Connecting Marketing to Sales Outcomes to Prove ROI

Proving that your marketing efforts drive actual sales results isn’t just helpful—it’s essential. 

For marketing leaders like you, managing expectations from CEOs and other stakeholders, the pressure to show real, bottom-line impact has never been higher.

Many CEOs demand clarity on how marketing dollars are translating into sales, and this scrutiny is driving a need for transparent, data-backed insights. 

If you can show a clear connection between your marketing strategies and tangible sales outcomes, you’re not just demonstrating value; you’re securing your role within your company.

Proving ROI isn’t easy, though, and that’s why so many struggle with it. So how can you do it?

This article explores four strategies that can bridge the gap between marketing and sales in a way that proves ROI, increases collaboration, and keeps you on track to meet your growth goals. 

Unifying sales and marketing means more than just bringing teams together. It means integrating software as well, so marketing and sales have visibility. This article assumes that you’re using or considering HubSpot for marketing, and at least integrating your CRM with HubSpot.

By implementing the following strategies you can position your team to directly influence sales and measurably showcase marketing’s impact.

Track All Deals in HubSpot CRM

If you want to show the real value of your marketing efforts, you have to track all of your sales opportunities in a CRM. Not a spreadsheet. Not a whiteboard. In a CRM.

Marketing teams often overlook the value of tracking the entire sales pipeline in their CRM. When every deal is recorded in HubSpot, marketing and sales gain a unified view of the pipeline, which makes it easier to understand where leads stand, how they’re progressing, and where bottlenecks may be appearing. 

With this shared visibility, you’re able to identify trends and adjust strategies dynamically:

• Are deals stalling at a specific stage?
• Which types of leads are closing faster?
• Where are sales reps struggling to close deals?

Beyond tracking deal stages, it’s essential to track key metrics, like Amount. Deal Amount is a system field in HubSpot and provides concrete insight into the financial value each opportunity represents. This is particularly valuable when reporting marketing’s impact on revenue, as it allows you to link specific deals and revenue outcomes to marketing-generated leads. 

Here’s why this matters:

• It’s tangible: Revenue metrics offer a concrete way to show marketing’s impact on sales, giving you solid data to back up budget requests and strategic pivots.
• It closes the ROI loop: When you can point to specific revenue outcomes from marketing campaigns, it becomes easier to justify continued investment in those areas.
• It enhances forecasting: Tracking financial metrics in real time allows both marketing and sales to make more accurate revenue projections, ensuring that you can better predict quarterly outcomes and adjust campaigns proactively.

One practical way to ensure a deal’s Amount is recorded accurately is by requiring that the Amount field be completed before a deal can move to the Closed Won deal stage.

Ideally, you should add the deal’s Amount as soon as possible—after the work has been scoped, a quote prepared, or a proposal written. Having this data early not only helps with forecasting but also provides a real-time snapshot of potential revenue from active deals. 

With insights like these, when the CEO asks how marketing is contributing to sales revenue, you’ll have data on hand to show exactly where and how marketing is forecasted to impact sales and how marketing is actually impacting closed deals.

With deal Amount tracking in place, marketing can make informed decisions about where to focus resources to maximize revenue generation. And as I’ll discuss in the next section, tracking Deal Source will further help in attributing which marketing channels are delivering the highest-value opportunities. This way, both marketing and sales can work together to prioritize the deals that matter most to the bottom line.

Add Lead Attribution to Your Deal Record

If you want to show the real value of your marketing efforts, tracking attribution is critical. In HubSpot, adding lead attribution to each deal record provides clarity on which marketing channels are driving the highest quality leads. Tracking both the initial point of contact and the entire journey leading to a sale allows you to answer critical questions:

• Which campaigns generated the most qualified leads?
• How did each marketing channel contribute to the customer’s journey?
• Are there patterns in the sources of deals that convert at higher rates?
• How many sales opportunities did the last trade show create?

