Did you know that about 40% of B2B failed to meet their target for 2021? You might be wondering what the reason is. This is due to sales becoming much more complicated year after year and creating new sales challenges that we have to overcome.
According to Ebsta’s 2024 B2B Sales Benchmarks, B2B salesperson turnover increased by 64% from 22% to 36% in 2024, and a staggering 69% of reps missed their quotas. This suggests that many B2B businesses faced significant challenges in meeting their sales targets.
Additionally, the report highlights that investments in B2B sales remained cautious due to factors like inflation and geopolitical climate, leading to precarious sales investments. New customers also remained elusive, with sales cycles lengthening and buying groups expanding
Longer sales cycles, higher competition, lack of control over the sales journey, and a deficiency of high-quality leads are among the current challenge “trends” that the sales industry is facing.
A recent survey from B2B International identified several B2B business challenges for companies in the U.S. and Western Europe. While B2C businesses–which serve general consumers–experience their own difficulties, B2B businesses–which provide products or services to other businesses–face unique challenges related to marketing, innovation, and customer retention in order to grow and flourish.
Below, we are going to be talking about what this B2B business challenges are and what they can do to overcome them. Let’s get into it.
Growing market share
Roughly 62 percent of businesses identified building market share as their central B2B business challenge during the survey. This concept applies to more than growing their revenue and sales. According to one source, the market share relates to “a specific market segment and not combined growth of sales over all products, services, and customer types.”
In essence, a company’s market share is how much of the overall market they are able to do business with. For B2B businesses, who typically specialize in both their customer type and their particular product or service, expanding their opportunities for market share growth can, in some ways, counteract the specificity of the niche they fill.
Overcoming this challenge requires intensive research into the marketing segment the business is currently targeting and a better understanding of other potential applications for the company’s service or product.
This B2B business challenge can be conquered through a better understanding of the market, the willingness to adjust services to meet new customer markets, and an openness to potentially expanding services to meet new and emerging needs.
Customer loyalty and retention
Another major area of concern for B2B business is maintaining the current customer base. In this market, businesses often have to shop around for lower costs and more efficient services to keep themselves afloat. A B2B business has to worry about not only it’s own efficiency and bottom line, but how its prices and availability affect the businesses it serves.
To solve this problem, B2B companies must focus on more than marketing and expanding their customer base. With other business owners as customers, savvy B2B businesses need to step beyond basic customer service to build real relationships with their customers.
Businesses operate on a higher cost scale than general consumers and tend to spend a lot more money on a weekly or monthly basis to obtain the supplies they need.
Personalizing services or customizing schedules to cater to the needs of other businesses should be standard operating procedures for strong B2B businesses in order to establish trust, reliability, and loyalty between the company and its clients.
Innovation
Trying something new is never easy. Innovation is difficult for any individual or company, so it’s no surprise the concept weighs heavily among the B2B business challenges. To start, when seeking innovation, business owners should consider each aspect of the business separately, including product, operational, and marketing segments.
Innovation is not just new products or services (i.e. don’t try to reinvent the wheel), but new ways to approach, sell, or develop those products and services to better meet customer needs.
Basically, there is no catch-all answer to becoming more innovative except perhaps to be as open as possible, with a level head about potential risks and rewards. Also—don’t overthink it. In the end, any business exists to meet a specific need.
By being in touch with the customers, listening to feedback from employees, and keeping apprised of technological developments, a B2B business owner may find that productive and lucrative ideas are not so unattainable.
What Are Some B2B Marketing Challenges?
Apart from the challenges mentioned above, there are some other challenges faced by B2B business when it comes to marketing. If you are experiencing some challenges in your business, you will find some helpful tips below.
1. Technology integration
Technology can be a blessing and a curse for many of our clients. Too often marketers see the potential and exciting things technology can do, but can’t seem to integrate it into their company. If SEO, SEM, website, social media, marketing automation and online media are not connected, then how can communications be integrated?
Not to mention all the other tools that are part of the technology stack like a CRM, content management system, analytics platforms and others. In many B2B companies, none of these systems are linked. B2C companies make it look so easy—retargeting you on every online channel you visit until they get you to buy that sweater you looked at on their website last week.
2. Managing leadership expectations
Senior management often doesn’t see how these new digital marketing tools can help close the sales loop in B2B. As a matter of fact, many B2B companies believe their current marketing activities are meeting the needs of sales. This leads many marketers to wonder, where is the best place to invest their marketing dollars?
An informal audit of your organization to understand how sales and marketing tools communicate together is often a first step in seeing if/how marketing activities are meeting the needs of sales.
Can you track someone from paid media via Adwords or other technology, through the website journey with an analytics or marketing automation tool, through the sales process in a CRM database to a sale? Is technology connected to push data and information to one another through the sales funnel?
You also need to consider that different parts of an organization, like marketing, IT or sales,may oversee different parts of the software so aligning these groups to provide data may be needed. It’s this understanding of end-to-end tracking of the buyer’s journey is where we can start to see areas for potential optimization and investment of marketing dollars.
