Table of Contents

Common Funnel Issues

Common Funnel Issues

The intent of this tutorial is to aid the user in understanding the purpose and meaning of the funnel company inclusion configuration and the functionality of the drop-down menus, toggle buttons, and other options within the configuration screen. All examples are easily implemented within your business's Salesforce instance. Unlock the power of CaliberMind's Funnel Application using custom company inclusion configuration tools for each funnel. Before getting started, keep in mind that the fields, events, and triggers shown in the following examples are unique to the CaliberMind SalesForce instance.
It is highly recommended if custom funnel development is required that your organization reach out to your Customer Success representative for further assistance.

Common Funnel Issues

Funnels are hard to get right. We’re trying to benchmark stages across multiple objects (lead, contact, account, campaign member, and opportunity), and this is hard to do without an external database or tool designed to bridge object joins in Salesforce.

The top issues are:

  • Action - Funnel tracking “breaking” because a salesperson creates the opportunity on a different contact than the one that qualified
  • Action - The inability to flag people and report at the account level (it’s usually just contact-based)
  • Action - Neglecting to build in recycle functionality (the ability to leave a funnel without buying and then engage again with sales)
  • Planning - Defining stage one too widely (if you choose something a record can only do once – like be created – they can never be requalified or recycled
  • Planning - Difficulty picking up on the funnel progressing on a different contact than the person who kicked off engagement
  • Planning - System configuration errors causing stages to be missed (missing MQLs)
  • Strategy - Lack of alignment on funnel stage definitions across departments (“These leads are terrible!”)
  • Strategy - Assuming one funnel will accommodate every business unit or product family or buyer type (expansion vs. net new)

Marketing automation platforms have a major weakness when it comes to supporting B2B sales motions. They are person-centric. A person is typically identified as a single email address, and while they may have an account name field, most marketing automation platforms don’t support the concept of a company or account out of the box.

Let’s pick on the current market leader in the marketing automation space for a moment. There isn’t a standard account object or opportunity object. In order to capture the lifecycle of a lead, the system records actions taken against the said person record.

If you’ve implemented a funnel at a company, you are intimately familiar with the shortcomings in a lead-centric funnel view. In order to capture stage advancement, contact statuses and opportunities must be entered against the record that kicked off the process. You’ll also be familiar with the fact that salespeople don’t really care about the integrity of your funnel tracking, and for good reason. It’s tedious.

How did we do?

Sales Funnel Journey: Questions and Answers

Sales Funnel Glossary

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