Sales and marketing budgets can be daunting to put together, especially if you’re not sure where to start. Here are four steps to create a customer-based sales and marketing budget that your CFO will love:

Step 1:
Look at your historical spend and allocate percentages for each sales funnel stage (customer acquisition and retention)

Step 2:
Allocate people’s time.

Tip: This is a budgeting game changer by allocating time staff spends on customers.

Everyone thinks budgeting is just actual dollars spent, but that’s not the full picture. You must also count the time staff spends on customer acquisition and retention.

Now you have a total view of time and dollars spent on each customer-journey stage! Hint: you probably are overspending in customer acquisition, but not enough on customer retention. Fix it!

Step 3:
Determine your revenue goal for every business segment.

Is the growth plan for each of your businesses to either maintain, break-even, or grow significantly? Then define your suggested budget percent to revenue such as a range of zero to 25% shown.

Step 4:
The final step brings it all together – your historical spend and staff time, what your revenue goals are, and your investment gaps.

You likely are significantly under-investing in customer acquisition and retention. Your CFO probably won’t give you the full amount required, but now you can have deep conversations about prioritization.

Instead of saying “I need more money”, you now say – “in order for me bring in X number of leads, it will cost this much, but I can’t get there with this amount.” It’s now a give and take resource allocation discussion.

Need help creating a customer-based budget? Reach out to www.HPZmarketing.com

HPZ Marketing is certified by the WBENC as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE).

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