Revenue is the fuel that powers growth - but often executive leaders focus too much attention on new leads and forget about current deals and customers. Driving new leads and more revenue is important - but if you have too much friction internally, you're going to lose deals and momentum.
These are the 5 most common revenue obstacles executive leaders face - and they all start within your company.
The Problem: Ineffective Internal Processes
The biggest revenue barriers often come from within your company. No matter how good your team is at generating new leads, if they're spending too much time on inefficient tasks and need to juggle too many manual processes as they work on deals, they can't give each lead the attention they need.
The Solution: Unbiased review and automation where possible
Conducting an internal review of all your sales processes can be daunting, but it's well worth the effort. Once you chart everything that goes into making a sale, you can pinpoint areas where you can use automation to streamline efforts and give your sales team more time in their days.
There are a number of easy sales tasks you can automate using a tool like HubSpot:
- Lead Scoring
- Lead Routing
- Follow-up Emails
- Tasks and Reminders
- Customer Re-engagement
→ Related Content: How to Use Automation to Close Lagging Deals Before Year End
In addition to automating these easy wins, a review of your processes will often uncover patterns of inefficiency that are hard to see in the day-to-day.
The Problem: Internal Resistance to Change
Change resistance is another extremely common revenue obstacle. You may have a brilliant sales or marketing idea, but without widespread buy-in, your teams won't adopt it. It can be discouraging to bring new ideas to the table if you're pretty sure your team won't adopt them.
The Solution: Show, don't tell
Change resistance often boils down to how a message is conveyed. If your team has done something a certain way or used the same tool for a long time, they're naturally going to want to stick with what they know. Instead of telling them that you're going to do something new, get them involved from the beginning so it feels like a group decision.
Solicit opinions on what isn't working, processes that seem ineffective or repetitive, or things that aren't working as well as they could. Not just your sales team, but marketing, ops and any team that impacts revenue. Your sales team doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you've found a solution to help them close more deals or generate more cash, make sure everyone understands exactly how it's going to make their lives easier - don't just focus on getting up and running.
→ Related Content: How to Get Your Sales Team to Actually Use HubSpot
The Problem: Sales and Marketing Aren't Aligned
Sales and marketing teams need to work together for optimal revenue generation, but it's relatively rare to have both sides working together well. Even if sales and marketing regularly communicate, they may have different ideas of what they consider a worthwhile lead, ideal target and good return on investment.
The Solution: Clear parameters and goals
Sales always wants more leads, but everyone needs to have a clear expectation on the number and quality of leads to expect each month. Likewise, you need to clarify what makes a "good" lead vs. a bad lead, and how to best reach your target customers, answer their questions and objections, and get them excited to keep moving down their buyer's journey.
→ Related Content: How to Get Smarter Lead Tracking
More often than not, the complaint "we need more leads" really means "we need more quality leads." More leads are necessary when the ones coming in don't close, or aren't a good fit for your business. Marketing gets frustrated when they think they're generating plenty of leads, but then hear a constant chorus of "I need more." Instead, focus on better leads - and ensure both teams know what great-fit leads are and what data is needed to find those leads.
The Problem: Ineffective Tech Stack
Executive leaders often run into one of two tech problems, both of which create inefficiencies: outdated tools or shiny-object syndrome. Sticking with inefficient and outdated tech because it's "what you've always done" might severely harm your lead-gen opportunities. But the opposite can also be a problem: trying too many new tools and then abandoning them in favor of the next new thing also creates inefficiencies.
→ Related Content: The Hidden Costs of FrankenMarketing
The Solution: Focus on the end results
When analyzing your tech stack, the most important thing is to focus on the end results and work backward from there. If the ultimate goal is to make it easy as possible for your sales team to enter contact data, you might be looking at a different solution than if your end goal is intelligent reporting on your contacts.
If you're using outdated tech, you're likely saving time on training, but sacrificing efficiency and good data. If you're using too many tools, you're likely running into a lack of connectivity and clear insight. Either way, you can most likely condense your tech stack into a few core systems - or perhaps even an all-in-one tool - that will achieve your desired results.
The Problem: Crappy CRM
Let's be blunt and honest: a huge revenue obstacle is likely your CRM. If it isn't easy to use, doesn't provide insights or data, doesn't connect with your other systems, and/or doesn't automate then it's pretty...well, crappy.
The Solution: HubSpot
We're a HubSpot Platinum partner, so I'm going to recommend HubSpot - not just because we're a partner, but also because it's a fantastic CRM. The base CRM is free - which makes it easy to get started - and it's also built so that you can stack onto the foundation of CRM. Add on marketing and a website CMS, and you'll be able to see where your leads are coming from and what they interact with before they convert. Add pro-level sales tools and you can automate follow-ups, handoffs and tasks. Work smarter, not harder, and enjoy better data and conversions.
→ Related Content: Why Should I Use HubSpot?
If you want clarity on where your leads are coming from, who they are and how best you can find similar leads in the future - you want HubSpot.
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BizzyWeb is a Minneapolis-based digital marketing and web design agency that helps companies get the high-quality leads they need to grow and thrive. Our tactics include inbound marketing, SEO, advertising, web design, content creation and sales automation. We are an accredited HubSpot Platinum Partner and we offer full-service HubSpot onboarding, enablement and strategy for new and current users.
