account-to-pipeline ratio, you can use sales pipeline velocity to compare:
Account tiers (enterprise vs mid-market effectiveness)
Programs (which actually drive quality pipeline)
Regions (where to focus)
Products or use-cases (what converts faster)
Also, play with different metrics to see how they impact revenue and define what programs to run.
For example, after analyzing with sales what can increase win rate, you define that improving buyer enablement materials and investing into deal room might help. You add it to your marketing planning.
How to present it to leadership:
Present the revenue metrics and your takeaways. For example, we see that our win rate went down because we generated opportunities with accounts that require specific integrations our product doesnât have.
We analyzed lost deals and identified that all of these accounts have a legacy stack our product doesnât support. We added it to account disqualification criteria, requalified all accounts and removed 17 accounts from our target list.
We also identified that this change alongside investing into a buyer enablement program and deal room might bring additional $600k in annual revenue in the next 12 months (show the sales pipeline velocity chart).
This gives your leadership a proof that you have an actionable plan, not âactivityâ reports with vanity metrics.
Drive pipeline THIS quarter with full-funnel ABM programs.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but donât do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you donât know how to fix it
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales canât get even a reply.
You clearly see that youâre already behind your revenue targets
We can help.
Weâll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.
How to introduce new metrics to leadership without starting an internal revolution
During almost 20 years in B2B marketing I came to one conclusion:
If the company is led by a CEO and CFO who are all about âmake B2B marketing predictableâ, no workarounds will help. They might nod their heads and even allow to buy end-to-end analytics, but it doesnât change the fundamental problems.
Itâs just a question of time when they will come back (and they will because of the wrong incentives) to ask about ROI of every marketing activity and prove marketing impact on revenue.
But at the same time you canât ignite the internal revolution and tell that everything is broken. Instead, you need to gradually do a change management (or find a new company đ).
Here is how.
Phase 1: Fix attribution and analytics fundamentals
You need to shift from marketing-sourced vs sales-sourced to allbound attribution.
This means getting CFO buy-in on the blended attribution model. Establishing two attribution categories (allbound and marketing-influenced). Setting up dashboards that track revenue breakdown, pipeline velocity, leading and lagging indicators.
How to introduce these metrics to leadership: You introduce them when you design the pilot. Make a mini presentation explaining why you want to track them and what they tell you about GTM efficiency. Say that you want to track them during the pilot to see if they make sense before making any organizational changes or CRM reports.
This way, youâre not asking for permission to change the entire system. Youâre asking for permission to experiment and learn.
Hereâs how to handle the inevitable CFO objection: âIf marketing is allbound, how do I justify your budget?â
The answer: Budget should be a percentage of last yearâs revenue that both CFO and CEO are comfortable with. This removes unnecessary debates about where to invest and gives CMO flexibility to invest into long-term brand programs.
The key is that the budget spent is aligned with what works for CFO. If you need extra budget, first prove a program works with a pilot. Show the numbers. Explain what you can expect from scaling.
For example: âOur pilot with 10 accounts generated 12% account-to-pipeline conversion and $1.6M in qualified pipeline with one marketer and one SDR. Scaling to 50 accounts with the same team structure would require an additional $X additional budget and is projected to generate $8M in qualified pipeline based on the same conversion rates.â
For the complete change management framework on navigating CFO conversations and implementing blended attribution, check out our Attribution article:
Phase 2: Prove it with a small-scope pilot
Launch a pilot where the goal is effectiveness, not volume.
Use the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-10 framework: 1 market segment, 1 vertical, 1 SDR, 1 marketer, 1 intent data source, 1 warm-up tactic, 1 account tier, 1 goal, 10 accounts maximum (3 buying committee members each).
Learn more about pilot cross-functional programs here:
Run the pilot for one quarter. Track weekly progress including account velocity, leading and lagging indicators. Expect to see account velocity progression within 90 daysâaccounts moving from Cluster ICP to Active Focusâeven if it takes 12+ months to win the sales opportunities.
When the account-to-pipeline ratio moves from 1.5% to 12%, the conversation shifts from âprove it worksâ to âhow do we do more of this?â
Book a meeting with your leadership and present:
Comparison reports for different programs/motions youâre currently running including account-to-pipeline ratio
Brief breakdown of multiple marketing and sales activities to generate opportunities with strategic accounts to prove the point of allbound revenue and blended attribution
Sales pipeline velocity, your takeaways and suggested improvements
3. Operationalize and scale
Once the pilot proves effectiveness, you operationalize: documentation, changes in CRM and dashboards, new reports, team training, and gradual scaling. This is when you move from Google Sheets tracking to HubSpot/Salesforce reporting.
Watch Full-Funnel Live - How to talk with sales about ABM.
*If you want to attend the next live episode, sign up here to receive an invite. Usually, we host them every Wednesday at 3:30 pm CET (Central Europe) - 09:30 am ET (Eastern Time).
In this episode of Full-Funnel Live, Vlad and Andrei break down the exact framework for having productive, outcome-driven conversations with sales about Account-Based Marketing.
đĄ Tune in to learn: â
How to prepare for conversation with sales team about ABM
How to find the best candidate to run a pilot program togetherâ
How to ensure the sales rep will prioritze pilot, and not lead gen KPIs