14: Lifecycle: A Martech Saga part 3: A simple formula for a basic lifecycle

Okay, you’ve got everyone to agree on a flow chart; you look like a wizard for building it all out, now the easy part, right? 

Is it the easy part?

It should be the easy part but what I’ve often seen is that folks deploying lifecycle are doing it for the first time; often they are unsupported except some high level guides from vendors. Once you get it down, it can be highly formulaic. 

As a marketer, you’re kind of in between your data team/revops/IT/bizops and sales, your end users. I see the role bridging the gap between was possible on the tech side and balancing what the end user wants, not always sales, sometimes marketing. 

But it can be stressful managing these projects. Some companies have massive programs that are triggered off of lifecycle stage changes. So what’s the formula? 

First, you need strong stage definitions. Hand-in-hand with this is knowing what constitutes a transition. I think the transition part of lifecycle is often where people get hung up. 

Mechanism for transition needs to be a data signal of some sort. Moving from Marketing side of the fence to Sales side needs a clear hand off.

3 typical mechanisms for transitioning records are: 

• Lead Scoring - Marketing
• Contact Status - Sales handoffs
• Opportunity Staging - Sales pipeline

Question - You’ve talked to me quite a bit about the difference between lifecycle stages and contact statuses. This can be super confusing to folks new to automation. What’s the difference and why’s it important? 

Lifecycle Stage = Roadmap
Contact Status = Traffic lights

One of the big value points of deploying a solid lifecycle is reporting. What are you doing during set up to make sure your reporting is top-notch post deployment?

• Timestamp fields -- super easy!
• Contact status fields -- review your rejected leads
• Attribution fields -- hard code these values
• Take a look at tools within the systems themselves: HubSpot has attribution tools, Marketo has revenue cycle modeller

How simple is all this really? I mean, once you know your way around lifecycle, it’s actually not that hard to deploy? 

In terms of a technical problem, it’s a solved problem. You can mix and match components, and tailor things to your needs. The real challenge will always be getting buy-in:

• You might have genius idea for contact status that requires additional data input from sales people.
• This is a great way to turn people against you, and our finale will dive deeper into this!  

Thanks for listening! Make sure you check out part 1 and 2 in the previous two episodes and stay tuned for part 4 and 5.

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