What kind of report do you pull?
A - Opportunity report using Opportunity Source, which pulls from a field that references the source of the opportunity itself which may be populated by the sales rep or an automation
B - Opportunity report using Lead Source for the main contact on the opportunity.
C - A Campaign Influence report that tracks the campaign that drove the opportunity.
D - A hybrid report that considers the various touches that lead up to the opportunity or another type of report - Please add comments
Last week I surveyed my LinkedIn audience with the question above. The results surprised me more than I expected. There wasn’t a clear winner. Sure, Option D took a slight majority, but Option A and Option C are pretty close.
So what does this mean? I think it represents a big problem for marketing operations professionals. How can we talk about HOW to pull a report when we don’t have a clear definition of WHAT we are reporting on.
And if we are asking about Marketing-SOURCED (as opposed to Marketing-INFLUENCED), where do we pull that source from? Each business has their own rules about where records come from, but what if one marketer pulls the report one way and another one pulls it a different way. How do you rectify that? What about definitions that might change over time?
These are questions for which I don’t have an answer… yet.