Webinar Recap: From Leaky Bucket to Revenue Engine

Madeleine Work
September 2, 2022
min to read

Webinar Recap: From Leaky Bucket to Revenue Engine

Madeleine Work
September 2, 2022
min to read

Your buyers are not pizza.

Even still… the traditional marketing funnel works exactly like the Domino’s pizza tracker from Domino’s. 

After step one, the other steps fall seamlessly into place — ending with a beautiful pizza delivered to your door.

Similarly, the traditional marketing funnel starts with awareness. Each step thereafter falls perfectly into place, ending with a Closed Won deal.

The traditional marketing funnel is, in a word, “linear” — just like the Domino’s Tracker. Only without the pizza.

But what we’re learning is that the buyer’s journey is not linear. It’s squiggly.

Traditional Marketing Funnel vs. Complex Marketing Funnel

Conversations about your product are happening in places you can’t see them. Slack groups. Subreddits. WhatsApp. Facebook groups. Even 1:1 conversations with colleagues.

There are “touches” happening all over the place that can’t be recorded or traced. 

As marketers, this means we need a new approach. First, we can learn how to work in the dark funnel. Second, we can focus on what we can actually control — minimizing the leaks we can actually see. 

Engage the right prospects at the right time

You’ve gotten your buyers to your website. 

Yay! 🎉

They like what you have to say and submit a demo request. 

Only to be directed to a landing page that says, “Thank you for reaching out! We’ll be in touch with you shortly. 

Thank you for reaching out! Someone will be in touch shortly.

This is no good. 🙅‍♀️ 

60% of meeting requests never convert to meetings

By the time prospects click “schedule a demo”, they’ve already done their research. 

In fact, they’ve probably already done research on you and your competitors. And scheduled a demo with all of you at the same time. 

According to a Lead Connect survey, 78% of customers buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first.

And 60% of meeting requests never convert to meetings. 🤯

The straight-to-meeting imperative is all about making sure your buyers get into meetings with sales as soon as they’re ready to talk to someone. 

Get your prospects in a meeting, ASAP

Marketing teams work so hard to get prospects to click that little “schedule demo” button.

Don’t drop the ball in the final second. 

With a web scheduler (like Chili Piper), prospects can book time with your sales rep immediately after they click that schedule a demo button. 

With that easy change, you can double your inbound conversions. 

Make it easy for qualified prospects to book meetings.

Stop wasting your time with bad-fits

When companies kick off their outbound efforts, they usually implement the same (not great) techniques. 

They’ll hire SDRs. Give them a slide with some firmographic information about your Ideal Customer Profile and let them go to town. 

As a result…

30-50% of outbound time is wasted

30-50% of outbound time is wasted

Your outbound team spends too much time manually researching best-fit prospects.

This basically means assigning some filters in whatever contact database they have… and going after these people until someone bites. 

Instead of spending time reaching out to people that might actually care about what they have to say. 

And this would be all well and good if they were going after high-quality leads, but… 

66% of leads are low fit

Even though they’re spending all this time doing the research, 66% of leads are low fit.

Even worse, once your leads enter your CRM, nobody questions it anymore. It just stays there. It gets recycled every quarter. It continues to get worked on.

Until, years later, someone finally asks, “Why are these leads even in here? How did we create the list?”

50-80% of five-star opportunities are missed

This is the one that’s most heartbreaking to revenue leaders. 

It’s not like there are nuggets of gold hidden within all the bad-fit prospects SDRs are going after. 

Well, there are. But there could be so much more.

Rev is a company that uses AI for prospecting. And they found that 50-80% of accounts that you really should be going after aren’t even showing up on your lists.

Goodbye ICP. Hello, aiCP.

Our friends over at Rev figured out a way to use AI to build a target customer list based on your existing customers. 

Instead of analyzing a static set of firmographic information, they analyze the behavior of a company — and then they let AI figure out who your best-fit customers are. 

As a result, you can use cold, hard data to narrow down your target account list to companies that are actually a good fit.

What’s next?

Like what you read? Watch the full webinar, where Chili Piper’s Sr GTM Manager, Sid Khaitan, and Rev’s Chief GTM Officer Jeff Ha at Rev, discuss this topic at length.

For even more spicy marketing and sales content, subscribe to The Sauce — the spiciest newsletter in B2B. 

Your buyers are not pizza.

Even still… the traditional marketing funnel works exactly like the Domino’s pizza tracker from Domino’s. 

