In my post last week, I promised to share some interesting “sound bytes” from the MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. These are comments from B2B marketers about the barriers they find the most difficult to overcome. I picked a few that are very commonly experienced by B2B marketing companies.
The Challenges for B2B Marketers
- “Lack of ability to stop executing and think strategically is the biggest barrier.” I find that typical of B2B marketing organizations that get so caught up in tactical plays and spike marketing. In the absence of a defined strategy it’s obvious that marketing becomes an ongoing challenge.
- “We have a limited budget for systems, so we are constantly working to incrementally upgrade the systems we have, which takes time.” Don’t we see this happening all the time? Companies fool themselves into believing that systems and automation hold the key to lead generation and marketing success. I repeat what I’ve said here before—marketing automation will not help you make more sales!
- “Problems in the transition between lead generation, lead nurturing and hand-off to sales.” Not surprising; departments work in silos; with little or no cross-trading, leads are bound to fall through the cracks and be lost.
- “Much of our time is spent currently on wrangling data when we should be spending that time analyzing it and making decisions based on it.” Exactly! Analysis-paralysis and no timely action taken. I caution marketers about Matrix Management, but no doubt it is rampant.
- “We have a large marketing organization and we have a tendency to trip over ourselves.” Common problem in large marketing organizations where too many processes managed by too many people lead to sluggish marketing. Companies end up with a lot of planning but no action and thus, no results either.
- “Gaining buy-in from the C-suite for new strategies.” The Bean Counters stifling marketing creativity!
- “A Sales team that is constantly turning over.” People! Look after your people! What else can I say? You can buy the best software and invest in the latest CRM systems but if your company lacks people management skills you won’t quell attrition rates and sales WILL suffer.
- “Lack of alignment between sales and marketing.” Of course! Read a previous post where I talked about how you can achieve alignment.
Does your organization struggle with these or similar B2B marketing challenges? How do you work to resolve them? Feel free to share your thoughts on my blog.
Louis, good post on the challenges faced by B2B marketers. In my opinion, the last challenge you mentioned – misalignment between marketing and sales – is pervasive. It doesn’t matter how well the individual departments do their jobs, if the handofff doesn’t work, results are negatively impacted.
Chris Ryan