Chew on this piece of research if you will–according to the consulting firm MarketingSherpa, 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. This is pretty consistent with what I see when I speak to most business owners. Here’s why this stat should scare the pants (or tights) off of you:
Unpredictable Income
This is the exact reason why the famous ‘Feast or Famine’ exists in businesses. If you haven’t identified where your next clients are going to come from, if you don’t have a proven method to gain access to people who need your help, then sleepless nights await you.
Throwing Spaghetti At The Wall Marketing
Without having identified who specifically needs you to solve their bleeding sore of a costly pain point, you can’t speak to this pain or to this industry in your marketing. Remember 82% of buyers view at least 5 pieces of content from the winning vendor. [Source: Forrester]. What that means is that if you don’t know who you help around what specific expertise, you won’t know WHAT your content should say. You’ll be trying every marketing message and tool you can think of to help get in front of Decision Makers. This is exhausting and doesn’t work.
Head-Cut-Off-Like-a-Chicken Sales Reps
Ever hire a sales rep or an assistant to help you get more leads and had a big fat 0 ROI? Well, if you don’t know where your leads should come from and can’t tell your sales staff where to look, how do you expect them to figure it out? It is your responsibility as the business owner to figure out your strategy of 1. who you should target 2. how to package your specialty and 3. how to message to connect to your audience. If you don’t know how to do this, get help in figuring this out. Without a strategy, your sales reps will definitely be running loose and coming up with zip.
Blending In With B2B Decision Makers
The ‘No thanks, we’re covered for that’ is a syndrome in the B2B world today. One executive quote in a study I read claimed “I don’t even have time to pee, I certainly don’t want to spend more time with new vendors I don’t need”. So if your messaging and marketing plan isn’t cutting through and intercepting the decision maker, you definitely blend into the background of the enormous noise of their life.
So if you want to beat the odds and be one of the few who DO know where your new B2B business funnels will be, take my advice and do the work to strategically figure out where the funnel is rather than hoping and guessing endlessly.
Want to find out if the market needs you? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch me on YouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk
