Data is Hard (when scaling)

When scaling, we all experience a universal truth:

Context and insight from data are hard.

Be “data-driven.” It’s the most cliched recommendation from “investors, thought leaders and CEOs to the CMO.” However, while everyone recommends being data-driven, few do it well. I’d love to know how data-driven certain CMOs or thought leaders are when running their teams.

The reason is quite simple.

It's difficult to get data accurate and assess across your MarTech stack to cover the end-to-end funnel. In many scenarios, it’s difficult to trust the data, make decisions from it, or even understand it, making it impossible to be "data-driven." 

The theory of being “data-driven” is obvious. The reality of operating in a “data-driven” way is a challenge. But it’s a challenge you need to solve. The reason is that the longer a marketing leader operates without effective data, the longer it takes to deliver insights to a CEO or board. Your credibility slowly wilts and diminishes. If you never solve it, the CMO will never provide leadership, value, and credibility to investors. 

They’ll state 15 HubSpot / Salesforce dashboards that show the funnel. They will present each one as a siloed entity, showing a picture of pipeline health. They’ll never truly understand the 1-2 pieces of data an investor or CEO wants (well, you can help that with better communication). In my experience, you want to understand the complete flow-through of the funnel from GTM to new business, cross-sell, up-sell and advocacy. You want to understand ROI, attribution and sensible decision-making. You want to understand the details of each funnel component and what it means in the context of how the business will look now and in 3-6 months. 

The average marketing leader says they are “data-driven”. The great marketing leader has built a fully operational data model covering the entire funnel with all inputs across every channel included in the visualisation. 

The great marketing leader will then be able to deliver “data insights”.

Think about the framing; it's different. "Data-driven" means you think you are great with data because you tell everyone you are "data-driven" (and in a lot of cases with the detail to prove it —this is similar to people calling themselves ‘thought leaders’—another common bugbear of mine!!). If you deliver “data insights,” you are taking action on the data.

This is most likely because you have built the data model to inform recommendations, suggestions, and improvements to the sales and marketing funnel.

The goal is to deliver “data insights” (again, as CEOs and investors, you can help your team be clear on this framing). 

The goal is to have a holistic picture of the entire funnel. Below is an example template of the BowTie funnel. This can be your starting point of the process. Here is an old one I used:

‍Homework: How to start delivering “data insights” 

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The journey to deliver detailed insights into the funnel's performance is not easy (and it will depend on the complexity of your business). Here is what needs to happen to get started. 

1. Decide on the tech stack. Do the systems you have right now allow you to build a full funnel? For example, it’s difficult to build a bow tie in HubSpot. In the past, we had to move to Salesforce or connect with a tool such as Kluster. 

2. Review current dashboards, reports and channels. Map out where you have gaps. What parts of the funnel do you understand, what parts do you not understand, and does the holistic end-to-end funnel make sense? If it does, you are at a good starting point. In most cases, you will have siloed reports in the channels, i.e. Channel, Digital Marketing or Inside Sales. These will paint a picture of one area, but connecting to the bigger picture is harder. An example of one part of the funnel: how they connect: 

3. Using the bow-tie full-funnel, plug in your channels and determine where they fit in the overall model. Then, build a requirements document for what you are looking to achieve.

You need to consider these requirements: 

1. What is the final report you need to achieve? Is it 1 or 3 or more? That top-level full-funnel visual. This is the basis for your data insight recommendations. 
2. What reports sit below the full funnel? How do you drill into all aspects of the master funnel to discover what's happening in each channel? How many of these reports sit inside the master funnel? 
3. Where does all the data come from? Map where all the data sources originate, and if integrating, make sure all the connectors work when plugging systems in together, e.g., HubSpot and Kluster. 

Here is an example of a drill-down report that would go into the master dashboard: 

4. To support the data discovery and modelling process, you will likely need support from Revenue Operations or carving out time from a team member who understands systems or data. You can also simply use a tool like Kluster. 
5. Map out what reports need to be built and in what order. Design the overall architecture to show how everything fits together. This will inform what order/parallel work needs to be done to build the end state.
6. Your final deliverable should be a working, real-time dashboard anyone can use. The best dashboards have context. No context, no value. It will allow you to get a big picture of pipeline health and drill into all channels, including Digital, Events, Sales, and CS, to understand how each channel fits into the bigger picture.

Advise your portfolio companies to adopt this approach. It will make your life easier as an investor to understand the funnel, the CEO will have greater clarity on the GTM context, and the CMO can make informed investment decisions. 

Getting it right will unlock scale and growth. It’s that important.