3. Marketing and sales alignment
Most of us have heard the popularly quoted statistic: up to 70% of the B2B buyer’s journey is completed online, before a buyer even reaches out to sales. As a matter of fact, Gartner Research reports that by 2020, over 85% of the decision will be made without any human interaction. So how exactly do you win the sale without any personal contact?
One way might be to integrate marketing and sales to increase lead generation—an initiative over half of B2B businesses mention as one of their primary marketing objectives.
Integration between sales and marketing is better today, but still has a long way to go before the two roles are aligned and working effectively towards the same goals. Katie Martell, B2B On-Demand Marketer, does a great job of breaking this issue down in her blog post, Is B2B sales and marketing alignment a myth?
4. Getting in front of the right people at the right time
For the best chance of success, marketers need to attract, reach and engage all key stakeholders in buying decisions—throughout each stage of the purchase process. These are complex relationships with the average B2B purchase involving 3-5 decision-makers.
That means you need to create content that speaks to both influencers and decision-makers—not always an easy task for B2B marketers who so often juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. One way to help your marketing department is to ask your sales team to contribute to your content efforts.
5. Globalization of content and marketing
Another major challenge we have seen is around globalization. B2B marketers may understand the concept in theory, but serving diverse markets around the world, while holding true to your brand, can be a huge undertaking. Marketing products and services globally requires understanding and catering to the needs of markets from a local level.
Because what resonates in one market might not be received the same way in another. Global marketing is not as simple as translating copy into appropriate languages.
You want to make sure your audience feels confident that you understand their challenges and have solutions that help make their lives better. That means communicating in such a way that lines up with that particular region’s habits.
Remote Work Environment in B2B Business
Remote work (also known as work from home [WFH] or telecommuting) is a type of flexible working arrangement that allows an employee to work from remote location outside of corporate offices. For employees who can complete work offsite, this arrangement can help ensure work-life balance, access to career opportunities or reduced commutation costs.
Benefits for the company include increased employee satisfaction and retention, increased productivity and cost savings on physical resources. Remote work arrangements can be temporary or permanent, part-time or full-time, occasional or frequent. Remote work requires policies governing equipment use, network security and performance expectations.
The past year has seen a drastic change in B2B sales across industries. Where in 2019, only 5% of business sales associates had access to a remote work environment, that number increased to an astonishing 90% within a month of the first COVID-19 related workplace shifts in the United States.
A recent survey compiled by MerchantSavvy.co.uk showed that 61% of global companies offer their staff some form of remote working. In the UK, statistics from CIPD show that 54% of workers have some flexibility when it comes to their work schedule.
This figure is up from just 9.5% in 1999. Clearly, the way we think about working remotely is changing. For B2B companies, embracing this change can bring a host of benefits.
1. Access to wider markets
As a B2B company, access to new clients and markets is essential. With remote work, you can ensure that you have a skilled and flexible pool of employees across many locations. This network of talent allows you to connect with clients across the world, either in-person or through telecommuting.
2. Happier, more productive employees
A recent study by the American Psychology Association found that employees with the ability to telecommute or work remotely had increased levels of job satisfaction. As a result, their overall performance and productivity were higher.
3. Lower overheads, higher profitability
The bottom line is that flexible and remote working can reduce overheads and make your business more profitable. Office rent and bills are reduced, while remote employees are more productive. A recent article by Forbes found that, in the US, companies save an average of $11,000 per year per part-time telecommuter. This figure is equal to a 21% higher profitability.
4. Better candidates
Employees want to have a flexible workspace. A 2019 report by Airbnb for Work found that 77% of UK workers feel companies should provide more remote working options. By offering the choice to work from home some of the time, you’re more likely to attract the talent that will drive your business forward.
5. Employee retention
When your workers are happy, they’re more likely to want to commit to you long-term. Given the benefits that telecommuting, remote work, and WFH bring, your employees are likely to feel less stressed, take fewer sick days, and feel more loyal to your brand.
Summary
Sometimes, certain B2B business challenges can seem overwhelming, largely because of the high dollar amounts often involved with customer retention, high-level marketing, and keeping the products or services flowing smoothly.
At their base, however, these challenges are not so different from many others. The key is understanding the specific nature of the problems and seeking specific, attainable solutions.
A few cautionary concepts, however:
- Do not sink money into something that is not actually working. Pride, lack of research, or an unwillingness to change can all contribute to a money pit that achieves nothing.
- Strive for efficiency in all things. Automate where possible and work smarter, not harder. Technology can help with this, but it’s not always the only or best solution.
- Keep an open mind, research, and seek outside opinions. Know what the competition is doing and don’t be afraid to emulate or adapt pre-established systems/processes to improve and grow.
No challenge is impossible to overcome, and B2B business challenges are no different. They just might require a bit more mental flexibility or perspective from time-to-time. With focus and determination, however, a solution is never far away.
