When there are problems within sales teams, opportunities plummet, conversion rates decline and commissions dwindle. The frustration becomes real.
Yet most of these negative outcomes can be avoided. But the teams must know what the challenges are.
In this article, we have grouped together the main causes of the annoyances experienced in B2B sales . Each of the following pain points has been revealed by professionals who have directly experienced frustrating situations during their careers. If you want to retain your salespeople and strengthen your sales team , you must prevent one of the following 8 situations from occurring in your marketing and sales processes.
1 – Warm up cold prospects
Questions like “Where does marketing find these leads?” or “Why are they passing them on when they are clearly not suitable? » are common in sales teams. And it's normal for the salesperson to be frustrated because converting prospects who are ready to buy is what they have best to do. But it's not surprising when you know that at least 50% of prospects don't match what you're selling .
In fact, it may not be the fault of the marketing teams. It's more likely that the problem lies with your systems and processes . Indeed, several flaws can cause this problem: a lack of alignment between teams, unclear qualification criteria, lack of monitoring and feedback, unsuitable strategies, insufficient data on prospects or ineffective qualification processes.
If this happens, you need to rethink your strategy, processes and tools . To do this, you can use Smarketing techniques .
2 – Not having enough accounts in your name
Most B2B sellers don't like to run out of accounts in their name. In fact, more accounts mean more chances of closing deals. It is quite logical. Still, most sellers can't help but chase big logos . The truth is, salespeople love a challenge. And the prospect of a huge payday with big brands is a real thrill for them.
Note, however, that if a prospect is simply not interested , you are wasting time and resources trying to close a deal with them. You'll be more likely to achieve your goal by focusing on a prospect that's ten times smaller, but who is actually in the market for your product .
3 – Losing an opportunity to close a deal
There's no greater frustration for salespeople than when they discover that a perfect prospect was looking for a solution, but their logo appears on a competitor's website. The obvious question is: why not start the conversation in time?
Sometimes the salesperson doesn't enter the conversation early enough. It's also possible that he missed it completely. In both cases, the main cause of these lost opportunities is limited visibility of the buying journey .
A complete and easy-to-use automation tool like Magileads is enough to solve this problem.
4 – Time wasted not selling
It's annoying to waste time on bad deals. However, it seems that sellers find it even more frustrating to waste time not selling at all. In fact, studies show that every day, they spend
- 21% of their day trying to write persuasive messages
- 17% enter data
- 17% to prospect and research potential customers
- 12% to go to internal meetings
- 12% to schedule calls
So only 21% of the day remains for actual conversations . If we refer to the Pareto rule, focusing on these 21% is what they have to do best.
Fortunately, the majority of these tasks can be automated or avoided using marketing automation . Sometimes knowing which accounts should be prioritized helps you avoid overwork and focus on revenue-generating tasks.
READ ALSO: 20 essential tips for B2B sellers in 2023
5 – Inability to find or access the right content
According to a study, 80% of content created by marketing is not used by sales , a figure that concerns both teams. Why are these resources underutilized?
There may be two main reasons for this: it is too hard to find the right content or no content available does not correspond to the stage of the journey purchasing a prospect. Here is a resource which explains how marketing can start creating content that speaks to a buyer, wherever they are in their journey.
6 – Limited knowledge of b2b prospects
Salespeople hate feeling unprepared for calls . But in reality, B2B buyers complete more than 70% of their buying journey anonymously before even speaking to a representative. In fact, it's difficult to know exactly what prospects watched.
However, it is possible to find out about the keywords and competitors that prospects have searched for. This provides valuable insight into prospects.
You can learn how to prepare for a B2B sales interview by watching this podcast:
7 – Errors due to poor alignment
The lack of harmonization between your teams can be the cause of unfortunate errors (too much time transmitting documents to clients, marketing contacting prospects in the middle of negotiating an upsell, etc.
Additionally, some prospects are passed to sales too early, when they are far from ready to buy. These lukewarm leads should still be followed up by the marketing department. Note that the sweet spot in your prospects' buying journey, when they are in the market for your solution, is between the consideration phase and the decision phase . When accounts are engaged at the right time in their buying journey, an average improvement of 120% in revenue generation has been seen.
When sales, marketing, and customer service work closely together, they can align on accounts, goals, personas, and key performance indicators (KPIs).
