Marketing departments are now intimately involved in revenue creation. Not only do they drive leads at the top of the sales funnel, they also provide content and market intelligence to keep prospects warm as they advance through the middle and later phases of the funnel. Because of this shifting role, most high growth companies now view their marketing organisation as essential to achieving their top line goals.

Unsurprisingly, truly innovative businesses aren’t simply seeking to ‘weather the storm.’ In fact, many are re-tooling their marketing and sales processes to emerge from the current downturn with an even stronger brand and share of the market. They are intently studying the economics of the sales and marketing funnel and meticulously pinpointing where improvements in conversion rates can reap the greatest payoff in top-line revenue growth.

Marketers at these companies have long since abandoned the email clickthrough and website visit as the measure of marketing effectiveness. Their focus is beyond the click, where leads turned over to sales pass through a series of gates on their road to becoming closed business. Optimising the conversion rates – the rate at which sales leads pass through the gates from one stage to another – can have an enormous impact on the resulting revenue.

Simply increasing the flow of leads into the top of the funnel is not enough – and in fact may be unachievable in a down economy. Improving the rate at which current leads are qualified, correctly routed, accepted by sales, included in forecasts and ultimately closed becomes the new battleground in a business climate that forces organisations to do more with less.