After step one, the other steps fall seamlessly into place — ending with a beautiful pizza delivered to your door.

Similarly, the traditional marketing funnel starts with awareness. Each step thereafter falls perfectly into place, ending with a Closed Won deal.

The traditional marketing funnel is, in a word, “linear” — just like the Domino’s Tracker. Only without the pizza.

But what we’re learning is that the buyer’s journey is not linear. It’s squiggly.

Traditional Marketing Funnel vs. Complex Marketing Funnel

Conversations about your product are happening in places you can’t see them. Slack groups. Subreddits. WhatsApp. Facebook groups. Even 1:1 conversations with colleagues.

There are “touches” happening all over the place that can’t be recorded or traced. 

As marketers, this means we need a new approach. First, we can learn how to work in the dark funnel. Second, we can focus on what we can actually control — minimizing the leaks we can actually see. 

Engage the right prospects at the right time

You’ve gotten your buyers to your website. 

Yay! 🎉

They like what you have to say and submit a demo request. 

Only to be directed to a landing page that says, “Thank you for reaching out! We’ll be in touch with you shortly. 

Thank you for reaching out! Someone will be in touch shortly.

This is no good. 🙅‍♀️ 

60% of meeting requests never convert to meetings

By the time prospects click “schedule a demo”, they’ve already done their research. 

In fact, they’ve probably already done research on you and your competitors. And scheduled a demo with all of you at the same time. 

According to a Lead Connect survey, 78% of customers buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first.

And 60% of meeting requests never convert to meetings. 🤯

The straight-to-meeting imperative is all about making sure your buyers get into meetings with sales as soon as they’re ready to talk to someone. 

Get your prospects in a meeting, ASAP

Marketing teams work so hard to get prospects to click that little “schedule demo” button.

Don’t drop the ball in the final second. 

With a web scheduler (like Chili Piper), prospects can book time with your sales rep immediately after they click that schedule a demo button. 

With that easy change, you can double your inbound conversions. 

Make it easy for qualified prospects to book meetings.

Stop wasting your time with bad-fits

When companies kick off their outbound efforts, they usually implement the same (not great) techniques. 

They’ll hire SDRs. Give them a slide with some firmographic information about your Ideal Customer Profile and let them go to town. 

As a result…

30-50% of outbound time is wasted

30-50% of outbound time is wasted

Your outbound team spends too much time manually researching best-fit prospects.

This basically means assigning some filters in whatever contact database they have… and going after these people until someone bites. 

Instead of spending time reaching out to people that might actually care about what they have to say. 

And this would be all well and good if they were going after high-quality leads, but… 

66% of leads are low fit

Even though they’re spending all this time doing the research, 66% of leads are low fit.

Even worse, once your leads enter your CRM, nobody questions it anymore. It just stays there. It gets recycled every quarter. It continues to get worked on.

Until, years later, someone finally asks, “Why are these leads even in here? How did we create the list?”

50-80% of five-star opportunities are missed

This is the one that’s most heartbreaking to revenue leaders. 

It’s not like there are nuggets of gold hidden within all the bad-fit prospects SDRs are going after. 

Well, there are. But there could be so much more.

Rev is a company that uses AI for prospecting. And they found that 50-80% of accounts that you really should be going after aren’t even showing up on your lists.

Goodbye ICP. Hello, aiCP.

Our friends over at Rev figured out a way to use AI to build a target customer list based on your existing customers. 

Instead of analyzing a static set of firmographic information, they analyze the behavior of a company — and then they let AI figure out who your best-fit customers are. 

As a result, you can use cold, hard data to narrow down your target account list to companies that are actually a good fit.

What’s next?

Like what you read? Watch the full webinar, where Chili Piper’s Sr GTM Manager, Sid Khaitan, and Rev’s Chief GTM Officer Jeff Ha at Rev, discuss this topic at length.

For even more spicy marketing and sales content, subscribe to The Sauce — the spiciest newsletter in B2B. 

Madeleine Work

Madeleine Work is Product Marketing Manager at Chili Piper. She loves bringing people together, learning new things, and making hilarious jokes. When she's not typing away at her laptop, you'll probably find her running, hiking, or hanging out with her baby. Follow Madeleine for laughs and product marketing tips on LinkedIn.

Fix your leaky funnel

Turn qualified prospects into booked meetings, instantly.

Get a demo
Linked in logo
Follow Us

Most Recent Articles

Fix your leaky funnel

Make it easy for prospects to book sales meetings and double your inbound conversions