I worked for more than 20 years for a US company and spent a lot of time there, perhaps that’s what made me think that I understood how business works in the US.

It’s been nearly six months now since we launched the SM3 Sales and Marketing Maturity Report with its underlying maturity model. We have had some very interesting reactions from our customers – some of which have resulted in changes and upgrades to the model itself.

I worked for more than 20 years for a major US software company. First as a Regional Director and for the last 10 years as a Regional (North Europe) Vice President. In general, US companies like to think that their Sales and Marketing models work best everywhere, and their (strong) preference is that you take the US playbook and implement it in whichever country you happen to work in. The downside is that if it doesn’t work, they replace the people whom they deem responsible, resulting in high staff turnover and poor financial results – and then they do it again!

As most of you know I spent 20 years working for a large American software company in various functions. In all of them I was responsible for the achievement of revenue targets, and sometimes we made our targets and sometimes we didn’t!

A 2024 survey from Constant Contact showed that 73% of small businesses (SMBs) lack confidence in their marketing strategies and whilst the numbers for sales achievement are less clear, because most organizations keep them secret, a common estimate is that between 60% and 90% of sales teams don’t hit their targets.