Key Points

  • Marketing professionals often attach very different meanings to the same terms and metrics, making collaboration and communication difficult within the marketing team as well as with other groups in the company.
  • The Revenue Cycle Model provides the basis for a common vocabulary describing stages in the sales-marketing process.
  • Clear definitions help to clarify departmental roles, responsibilities, processes, and performance indicators.
  • A company’s revenue model can start out simply, but will evolve, improve, and become more refined over time.
  • A staged model of the revenue process helps the seller focus more effectively on each distinctive phase of the buyer’s journey.
  • Three key stages of the revenue model are: early seed nurturing, engaged lead nurturing, and closing on those ready for harvesting.
  • Key principles behind the revenue model are that sales is an expensive resource; that leads should never be left behind; and that buyers’ journeys are often nonlinear.

1I want to acknowledge the confusing use of the term “lead,” even in this book. Sometimes the word is used to mean anyone in the entire revenue funnel versus a much more precise meaning of a buyer at a certain specific stage of their process. It’s a fact of life that the word gets used in both ways, so always pay attention to which meaning is being used!

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