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.
Our Sales and Marketing Maturity Model has been doing well in Europe with lots of great references, but the results so far in America have been disappointing. Having asked for feedback we received the following:
- Everyone thinks that the report and it’s contents are useful
- Nobody has a problem with the pricing
- Everybody is TOO busy with trying to sell and market in a difficult economy to take time to fill in the questionnaire!
Recent US based research from Salesforce concludes that salespeople spend 70% of their time on non-sales related tasks – that’s 28 hours a week, and 84% didn’t make their targets!
A Content Marketing Institute (CMI) study cited that between 60% and 70% of content created by B2B marketing departments sits unused, that’s between 24 and 28 hours a week for just one marketing person.
What I don’t understand is that US sales and marketing, who I always believed to be world-leading, can’t find 15-20 minutes (each) to fill in a questionnaire which has been shown to highlight a significant number of the problems areas.
We are not claiming to fix the problems in 15 minutes per person, but we can diagnose where the problems are and what you need to do to fix them.
I believe the problem might be a question of FEAR – fear of change, fear of being shown to be less efficient than you though, fear of being shown to be part of the problem and not part of the solution. The employment situation in the US looks to be worse than it has been for many years and now is not the time to stick your neck out.
Despite the current situation the winners will be (as they always are) the ones who took the initiative and made the decisions that others didn’t dare to make.
For the winners – the Sales and Marketing Maturity Matrix was written for you!
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