As most of you know I spent 20 years working for a large American software company in various functions. In all of them I was responsible for the achievement of revenue targets, and sometimes we made our targets and sometimes we didn’t!
One lesson I learnt – DOING NOTHING NEVER FIXES THE PROBLEM!
if you decide not to change and improve? Is there a cost attached?
There is a DIRECT cost to DOING NOTHING. It’s real, and it will only get worse over time.
But don’t take my word for it.
Here is just a small sample of what a large number of experts have to say on this subject -
Research from Salesforce.com, the Aberdeen Research Group, Forrester and IDC shows that a poorly performing Sales and Marketing Department costs you at least 10% of your revenue, and that last year 84% of Salespeople didn’t achieve their targets.
Salesforce says that salespeople spend 70% of their time on non-selling tasks (because they think that other people are not doing the necessary work), and 80% of marketing lead generation is only “Slightly or Somewhat” effective.
B2B companies’ inability to align sales and marketing teams around the right processes and technologies costs 10% or more of revenue per year - IDC.
Salespeople are most effective when they have the right amount of support. Too little support, and your salespeople can’t do their jobs well; too much, and you’re wasting money. But get it just right, and your sales efforts can drive productivity and growth.” - McKinsey & Company
Poor targeting, inefficient campaigns and bad data directly lead to loss of revenue, with estimates suggesting that Marketers waste between 10-31% of their budget – The Data Business
So, what happens if we do something useful to improve things?
Some of these quotes are new, and some are as much as 10 years old (but appear to be just as relevant now as when the research was originally completed)
- Companies with a formal sales process see 18% more revenue growth – Harvard Business Review.
- Increase Marketing Budgets - 59% of CMOs expect their 2025 marketing budgets to be insufficient to execute their strategies, and this shortfall is expected to hinder business growth Gartner 2025.
- Provide the right level of Sales Support - The top 25% of companies analyzed have an ROI more than double the bottom 25%, and the top 30% have a 30% higher level of sales support than the rest – McKinsey & Company
- Focus on the most valuable opportunities - Underperforming B2B sales teams spend too much time (more than 50 per cent in some cases) serving customers that contribute 20 per cent or less to the company’s revenues – McKinsey & Company
- Align the Sales and Marketing departments’ processes and technologies – Misalignment of Sales and Marketing costs companies 10% or more of their revenue per year – IDC and others
- Agree with Marketing on what content is valuable – Sales will never use 60%-70% of the marketing material produced, mainly because the topic is irrelevant to the buyer audience – Forrester
The problem is that the issues that need to be addressed, and the order in which they need to be tackled, vary from one organisation to another. Every business is unique. Changing sales capabilities without changing marketing (or vice versa) rarely produces the required effect.
That’s why I was involved in producing the Sales and Marketing Maturity Matrix (SM3)
It exists to tell you two things:
First, what is your overall commercial effectiveness today as a business, measured by a powerful sales and marketing organizational effectiveness framework
Second, in detail, which areas can be improved as the ‘next step’ towards commercial excellence, both in Sales and Marketing.
What should your priorities for change be?
SM3 defines eight core tiers, or elements, for success in both your sales and marketing operations and adds multiple other questions and analyses to create a powerful questionnaire for the users. Once completed, the questionnaire generates a made-to-measure report, just for you.
Do you want to keep doing nothing and running the business while missing revenues and growing slower?
Of course you don’t!
This is the fastest path towards accelerating growth and business success!
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