To make this possible, we recommend creating a custom field in HubSpot called Deal Source. This field serves as a consistent way to capture the marketing source for each deal, directly linking revenue outcomes back to marketing’s efforts. Here’s how you can set this up in HubSpot for automated, accurate attribution:

Step 1: Create the Custom Deal Field

1. In HubSpot, go to Settings > Properties.
2. Under Deals, click Create Property to set up a new custom field. Name it Deal Source and choose a field type that best matches your source categories, such as a dropdown with options for channels like “Paid Search,” “Organic Search,” “Social Media,” etc.

Step 2: Build a Workflow to Set Deal Source Automatically

1. Go to Automation > Workflows and create a new workflow.
2. Set the enrollment criteria to trigger the workflow when a contact is associated with a deal.
3. Add an action that checks the Original Source Type property of the contact (this is a standard HubSpot field that captures the source of a contact’s first interaction).
4. Based on the Original Source Type data, configure the workflow to set the Deal Source field on the deal. For example, if the Original Source is “Paid Search,” the workflow can automatically set Deal Source to “Paid Search.”

By implementing this workflow, each time a new contact is assigned to a deal, the Deal Source is populated based on that contact’s original interaction with your company. This automation minimizes manual data entry and ensures your attribution data is consistent and accurate.

Automating Deal Source not only streamlines the attribution process but also provides an accurate picture of which marketing channels consistently deliver high-value leads. 

Implement a Lead Handoff Process to Accelerate Conversions

The handoff between marketing and sales is a delicate moment that can make or break a sales opportunity. A robust lead handoff process ensures that no qualified lead falls through the cracks. When marketing passes along leads that are already primed and informed, sales can step in at the optimal moment, reducing lag time and improving conversion rates.

Done poorly, sales will just start calling contacts and complaining of poor quality leads, or worse yet, leads won’t get handed off at all, resulting in lost opportunities.

Here are the steps to streamline this process in HubSpot:

• Define lead qualification criteria: Clearly establish what qualifies a lead for handoff, using data like engagement scores, content downloads, or form fill types.
• Automate notifications: Set up automated alerts to notify sales immediately when a lead is ready.
• Document handoff steps: Outline a consistent follow-up cadence for sales so that every lead receives timely attention.
• Train the team: Every team member in the marketing and sales department should understand what’s expected of them to make sure lead handoff happens well.

This approach not only speeds up response times but also enhances the buyer’s experience by ensuring consistent communication across touchpoints. 

According to industry statistics, organizations with aligned departments can achieve up to 38% higher sales win rates. Implementing a handoff process is a foundational way to create this alignment.

Build a Culture of Alignment and Transparency

Closed loop reporting isn’t just about technology – it’s about fostering a collaborative culture where marketing and sales work as a cohesive revenue team. 

When marketing has direct visibility into sales data and can attribute deals to specific campaigns, it empowers your team to make smarter, data-driven decisions. The same goes for sales, who benefit from leads that are clearly prioritized and well-documented.

Here’s how you can start to build this culture of alignment:

• Regular alignment meetings: Host monthly meetings between marketing and sales to review the pipeline and discuss lead quality.
• Feedback loops: Encourage sales to provide feedback on lead quality, allowing marketing to adjust targeting and messaging based on direct input.
• Joint success metrics: Establish shared metrics that reflect the combined efforts of both teams.

Making Your Marketing a Sales Engine

At Whittington Consulting, we believe marketing should be more than just a source of brand awareness. Done well, marketing is a sales engine—fueling revenue and proving ROI. By tracking deals in HubSpot, implementing lead attribution, optimizing handoff processes, and building a culture of alignment and transparency, you’ll be well-equipped to show marketing’s value in a way that resonates with sales and executive leadership.

To learn more about how Whittington Consulting can help transform your marketing into a results-driven sales system, explore our HubSpot consulting services, where we provide actionable, data-backed solutions that tie directly to your business goals.