I am CMO of SmartBear software and we track a lot of metrics. At last count we had about 10 sheets in a google docs workbook each with about 80 metrics per sheet. It takes us about 90 minutes every Monday to review the prior week. But when we are done, we know what happened the prior week in great detail. Of course we also monitor daily and real time metrics to make sure nothing breaks.
But there is one metric we haven’t been tracking and maybe we should. SmartBear is proud to have three Marketo Champions and five certified Marketo experts on its marketing team. Marketo only inducts 25 new Champions twice a year. Qualification criteria for being selected a Marketo champion includes; expertise, community involvement, leadership, evangelism, early adoption and engagement (participation in events and speaking engagements). SmartBear is the only company in the world with this many champions and we are understandably proud of that.
I didn’t have anything to do with it – so the credit goes to the team members. Marketo is one of our core systems, and provided our sales rep doesn’t screw around with the renewal, it will continue to be our core system (We negotiate all our SaaS renewals a quarter prior to expiration to give us the required time to shift systems should we have to). Like all systems we use, we allow open access to almost everyone. By doing this, we enable everyone to either use the system to get their job done, or at least get into the system to run reports. We do have some occasional issues due to open access, but more importantly everyone feels empowered to get their job done, and well, become a champion. Everyone on my team has Marketo access — its a lot of people, but it makes the team hum.
We will be at Marketo Marketing Nation conference next week – myself and our three champions. We are presenting in three presentations and the Champions will be hanging out at the Smart Bar answering questions. They told me I am not allowed to go there. But if you do stop by, please ask them the best way to handle multi-product companies and scoring. They are working on that now.
Here are my team’s presentations:
- Gary DeAsi – The Art and Science of Revenue-Centric Marketing in a Digital World
- Val Armstrong and Rick DeCosta will be at the Smart Bar 6:30 – 7:30 PM on Monday
- I am on a panel and will also be speaking on metrics and also sales alignment.
Three Marketo Champions – A good metric to monitor.