Vanity vs. Velocity: The New Partnership Between Marketing and Ops

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A familiar tension exists in many companies. Marketing is celebrated for generating a high volume of leads, while Sales and Operations struggle with their poor quality. Each function is optimizing for a different, and often conflicting, set of metrics.

This friction stems from a focus on vanity metrics, numbers that look good on a report but do not predict business outcomes. The path to alignment and scalable growth requires a shared commitment to velocity metrics, the indicators that actually measure the health and speed of your revenue engine.

This shift is not just a change in reporting; it is a fundamental redesign of the partnership between Marketing and Operations.

Part 1: The Marketing Leader's Move. From MQLs to Pipeline

For Marketing, moving beyond vanity means shifting the conversation from activity to impact.

Instead of reporting on MQLs, report on Marketing Sourced Pipeline. This is the ultimate measure of your contribution to revenue.

Instead of celebrating Open Rates, track Engagement Rate by Target Account. Are the companies in your ICP actually listening?

Instead of counting Meetings Booked, measure Conversion from Engagement to Meeting. This shows the effectiveness of your motion, not just its activity.

This evolution requires Marketing to deeply understand the sales cycle and what truly constitutes a sales ready lead. It moves the function from a creator of top funnel activity to a driver of bottom funnel results.

Part 2: The Ops Leader's Mandate. Building the Infrastructure for Visibility

For Operations, enabling this shift is a technical and strategic imperative. Velocity metrics cannot be tracked on spreadsheets.

You must build the infrastructure. This means defining a universal SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) criteria in the CRM that both Marketing and Sales agree upon.

You must implement attribution. Instrumenting systems to track a lead from first touch to closed deal, ensuring Marketing gets credit for influenced pipeline.

You must create the dashboards. Building real time reports that show Pipeline Velocity and Cost per SQL, giving leadership a true view of what is driving growth.

Ops is the architect of the system that makes this shared visibility possible.

The New Partnership: Aligned on Revenue Velocity

This is not a passive change. It requires active collaboration.

• Agree on a Single Definition of a Qualified Lead: Marketing and Sales must sit down together and define what a "good lead" is. This is a business decision, not a marketing or sales one.
• Implement Closed Loop Reporting: Ops ensures every lead is tagged from source to outcome, creating a feedback loop that shows which marketing efforts actually drive revenue.
• Co-Present a Unified View: Marketing and Ops should present a joint report to leadership. Marketing speaks to the top of funnel initiatives, Ops presents the conversion data, and together they tell a complete story of revenue performance.

When Marketing and Ops align on velocity metrics, the friction evaporates. Marketing is incentivized to generate high quality demand that Ops can efficiently route and Sales can close. Ops provides the data and systems that prove marketing's value.

They become co-pilots, jointly responsible for steering the company toward predictable, scalable growth. They stop reporting on effort and start reporting on outcomes.