Key Learnings From 10 Years of Working with B2B Technology SMEs
What Already Working Well for B2B SME Technology Organizations:
Most people working within business-to-business technology small-medium organizations indicate that critical aspects of organizational strategy are in place: 2 in 3 SME people, or 62%.
Managing the sales process fairs best with 70%. Most B2B technology SMEs are already using customer relationship management tools. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that all respondents are technology businesses. Three quarters have lead management processes in place but there is an opportunity to improve understanding of why deals are closed (either closed-lost or closed-won). Understanding where your organization has in the past successfully won clients assists market focus.
Upon completing a win-loss analysis, one client completed discontinued what had been thought a key lead generation channel upon discovering that yes, ‘we can gain leads from that channel but those leads never resulted in sales’. The mini-workshop which revealed this key learning included a handful of people, but critical cross-functional people, and took perhaps 2 hours and saving thousands of wasted hours and euros.
Top SME B2B Technology Organizational Opportunities For Improvement:
- 1. Customer Value Proposition
- 2. & 3. There’s a tie for second place between using Marketing Communication Channels effectively and an opportunity to better Understanding Customers (both qualitative and quantitative).
- Top 5 issues are rounded out by a Lack of Win-Loss Analysis and lack of Market-specific Strategy.
n = 125 participants in Irish B2B technology SMEs
Marketing communicating is the function / department with the greatest upside available. Only half of respondents agree that both marketing content and marketing communication channels are being well used.