Five Deadly Sins That Stall Growth

Be honest. 

Are your sales and marketing teams helping you to meet your business growth targets as well as they could?

If you're like many directors and business owners, you probably don't think so.

In today's blog I want to share 5 B2B sales and marketing "sins" that stall revenue growth. These problems are frequent in all B2B markets, and are vital to resolve if you want to keep on growing.

Misalignment

One of the biggest problems B2B organizations frequently face with their sales and marketing is a lack of alignment. Sales and marketing traditionally don't get along very well—sales place the blame on marketing for not providing enough leads, or providing poor quality leads, and marketing places the blame on sales for not closing the leads they generate. 

Poorly aligned sales and marketing departments are rarely successful. If your company is serious about growth, you need to get them on the same page and close the loop. You need an agreement between the two teams as to who is responsible for what, and to appropriately pass data between the teams. 

Your marketing department needs to know which of the leads they supply to sales are closed, and for what value, so they can determine which marketing efforts are successful. Likewise, your sales team needs to know where their leads have come from, and details of any interaction the lead has had with the company before their first sales call, so that they can have more productive discussions with prospects. 

An unclear sales process

A good sales process is well documented, and repeatable. Your sales team should know exactly how to approach each prospect depending on where in the sales pipeline they are, and have a series of actions they take at each stage to qualify or disqualify them. If you don't have a documented sales process, invest resources in developing one.

Untrained sales teams

A big issue amongst sales teams is often a lack of training. Sales teams are rarely given time to learn, as any time spent away from selling is often deemed an unnecessary cost. In reality, this couldn't be further from the truth. Poorly trained sales people are costing your company sales. Your sales team can always be improved, and trained. Make time for regular sales training, commit to it, and I promise it will pay dividends.

Outdated software

What software do your sales and marketing teams use? Modern marketing automation software is vital for effective B2B marketing in the digital age, and a CRM system like Salesforce can vastly improve the productivity and performance of your sales team. Integrating a new sales or marketing system can appear to be a lengthy or expensive process if you have a large team or lots of data, but it'll pay dividends in the future.

The right sales and marketing software maximize the time your teams spend performing the core aspects of their role, and reduces time spent doing administration, development, and other tasks that aren't directly growing the business. Be honest—are your teams underperforming due to not having the right tools? Your competitors are using this software, and if you're not, it's allowing them to close more sales at a lower cost.

Poorly defined success metrics

Poorly defined success metrics are open to abuse, and are often detached from key business goals. Make sure that the metrics you are using to measure the success of your sales and marketing efforts are directly aligned with your business goals. 

It might be worth taking a look through my blog on the Sales Velocity Equation, which goes into more detail on the metrics your sales and marketing teams should be measuring.

The good news is that if your company is struggling with one or more of these growth-killing sins, Vicendia Partners can help. Give us a call today at (630) 217-5948.

What are the biggest sales and marketing problems your company experiences? Have I missed any key ones you'd suggest? Share them in the comments below.