3 Reasons Your SMB B2B Sales and Marketing Strategy isn’t Working

Increasingly, small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to fill their pipelines and convert prospects into customers. But why is this happening? While the business landscape is constantly evolving, the COVID 19 pandemic ushered in a real change in the way businesses operate, where traditional approaches to B2B sales and marketing are proving ineffective in this modern landscape. SMBs leveraging the same traditional approach to sales and marketing today are struggling to generate qualified leads and optimize their processes for success.

But what exactly is the problem with traditional B2B sales and marketing approaches?

Buyer Journey is Outdated

Today’s buyer journey is becoming increasingly unpredictable and non-linear due to the rise of social media and new ‘stop points’ being added yearly, making it more difficult than ever to achieve a positive outcome. In the past, it was not uncommon to have a single decision maker responsible for the buying process, who’s attention was easy to grab using traditional sales and marketing strategies.

Nowadays, 80% of B2B purchases involve buying groups, which typically consist of at least 6 to 10 stakeholders from various departments across the organization. Each stakeholder has their own goals for the purchase, does their own research about what solutions are available, and must work to convince the group (who are often not physically together) countering the ideas and facts that other stakeholders gather in their own research. For B2B sales and marketing teams, identifying who is part of the buying group, capturing their attention, and delivering a message that resonates is extremely difficult. Traditional conceptions of the buyer journey simply don’t account for this level of complexity.

B2B Sales and Marketing Processes are Not Buyer-Centric

All too commonly, B2B Sales disregard the buyer journey and focus only on the sale, not the buyer. They craft their sales and marketing approach around sales activities without taking into consideration the buyer’s specific needs and preferences. As mentioned previously, the buyer journey is becoming more complex and unpredictable, and traditional approaches lead to missed opportunities.

With the traditional approach to B2B sales and marketing, companies are unable to nurture relationships and provide useful information throughout the process. By relying solely on sales activities, companies often allocate their resources inefficiently and tend to neglect gathering necessary data and insights that could help optimize their strategy, netting missed opportunities for engagement.

Revolving Everything Around Leads

When companies utilize traditional sales and marketing approaches, they often conflate the engagement of an individual with a company’s buying propensity. However, as we discussed above, the rise in buying groups means this is less true now than ever before, as the concept of the sole decision-maker is becoming extinct.

Traditional CRMs also contribute to this, as they typically have limitations that only allow for the conversion of one lead into the primary contact for a company, ignoring the possibility of multiple decision makers, leading to operational challenges that deprives sellers of visibility into the actual buying group and process.

Modernize Your B2B Sales and Marketing Approach

As the traditional approach to sales and marketing is no longer bringing in the opportunities needed to fill SMBs pipelines, ClickDimensions has introduced a Unified Sales and Marketing Solution, a modern, buyer-centric approach that streamlines sales and marketing to optimize performance.

Learn more about our Unified Sales and Marketing Approach in our special report and don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our new series, in which we will discuss some of the common challenges SMBs face when trying to modernize their sales and marketing efforts.