Today’s B2B buyers have an abundance of product information at their fingertips and they tend to research their purchasing decisions well before they contact your sales department or reps. So, with that fact in mind, you must be ahead of the game by optimizing your sales and marketing effectiveness. Items like identifying your channels and filling your pipelines, scoring leads before sending to sales, establishing a process for nurturing leads, and so on.
For advice on how to convert B2B marketing concerns and challenges into revenue, you should consider MarketingSherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. They surveyed 1,745 marketers on their most effective B2B marketing tactics and saw up to a 50% decline in their overall marketing effectiveness from the previous year.
This report indicates that despite current challenges, B2B marketers are still not optimizing their sales and marketing channels:
- 68 % haven’t identified or optimized their sales and marketing funnels
- 61 % still simply send leads, even non-qualified ones, directly to sales
- 79 % haven’t established a lead scoring process
- 65 % don’t nurture and grow their leads
The last few years have not been easy for most sales and marketing professionals, and I doubt that 2012 will be any easier. What might make things better is to be more effective in your sales and marketing strategies and processes.
In that vein, I invite you to visit our Sales & Marketing Effectiveness Blog at http://infogrow.typepad.com/ for ideas and advice on how to accelerate your B2B growth and grow profits in 2012.
