One Question You Can Add That Shows What’s Working
By Juli Anne Patty, Fractional CMO · November 12, 2026 · The 60-Second CMO
In brief: Attribution is one of the biggest challenges in marketing, and regardless of the solution you’re using to analyze your marketing data, most marketing reports give all the credit for a sale to the last thing a buyer clicked. That hides the referrals, conversations, and content that actually started the deal, and it obscures the effective tactics that you should be funding. It also potentially leads you to put way more budget behind the least effective tactic than you should. But here’s the good news! You can get the fuller picture for free. Ask every new lead, “How did you hear about us?” in an open text field. Read your last ten closed deals by hand. If you’re getting a different answer from the report and the customer, believe the customer and plan next year’s budget around it.
What happened with the $200,000 deal?
This highly instructive story comes from Kyle Poyar at Growth Unhinged. Many attribution models credit a sale to the last tactic a buyer engaged with, either because they assume that was the one that tipped the buyer over into conversion or because they simply aren’t sophisticated enough to follow the entire buyer journey. Davide Grieco, the head of growth at Clay, a sales and marketing data platform, was bothered by the lack of clarity in how marketing tools analyzed attribution, so he decided to build an agent to fix the problem. (He used Claude and Wispr Pro initially.) Very quickly, the benefits of using such a tool became clear: Grieco looked closely at one $200,000 deal. The original report credited the sale to a paid Google ad that led the buyer to request a demo, but here’s what actually happened:
About two months earlier, the buyer signed up for a free trial. Under “How did you hear about us?” they answered “Network.”
In the weeks before the demo, they registered for two webinars.
At the very end, they clicked a Google ad and requested a demo. That last click got all the credit.
As Clay’s head of growth, Davide Grieco, put it in Growth Unhinged, “Last-touch attribution would have handed all the credit to Google.” It could easily have resulted in moving a huge chunk of your budget to Google Ads … without the expected return.
What is last-click attribution, and why does it mislead founders?
In last-click attribution, the last thing the buyer interacts with gets 100 percent of the credit for a sale. With new AI tools, better attribution models are now possible, but because the last-click is the easiest thing to track, many platforms and CRMs still have last-touch attributions as the default view. (For a full exploration of all the different attribution models and their pros and cons, check out this excellent article by Dataslayer, a marketing reporting tool with possibly the best name ever.)
Attribution that relies entirely on clicks, whether the last, first, or one in the middle, is always going to be misleading. That’s because so many of the marketing activities that start a relationship with a small business aren’t trackable by a click:
A referral from a client, a friend, or a business group
A podcast episode someone listened to on a walk
A LinkedIn post someone saved and came back to weeks later
A conversation at a local event or conference
None of these show up in a last-click report. If you set next year’s budget from that report alone, you could cut the very thing that’s bringing in your best customers and pour more money into the ad that only gets them across the finish line.
What is self-reported attribution?
Self-reported attribution means asking customers directly how they found you. It’s usually a single question, “How did you hear about us?”
For founders, and really everyone, it has three big advantages.
It’s free.
It needs no new software.
It captures word-of-mouth, which is often the biggest source of new business for small companies and the one tracking tools miss most.
It isn’t perfect. People sometimes remember the most recent thing, not the first, and some answers will be vague. That’s why it works best alongside your reports, not instead of them.
How to find out what’s really driving your sales in three steps
1. Ask
Add “How did you hear about us?” everywhere a new customer raises a hand: your contact form, your booking page, and your intake or discovery call. Make it an open text box, not a dropdown. A dropdown only offers choices you already know about. A text box gets you answers like “A friend in my Rotary club mentioned you” or “I heard you on a podcast,” which tell you exactly what to do more of. (Bonus: If they mention an actual person, that’s another opportunity you can leverage. People who are actively referring clients to you are relationships you should be actively nurturing.)
2. Read
Pull your last ten closed deals and go through them by hand. For each one, write down:
What the customer said when you asked how they found you
The first touch you can find, such as a referral, an event, a post, or a free trial
What your report or CRM credits
3. Decide
Where the customer’s answer and the report disagree, believe the customer. If three of your last ten deals started with a referral, that’s a channel. Fund it, whether that means a thank-you program for referrers, more time with your best partners, or simply asking happy clients for introductions, before you add another ad.
What should you do with what you learn?
Look for patterns, not one-offs. A few common ones:
Lots of referrals: Make it easy and rewarding for clients to refer you, and ask more often.
Podcasts or speaking: Pitch yourself as a guest on more shows your buyers listen to.
LinkedIn or other social content: Keep posting consistently, even if likes are modest. Buyers may be reading quietly.
Events: Show up at the smaller, local events where your customers already gather.
Paid ads mostly as the last step: Keep them, but don’t give them the whole budget. They may be closing deals that something else started.
Frequently asked questions
Should “How did you hear about us?” be a dropdown or an open text field?
Use an open text field. Dropdowns limit answers to the options you already know about. Free text captures the specifics, such as the name of the person, podcast, or event that sent the customer.
Is self-reported attribution accurate?
It’s not perfect, since people don’t always remember the first place they heard of you. But it captures word of mouth and offline conversations that tracking tools can’t see. Use it alongside your reports to get a fuller picture.
How many deals do I need to review?
Start with your last ten closed deals. That’s enough to spot a pattern without turning it into a research project. Repeat the review every quarter.
Do I still need analytics tools?
Yes. Analytics show the last click, and customer answers show what started the relationship. Use both, and when they disagree, give extra weight to what the customer said.
When should I do this?
Before you set next year’s marketing budget. It takes about an hour to review ten deals, and it can keep you from cutting the channel that’s quietly working best.
The 60-second version
Last-click reports give all the credit to the final touch and miss what started the deal.
Ask every new lead, “How did you hear about us?” in an open text field.
Read your last ten closed deals by hand.
When the customer and the report disagree, believe the customer.
Do it before you set next year’s budget.
About the author
Juli Anne Patty is a fractional CMO for founder-led small businesses. She has spent more than twenty years leading marketing across B2B SaaS, cybersecurity, broadcast technology, and mission-driven organizations, most recently as chief brand officer at Nextologies. She writes The 60-Second CMO, a weekly marketing tip for founders that takes about a minute to read.
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