AMA: Dovetail Head of Demand Generation, Venus Picart on Demand Generation KPI's

The process I use to determine which metrics to hold demand generation accountable for can be summarized into four key steps: 1) Assess the Current Situation * Go on a listening tour: Speak with key stakeholders across marketing, sales, and customer success to understand how demand generation is currently perceived and what outcomes they expect. Gather insights into past campaigns, successes, and failures to build a baseline understanding. * Gather tribal knowledge: Learn from team members with historical context about what has been tried before and what worked or didn’t work, which can reveal nuances that aren’t documented. * Understand the martech stack: Evaluate the tools currently in place for lead capture, campaign execution, attribution, and reporting. Identify which tools are being used effectively and which are underutilized. This will inform what metrics can realistically be tracked and measured. 2) Identify What’s Important to Leadership * Clarify business goals: Understand the overarching business objectives, such as revenue growth, market expansion, or customer retention, and how demand generation is expected to contribute. * Engage with leadership: Collaborate with executives to define their expectations for demand generation. Do they prioritize top-of-funnel activities like lead volume, or are they more focused on pipeline velocity, deal size, or customer acquisition cost (CAC)? * Align on outcomes: Ensure the metrics align with both marketing and broader organizational goals, so that demand generation efforts are seen as directly contributing to business impact. 3) Determine Gaps in People, Processes, and Tools * People: Assess whether the team has the right skill sets to execute and measure demand generation effectively. Are there specialists in analytics, campaign management, and martech who can ensure metrics are tracked accurately? * Processes: Evaluate the current workflows for tracking and reporting metrics. Are there established processes for lead qualification, handoff to sales, and feedback loops? If not, how quickly can they be established? * Tools: Identify gaps in tools needed for accurate measurement, such as CRM integrations, attribution software, or advanced reporting capabilities. Addressing these gaps ensures metrics are actionable and reliable. 4) Understand the Organization’s Data Maturity * Evaluate data quality: Assess whether the organization has clean, consistent data across platforms. Poor data quality can lead to inaccurate metrics and undermine decision-making. * Assess attribution capabilities: Understand how well the organization can attribute demand generation efforts to revenue outcomes. For example, can you track multi-touch attribution, or are you limited to first- or last-touch models? * Tailor metrics to maturity: Set realistic expectations for metrics based on the organization’s data and reporting maturity. For example, if attribution is a challenge, focus on pipeline contribution metrics rather than precise ROI calculations. Following this process helps to ensure that the metrics chosen are not only actionable but also aligned with the organization’s strategy, resources, and data capabilities. But it's also completely feasible that there may be additional steps to the process I outlined above and will depend on the overall maturity of the organization you are currently at.

Congratulations on this exciting opportunity! What a wonderful opportunity and an exciting ride that you're about to embark upon. As someone who has been in a similar position, here’s some of my advice: 1. Don’t underestimate the work culture. Demand Generation is a structured discipline, often relying on data, metrics, and a systematic approach to driving leads and revenue. Your colleagues with creative or brand-focused marketing backgrounds might find this way of working unfamiliar. Take time to understand the existing culture and their style of work—how decisions are made, how success is celebrated, and how teams collaborate. 2. Know that you live in a bubble. As a Demand Generation expert, you bring specialized knowledge, but you may quickly realize others in the organization don’t fully grasp the terminology, concepts, or value of what you’re building. Before you launch your programs, invest time in educating stakeholders and peers. Provide presentations to explain what Demand Generation is, how it works, and how it aligns with the company’s goals. Show teams what success could look like with concrete examples from similar businesses or industry benchmarks. 3. Take everyone on a journey, but know that time is against you. It’s essential to bring colleagues along, especially other parts of the Marketing organization as well as cross-functional partners like Sales, Product, and Customer Success. Build rapport, seek input, and actively campaign for their buy-in. But don’t wait for perfect alignment before getting started—prioritize quick wins to build momentum. For example, launch a pilot campaign targeting a low-hanging fruit segment and share the results to demonstrate early success. 4. Communicate often and clearly. Your role and its impact may not be immediately apparent to everyone. Regular updates—whether through team meetings, email updates, or dashboards—are critical to keeping stakeholders and colleagues informed. Share not just your activities but also your progress against goals. 5. Emphasize the critical nature of your work. Demand Generation is the lifeblood of pipeline creation, and your programs will directly impact revenue. Frame your role as a key partnership with Sales to fuel business growth. Use data to illustrate this connection, such as projecting how your campaigns will contribute to pipeline targets or revenue growth. Position Demand Generation as one critical component to the company’s success—without it, scaling will be nearly impossible. 6. Set up strong foundations. Before diving into tactics, focus on laying the groundwork. Define clear goals and KPIs, establish alignment with Sales on lead definitions and qualification criteria, and ensure your tech stack (e.g., CRM, marketing automation) is ready to support scalable programs. 7. Celebrate small wins and learn from failures. Building something from scratch is a marathon, not a sprint. Celebrate milestones like your first campaign launch, the first MQL that converts to an opportunity, or the first deal influenced by marketing. These moments will help rally the broader team around your efforts. At the same time, learn to fail fast. Be prepared for setbacks and treat them as learning opportunities. Your success in your new role will set the tone for how the company views Demand Generation in the long run so stay curious, adaptable, and focused on driving impact.

