So you have a VP of marketing and a VP of sales, but as the CEO you have lots of other important things to do? What if you are missing something? What are the real reasons you’re not getting the results you want? What if it’s simple but crucial? And what if not fixing it while your competitors do will drastically affect revenue?
1. When you miss your targets, it’s usually because your clients aren’t buying
100 percent of your organic growth comes from sales. When your company misses revenue targets, growth targets, cash flow targets or profit targets it’s because your clients did not buy enough or because your company did not deliver what your customers purchased at the right quality and price.
2. Your revenue is probably concentrated from less than 3 percent of your client base
For many B2B companies up to 80 percent of revenue is produced by 20-30 clients or as little as 3 percent of the client base. And sometimes as few as 5 clients. Is this the case for you? If not, being able to handle the concentration of your revenue is one of the most important success factors.
3. Your marketing transformation effort is focused on 80 percent of clients that produce 20 percent of the revenue
There are a lot of MarTech and consulting companies that want to automate your marketing and selling. We agree that it’s important. The problem is that common sense has been taken out of play and many are investing millions in efforts that affect at most 20 percent of the revenue. At the same time they are neglecting their marketing efforts to the top 3 percent of clients that will produce revenue during this and next year. Fix that first.
4. The way you sell is about to become outdated and there is no training or coaching available
It’s clear that selling is changing. Gartner is predicting that 18 million sales people will be out of a job in just a few years. This is partly because selling has become automated, but also partly because it’s becoming more complex. Because of this your salespeople need to be trusted advisers, experts and management consultants.
5. There is no joint sales and marketing approach to the top 30 clients that produce up to 80 percent or more of your revenue
Sales and marketing do not have a joint plan for a consistent effort that utilizes online and offline media in a smart way. We just had one of our clients close a €30 M deal that started on LinkedIn and created over € 200 M in value during an IPO. Many companies are leaving most of their potential growth on the table due to a lack of knowledge about what produces revenue in sales and marketing today.