3 Real Reasons Your B2B Isn’t Growing

Is your revenue chart pancaking? Looking disturbingly flat?

Most CEOs blame the economy, the market, the competition.

And their teams believe them- which feeds the beast.

I’m not saying circumstance don’t factor in. I’m saying they’re only one factor and there are at least three other factors likely causing that growth plateau- if you’re willing to hear them.

And that’s usually where the problem really lies.

It’s something I’ve seen repeatedly- in different companies and internationally.

The CEO of a 600 person technology services firm was at his wit’s end.

An impatient person by nature, he’d given two different General Managers 18-month stints in the role of managing his US subsidiary and neither had succeeded.

Sales were flat; losses were increasing. It was neither a boom nor bust period and his other subsidiaries had steady growth of 15–20% per year and reasonable profitability.

In desperation, he dispatched the Global Vice President of Human Resources to Atlanta to take over.

She had started her career with the company in his office- going with him to clients, sales meetings, board meetings, investor meetings, internal management meetings. Despite her lack of P&L experience, he trusted her to figure it out.

Within six months, sales were on the rise and the subsidiary’s losses had turned into slight net profit.

Here’s what she discovered- the real reasons your B2B isn’t growing:

1- You’re not listening to your sales people.

Your professional salespeople- the ones who actually understand enterprise buying cycles and buyer psychology- can almost always tell you why a product or service isn’t selling.

What the VP HR did was listen- to everyone and especially to the sales people.

In this particular scenario, she was somewhat forced to do so, given her lack of experience. The sales team was thrilled! They shared insight after insight including mis-spent marketing dollars; unclear value proposition and market differentiation; lack of tools enabling their productivity.

Most requests involved zero investment and were quickly actioned leading to an immediate uptick in deals closed.

When sales people trust you and feel confident there will be no negative repercussions, they will tell you what you need to hear.

2- You’re not listening to your clients.

Even more than your sales team, your customers know what needs to be fixed in order for them to want to do more with you.

But, when clients try to share, most recipients of the feedback (e.g. the CEO, the product manager) get defensive. They try to explain why what’s wrong isn’t actually wrong, make excuses and justifications.

Instead, whoever is getting the feedback needs to listen, listen, listen.

Whoever is soliciting live client feedback also needs to ask follow up questions to make sure they’ve heard the full extent of feedback and recommendations.

Repeatedly inquiring “what else?” and “tell me more” is one effective way to do so.

3- Your leader is not sales focused.

Whatever their title, whoever is at the helm needs to be at least 80% focused on sales.

That’s because, without sales, there is no business!

Sales is a primary growth engine and it warrants a corresponding level of attention from the boss, even when there’s a sales manager in place.

Also, the boss sets an example. When the boss is a primary contributor to sales in the form of rainmaking, client relationships, etc., the entire company learns sales is an important function and not a dirty word.

What’s painful about the above is that the answers are in plain sight the whole time…

Once you develop your listening superpower, your revenue is likely to rebound.