If you’ve been looking at the B2B stats lately, you might be tempted to panic.
Only 27% of sales reps are making their quotas (according to the EBSTA and Pavilion 2024 B2B Sales Benchmark Report). Discovery meetings are down by 30%. And the average B2B customer sales cycle is a lengthy 1.5 to 2 years.
The tech industry in particular has been subject to layoffs, disruption, and new tech that’s sent its sales on a downward trend.
These were the facts and figures presented at B2B Marketing Exchange (B2BMX) East. And at first glance, they can feel a bit alarming…
So, what’s a marketer to do?
The answer—which you may already know because I know a lot of you have been in this game a long time—starts with staying the course.
You’re a B2B marketer: you already know long customer journeys like the back of your hand. Even if your company’s have gotten a bit longer, we believe you’ve got this. You know how to stay the course. You know how to adapt. And this is another opportunity to prove it.
Now, in addition to sticking to our guns, what are some practical shifts we can make? Here are 5 suggestions:
- Push pause and analyze the sales funnel.
What is no longer working? Where are the slowdowns? Where are people dropping off? You’ve likely done this work before, but now is the time to refresh your understanding of the current funnel. Things are changing across the industry and the more data we have about our own sales funnels, the better we can roll with those punches.
- Figure out where sales can use your help.
We’ve always been on team “sales and marketing need to work more closely”—but every year that seems to become even more true. So once you analyze that sales funnel and see where the gaps are, it’s time to find a way that marketing can help fill them.
Does sales need more qualified leads? How can you shift marketing efforts to get them? Is the problem closing deals at the end of the funnel? What can marketing do to support the close? Do they need help with custom messaging? Segmenting their audiences? Creating better presentations? Telling better stories?
There are so many ways marketing can step into the gap to help sales win.
- Assess your tools.
Do you have great sales enablement tools? Are your teams using them to the fullest? Are there tools they need and don’t have? Training on the current tools that would be useful?
Setting aside time to figure it out and put the right tools in place will set you up for success in the long-term.
- Take notes from your B2C colleagues.
We’ve said this one ‘til we were blue in the face, but it remains true: most B2B marketing is boring. In fact, one 2023 survey found that a whopping 82% of the c-suite find B2B marketing boring and repetitive.
If you want to stand out, you’ll need to take more B2C approaches. Be bold! Evoke emotion! Show visuals. Speak to people like humans. Try something a little crazy. Break out of the standard B2B boxes.
- Remember who you are.
What does your company stand for? What’s the mission underneath all the noise? What is your unique point-of-view? Marketing needs to ground itself consistently in those truths if you want to walk beside buyers for the entire (lengthy) sales journey.
And if you need some help? We are (obviously) always here for it. Reach out anytime.