The answer to this question is bit tricky. The truth is, you don’t fully get past the uncertainty—but you can approach it in a structured way to reduce ambiguity and set realistic, adaptable goals. Here are a few strategies that might help: 1. Be comfortable with the known unknowns. Understand that uncertainty is part of the process when entering new markets. Acknowledge what you don’t know, and frame your initial KPIs as a starting point rather than fixed benchmarks. This mindset will help you and your stakeholders maintain flexibility while managing expectations. 2. Use historical data to establish a baseline. Even if your new market differs significantly from your past experiences, look for trends or outcomes in similar initiatives. For example, if you’ve launched a product in adjacent markets, examine how long it took to gain traction, what customer acquisition costs looked like, and other performance indicators. These insights can inform initial targets, even if they’re not an apples to apples comparison. 3. Look to the market and consider relevant or adjacent industry standards. Research competitors and analogous industries to identify benchmarks. For instance, if you're entering a B2B SaaS market, you might evaluate typical customer acquisition costs, sales cycles, or conversion rates in that sector. These industry norms can provide context and act as guardrails for setting KPIs. 4. Set expectations through transparent communication. Clearly articulate which aspects of your KPIs are based on industry best practices, historical data, or assumptions unique to your organization. By doing so, you ensure alignment and buy-in from key stakeholders while building a shared understanding that these goals may evolve. 5. Adjust at critical intervals as new data comes in. Treat your initial KPIs as a living document. Plan regular check-ins—perhaps quarterly or after major milestones—to review performance, incorporate new data, and refine your metrics. For example, after the first three months, you might find that conversion rates are trending higher but sales cycles are longer than expected. Use these insights to recalibrate. Pro Tip: Consider breaking KPIs into two categories: * Exploratory KPIs: Metrics to test assumptions and validate early strategies (e.g., number of leads generated from a new channel). * Operational KPIs: Metrics tied to execution and scale once you’ve identified successful tactics (e.g., cost per acquisition or retention rate). By combining these two types of KPIs, you balance the need for experimentation with the need to deliver measurable outcomes.

I hesitate to use the word "worst" because, in most cases, KPIs aren’t inherently bad—they’re often just "less optimal" depending on the context, goals, and how they’re used. That said, there are definitely KPIs that can lead you astray if you're not thoughtful about their relevance to your objectives or the limitations of your organization. Here's some KPIs I would be wary of: 1. "Big Swing" KPIs These are ambitious, high-reaching goals that aim to inspire teams and generate excitement—think "double our pipeline in one quarter" or "grow MQLs by 200%." While pushing boundaries is essential for growth, these KPIs my not always be grounded in the reality of your current resources, processes, or market conditions. t's good to stretch strategically, but don't goals that might derail morale if they’re unattainable. 2. Vanity Metrics Vanity metrics, like website traffic or raw follower counts, can look great in a report, but their value diminishes if they aren't tied to business outcomes like revenue, pipeline, or customer retention. For example, having thousands of monthly website visitors means little if those visitors don’t convert into meaningful leads or qualified opportunities. 3. Email Deliverability and Open Rates At face value, email deliverability and open rates seem critical, but they’re becoming less reliable due to external factors. For instance, IT teams at large enterprises often auto-open emails for security scanning purposes, inflating open rate numbers. Additionally, modern privacy features, like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, further muddy the waters. Instead, focus on downstream email metrics like click-through rates (CTR) or conversions that better reflect actual engagement and interest. 4. Social Media Engagement Without Pipeline Attribution Social metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and even follower growth can boost your visibility and brand perception, but they don’t always translate into relevant demand generation indicators. Without tying social activity to pipeline contribution or conversion rates, you risk investing heavily in social platforms and campaigns that drive awareness but fail to generate demand. In general, avoid KPIs that prioritize activity over impact. Focus on KPIs that align with your organization’s broader revenue and growth objectives, and always maintain a clear line of sight to the business outcomes they support. And if you have to commit to the "worst" KPIs, know that delivering great results are table stakes, though they may not necessarily bring actual value.