Basics of Lifecycle and best practice usage

"Lifecycle" or "Lead Lifecycle" (depending on your organization) is a terminology that many of us in Marketing Operations often use, but it is also an oft-misunderstood part of our core toolset.  When you hear the term "lifecycle" what is the first thing that comes to mind?

• Lead definitions (aka - what is an "MQL?")?
• Sales and Marketing alignment (such as Service Level Agreements for following up on MQLs)?
• Measuring Sales conversion of marketing leads (MQL to SQL %)?

Like the analogy of the three blind travelers attempting to describe an elephant, these are all true parts of what the core capability of "lifecycle" is intended to help us accomplish.  However, they don't describe the tool as a whole and this is why there is oftentimes much confusion about why investment into building and maintaining a robust lifecycle model in your organization is so important and it is often as a result misused.  

Therefore, this blog is intended to bring us back to basics and fundamentals.  

First:  What is lifecycle?  

Lifecycle is first and foremost a reporting tool before it is anything else.  The intention of lifecycle is to help revenue teams understand their  overall audience's status at a macro (overall, what is the health of our prospect pipeline and/or flywheel) and micro (How many leads are we passing to Sales and what is their quality level?) level.  It's intention is to answer key strategic questions concerning the validity of the organization's current demand strategy based on buyers' journey to acquiring and onboarding on new solutions.  

Second:  What does a best practice lifecycle include?

A best practice lifecycle model should include the following key elements:

• A definition of the organization's lifecycle success path to revenue - meaning the "happy path" by which a person progresses from being a stalker to a buyer. 
• "Bypass stages" that inform the model and its reporting of hiccups in the happy path; providing revenue teams with data to inform "recycling programs" and to adjust qualification rules to align better with buyer intent. 
• Cross-functional, organizationally defined milestone definitions for key stages used for reporting.  The most common milestones are MEL (Marketing Engaged), MQL (Marketing Qualified, or "ready for sales"), SQL (Sales Qualified, typically a meeting booked), SQO (Sales Qualified Opportunity, or opportunity in funnel), and of course your opportunity stage in the CRM that represents a booking. 
• Date/time stamping for records in the marketing automation system when they originally reach a milestone and the most recent date/time they reach this milestone.  These stamps should account for not only when a person reaches the stage itself, but also for any "pass through" flows where a person may move multiple stages at once (for example, a fast track to MQL or a MQL that a rep has had previous experience with that is automatically added to the sales funnel).  

Third:  What operational components should I have in place to support good lifecycle operations? 

Your lifecycle, as a system supporting your organization's strategic reporting, is supported by solid fundamental operations that enable the lifecycle to function effectively.  These components include:

• A well-established and tight sync with your CRM of record, including data concerning deal/opportunity data that indicates at which stage of the sales funnel a buying motion exists.
• Systematic ways to measure when people engage with your key online and offline marketing touchpoints (one of the best ways is by using programs with success stages in Marketo Engage
• Operationally sound data management practices, including duplicate management, data definitions, and defined segmentations
• Marketing and sales agreement on the definition of the handoff points in the lifecycle, which include:
  • Lead Definition (MQL or Sales-Ready Lead) 
  • A mutually aligned Service Level Agreement (SLA) for leads passed based on the agreed-upon MQL/Sales-Ready Lead standard)
  • Standard by which a lead converts to an opportunity or a meeting.
  • CRM Operations that ensure that leads and their associated marketing touches (such as Marketo program membership > Salesforce campaign membership) are connected to funnel opportunities for attribution.
  • Definition of a qualified opportunity and the sales process
  • Sales rejection reasons and marketing strategies (such as automated recycle nurtures) to re-engage MQLs that were not yet ready for sales to engage effectively.  

• Marketing Operations know-how and talent that is able to and empowered to analyze lifecycle performance and make cross-functional adjustments to ensure that the lifecycle (and as such the reporting) machine is operating well and maintaining harmony in the customer journey.