Welcome to another edition of Funnel Lab Fridays. For those of you tuning in for the first time, Funnel Lab Fridays is a weekly LinkedIn Live session where we dive into the use cases and challenges that data-savvy marketers encounter in today’s evolving landscape.
I’m your host, Eric Westerkamp, CEO at CaliberMind, and I’m excited to welcome Doug Bell, CMO at CaliberMind, and Ryan Milligan, VP of Sales and Revenue Operations at Quotapath. In today’s episode, we’ll be exploring Northstar Metrics for Marketing and Channel Activation—those vital indicators that can make or break the success of a marketing channel.
Introduction to Ryan Milligan and Quotapath
Quotapath automates commission calculations, ensuring transparency and efficiency for sales teams. As the VP of Sales and Revenue Operations, Ryan understands better than most how QuotaPath makes it easier for reps to track their earnings in real-time and for finance teams to build out compensation plans. Ryan’s career has spanned data science, marketing ops, and RevOps, giving him a unique lens to tackle today’s conversation.
Activating Marketing Channels: Quotapath’s Community Channel
Eric quickly jumped into the meat of the discussion, asking Ryan to share some insights into Quotapath’s recent efforts to activate a community channel. Ryan explained how they use communities like RevOps Co-op and Pavilion to tap into one of their top lead generation motions—compensation plan consultations.
The beauty of communities, Ryan shared, is that they’re an excellent testing ground for new ideas and content distribution. He broke down the process:
- First 90 days: Test the waters—how many Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)-style events can be generated?
- Next 90 days: Assess opportunity creation—are these consultations converting into tangible opportunities?
This “test, measure, and adapt” approach helps them decide if they should continue investing in a community or if they need to pivot.
Metrics That Matter: CaliberMind’s Approach to Performance Marketing
Following Ryan’s example, Eric turned to Doug to shed some light on how CaliberMind activates and measures the success of its own marketing channels. Doug noted that CaliberMind activated two significant channels last year: ABX (Account-Based Experience) and performance marketing. He pointed out how important it is to engage audiences in an economically feasible way.
Doug’s strategy for reactivating performance marketing centered around cost per engagement and progression through engagement stages—a tactic that has paid off handsomely. He emphasized a golden nugget of advice for high Annual Contract Value (ACV) companies: focus on establishing early metrics and let them guide you toward the right downstream indicators.
The Role of Deal Size: Quotapath’s Different Sales Cycles
Given that Quotapath primarily serves the upper SMB and mid-market segments, Ryan discussed how deal size affects their approach. With smaller deal sizes and faster sales cycles, he’s able to quickly assess if a channel is delivering results. For Quotapath, free trials are a key top-of-funnel tactic. Ryan noted that in higher ACV businesses, the feedback loop is longer, but with Quotapath’s shorter cycles, they can pressure-test a channel’s viability in a matter of months.
Doug chimed in, affirming that the challenges Quotapath faces aren’t all that different from CaliberMind’s, even with varying deal sizes. The dynamic of balancing expectations against actual metrics is something both companies wrestle with.
Cost vs. Performance: Navigating the Dark Funnel
Ryan then touched on the tricky nature of tracking the dark funnel, especially with community-driven channels. There’s always an element of “view-through” that is harder to quantify. To manage this, Ryan employs a cost-per-direct MQL model, layering in assumptions based on his other channels like paid search and direct traffic. By building a composite model of what performance looks like across channels, he’s able to estimate payback periods and ROI.
Doug added that channel elasticity—how much you can scale a channel before diminishing returns—is another key vector. The ability to know when to pull back or double down is crucial to effective channel management.
The CEO Perspective: Making Big Bets
Eric shifted gears to the CEO perspective, sharing his own frustrations with channel activation: are the early metrics translating into results? Often, channels show promising engagement metrics only to falter when it comes to generating pipeline. The challenge for CEOs is balancing optimism with reality—early indicators can be misleading if they don’t convert to actual revenue.
This led to a conversation about normalizing metrics across channels. Ryan acknowledged that MQLs and MQAs (Marketing Qualified Accounts) are often lumped together, but the conversion rates can vary drastically depending on the channel. For instance, event-based MQLs might have a much lower conversion rate than webinar-based ones, making it vital to measure them separately.
Customer Quality Matters: Beyond the Conversion Rate
One of the standout moments was when Ryan pointed out that different channels also deliver varying levels of customer quality. Paid search leads, for example, tend to have higher intent and stick around longer, while community-driven leads may churn faster. This adds an extra layer of complexity when measuring channel performance, as customer lifetime value (LTV) and net retention rates can differ by channel.
Ryan’s advice? Don’t just look at cost per customer—dig into the long-term health of those customers to make better investment decisions.
The Balancing Act of PLG and Traditional Sales Models
Eric wrapped up the conversation by asking Ryan how Quotapath balances Product-Led Growth (PLG) motions with traditional sales models. Ryan explained that each motion comes with its own time horizons and funnel dynamics. For example, in the SMB and mid-market motion, there’s a fast feedback loop, allowing Quotapath to adjust quickly. But in the enterprise segment, patience is key. Enterprise deals require more time, with investments made upfront before results are visible months later.
Tool Time: Monitoring Channel Performance with Data
As always, we ended the episode with Tool Time. Ryan shared his screen, walking us through how he monitors channel performance using Snowflake as a data warehouse and Mode for BI reporting. He highlighted how he tracks metrics like opportunity creation, demo rates, and win rates to determine if a channel is delivering against expectations.
Ryan’s dashboard provided a snapshot of ARR by channel, as well as conversion rates from MQL to opportunity, giving him a comprehensive view of each channel’s health. He emphasized the importance of top-of-funnel metrics and how they can provide early indicators of whether a channel is worth continuing to invest in.
Closing Thoughts
This week’s Funnel Lab Friday was packed with actionable insights on navigating the complex world of Northstar Metrics and channel activation. A huge thanks to Ryan Milligan and Doug Bell for sharing their expertise. Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where Tracy Earles from NetApp will join us to delve into the ROI of marketing.
