Sourced or Influenced? Two Pipeline Numbers, Two Different Questions

Key takeaways

• Sourced answers "what did marketing start?"; influenced answers "what did marketing touch?".
• Each deal has one source but can be influenced by many actions.
• Influenced pipeline across channels will add up to more than total pipeline. That's expected.
• Fix the definitions with sales before you report either number.
• For long cycles and offline work, influenced is the more useful number for comparing actions.

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Marketing reports €2 million in influenced pipeline. Sales points out that total pipeline is €2.4 million and asks whether marketing is claiming 83% of it. The meeting goes downhill from there.

Both numbers can be correct. They just answer different questions, and mixing them up is what causes the argument.

Definitions

Sourced pipeline is the total value of open and won deals where the first recorded touch was a marketing activity: an inbound form, a content download, an ad click, an event scan. Each deal has exactly one source, so sourced pipeline across all sources adds up to total pipeline.

Influenced pipeline is the total value of deals where at least one contact on the deal interacted with a marketing activity, usually within a time window before or during the deal. A deal can be influenced by many activities, so influenced pipeline per activity overlaps.

Some teams also report marketing-touched pipeline, which is influenced pipeline with no time window. It's the most generous version and the least useful.

How to calculate each

Sourced: take each deal, find its earliest associated contact, and read that contact's original source. Deals from contacts whose source is a marketing channel count as marketing sourced. In most CRMs this is a filter on a deal report.

Influenced: for each marketing action, find the contacts it reached (the list of event attendees, the people who clicked a campaign, the leads from an ad), then find the deals created or progressed after the action that have one of those contacts. Sum their value. Each deal counts once per action, and may also count for other actions.

The time window matters. A reasonable default is from the start of the action to the end of one sales cycle after it.

Why the numbers never add up

If an account attended your webinar, clicked a LinkedIn ad and met you at a conference, its deal counts in the influenced pipeline of all three. Add those up and the deal is counted three times.

That's not an error. Influenced pipeline answers "which deals did this action touch?" for one action at a time. It's useful for comparing actions with each other, and wrong for adding up into a total. If you need a total, report sourced pipeline, or one influenced total for marketing as a whole where each deal counts once.

Which to report, and to whom

• To the board: marketing sourced pipeline as a share of total, plus one deduplicated marketing-influenced figure. Two numbers, both clearly defined.
• To the marketing team: influenced pipeline per action, to decide what to keep, stop or scale.
• To sales: the list of open deals each action touched, which is more useful to them than any total.

For businesses with a long sales cycle and a lot of offline work, sourced pipeline will understate marketing because the first recorded touch is often a sales email or a direct visit. That's a reason to look at influenced pipeline per action, not to stretch the definition of sourced.

Agree the rules with sales first

Most of the conflict around these numbers comes from definitions decided by one side. Before reporting, agree in writing:

1. What counts as a marketing touch (and whether sales-led events do).
2. The time window for influence.
3. Whether open pipeline, won revenue or both are reported.
4. That influenced totals per action are not summed.

Quick Q&A

What is marketing sourced pipeline?

The value of deals whose first recorded touch was a marketing activity. Each deal has one source.

What is marketing influenced pipeline?

The value of deals where a contact interacted with a marketing activity before or during the deal. A deal can be influenced by several activities.

Why is influenced pipeline bigger than total pipeline?

Because the same deal counts for every action that touched it. Compare actions with it; don't add it up.

Which is better, sourced or influenced?

Neither on its own. Sourced is stricter and suits board reporting; influenced is better for comparing actions, especially events and other offline work.

How do I track influenced pipeline in HubSpot?

Put the contacts each action reached on a list, or link the action to a campaign property, and count the deals created afterwards that have one of those contacts.

Keep reading

• How to measure event ROI: influenced pipeline for conferences and sponsorships.
• HubSpot attribution reports explained: contact, deal and revenue attribution.
• Campaign reporting for long sales cycles: following campaigns from contact to won deal.
• Track marketing actions, not just traffic: the action log that makes this possible.