Leads: they’re at the top of the sales funnel. And they’re likely your sales team’s most-loved metric because they’re also an indicator of potential new customers, which means potential new revenue.
At events, there’s no arguing that tracking leads is important proof that gathering in-person does, in fact, promote pipeline growth. However, when making leads your primary metric, be wary of wading into a quantity-over-quality issue in your post-event data.
It’s arguably the main reason leads shouldn’t be your primary metric: leads alone lack context.
Rather, spend time and energy deciphering just how many of those leads fit your target profile, said Lauren Ashcroft Burdette, the head of revenue operations at New York-based customer experience provider Ubiquity. After all, it’s all about getting leads generated to complete the sales funnel—and sales teams can be more effective in doing so using what’s known as an ideal customer profile (ICP). With this analysis, tracking leads turns into tracking the eventgoers who most likely fit the profile of your ideal customer. As a result, these attendees are most likely to proceed further down the sales funnel.
Speaking of ideal customers, leads fail to take current customers into account.
“Let’s not forget the people that keep the lights on,” advised Kevin Hubschmann, the founder and host of corporate comedy experience firm Laugh.Events (pronounced “Laugh Dot Events”). “Current customers are your best salespeople,” he added. Adopting this mentality will force sales teams to measure success “not on net-new customers, but on customer retention”—a strategy Hubschmann told Vendelux he used when measuring event ROI while working as one of the founding team members of Splash (now owned by Cvent).
“Current Customer” was actually one of four criteria—which also included “Existing Pipeline”—that Hubschmann used at Splash as part of an “ROI calculator” to “analyze attendees” and help brands “understand the ROI that they would get from their events.”
When thinking about “Existing Pipeline,” you’re measuring “how much money is in the room,” derived from “attendees who were existing deals in the pipeline,” Hubschmann explained. “At this point, the client is already familiar with your services and this is the best time for them to meet important folks at the company.”
“Having these leads at events are, in my opinion, the best kinds of leads since they are the closest to the finish line, and allows the event to get the credit for pushing them over,” Hubschmann said, noting that he’s taken these philosophies on measuring leads from Splash and incorporated them into the data he collects at Laugh.Events.
For example, Laugh.Events puts on “Afterwork Comedy Shows” featuring a lineup of New York City’s best comedians. The events “are the best ways for prospective customers to experience our brand, or for existing customers to get more out of their relationship with us,” Hubschmann said. “Our biggest deals have come from individuals who have attended our Afterwork Shows,” he added, noting that attendance at Afterwork Shows from net-new leads has led to bookings for a custom, corporate version of Laugh.Events’ signature comedy show, while current customers who go to Afterwork Shows are best known to book repeat events.
In conclusion, it’s safe to say that solely tracking leads can create a superficial sense of success.
After all, the only primary metric that can prove ROI totally on its own is the amount of revenue generated. “If you can directly tie revenue to an event, you’ve got a concrete measure of success,” Ashcroft Burdette said.
But more often than not, an investment in events is a long-term investment—which is why it’s important for sales teams to “nurture and engage with leads,” according to Ashcroft Burdette. To assist in this, event professionals need to ensure that marketing, creative and sales teams are aligned. “For example, if lead attribution from events goes directly to marketing, it can discourage the sales team from following up with those leads because they don’t feel incentivized to work on them. That divide can hurt overall ROI,” Ashcroft Burdette said.
“By engaging as one engine, you keep the teams working in tandem, all moving toward the same goal,” she continued, “which ultimately strengthens collaboration and makes it easier to prove the value of events across the board.”
To debrief, here are the three reasons leads should not be your primary metric:
Because leads alone…
- lack context.
- fail to take current customers into account.
- create a superficial sense of success.
Interested in what other metrics to prioritize over leads? Check out Vendelux’s recent story: “These Are the Key Event Metrics Your Sales Team is Overlooking”
