The B-to-B Black Hole

"There has long been a critical, crippling disconnect between the marketing and sales functions in many business-to-business firms. This Marketing/Sales divide in B-to-B firms leads to a tremendous waste of marketing and sales effort and expenditures, inconsistent customer messaging, poor or delayed sales readiness, fewer sales calls as a result of protracted sales preparation time, and less effective selling dialogues. The bottom line: higher costs, lower revenues, and shrinking margins in an economy where these problems can put a firm out of business."

From late 2000 through the middle of 2004, I read several hundred articles, studies, and white papers, and conducted over 250 interviews on marketing and sales alignment and effectiveness as background for my new book “Escaping The Black Hole”. What I uncovered during this process were some sobering over all statistics on marketing and sales effectiveness.

• More than 50% of salespeople are not achieving their sales quotas.
• Over half of new product launches fail to meet expectations.
• At least 90 % of sales opportunities don’t close as forecasted.

Of course, you might argue that these statistics are primarily driven by reduced business investment, tougher buyers, more competition, constant change, and increasing complexity. Unfortunately however, for many companies, they are also exacerbated by a disconnect between their marketing and sales organizations that makes them miss opportunities and consumes costs, time, and resources the same way that matter, light, and energy are sucked into a black hole in space.

So, how bad is the marketing-sales disconnect, and how much
does it actually impact the top and bottom line?

Consider the following things I also uncovered during my research:

• 25% of all marketing and sales resources are routinely wasted.
• 70% to 80% of the leads generated by marketing are never followed up on.
• 80% of sales support experts are regularly used inappropriately.
• 75% of solutions selling initiatives have failed to produce meaningful results.
• 85% of companies are experiencing growing pre-sales support costs.
• 80% to 90% of marketing collateral is considered useless by sales.
• Only 29% of a salesperson’s time is actually spent selling.
• Sales people spend typically 30 to 50 hours per month searching for information and recreating customer-facing content.
• 85% of the customer-facing content created by sales people is inaccurate and dilutes the brand.

So what are companies doing about these problems? Unfortunately, not that much.

• 58% of companies have never formally defined the steps of their selling process.
• 80% of those that have defined their sales process have not implemented an effective pipeline management process.
• 75% of companies do not have a systematic process for managing leads.
• 85% of companies do not have an integrated marketing and sales prioritization process.
• Most companies continue to go to market with an inside-out perspective, and there is still too much focus on products and features.
• 80% of companies do not deliver targeted messages to different audiences, constituencies, and stakeholders.