Positioning

Significant potential for revenue growth in B2B strategy often overlooked

Significant potential for revenue growth in B2B strategy often overlooked
What’s the primary driver of growth within your B2B organization? We often think immediately of acquisition, and that’s not unusual. Over 60 percent of the market feels the same way. Yet, there’s another way to look at it, how so? Acquiring a new customer costs 6 to 8 times more than retaining an existing one, a well-known fact. Moreover, we live in a world where customer experiences, meaning how a customer views your services or products, will be the most critical pillar of distinctive capability in 5 years!

So, more important than price and product, for instance. Then why do we still often see that this ‘customer experience’ reality isn’t incorporated into strategies? Why do we evaluate based on the number of new customers and not the number retained or those whose spending has increased? You can probably think of enough examples where, as a loyal customer, you didn’t receive the same attention as a prospect and consequently left or are considering doing so. Could it really be that ‘possession of the thing (customer) is the end of enjoyment (attention)’…

Research by Harris Interactive shows that not only is it up to 8 times more expensive to acquire a customer, but also that 86% of customers would pay more for a better experience. Research by Forbes Insights among 350 North American companies with at least $500 million in revenue reveals that 70% of resources are allocated to caring for newly acquired or acquiring new customers. B2B companies are thus massively overlooking the low-hanging fruit: more revenue from existing customers! The cause of this is the strategy because, in B2B organizations, it’s primarily developed from a sales perspective, and essential insights from the rest of the organization are often not included.

Sales, marketing, service, and technical departments are often completely isolated from each other and can’t combine insights into both needs and the market. Because companies often have the functioning of their own organization at the core, and not the customer, each department uses different systems and techniques. Even if sales had access to marketing’s systems, they would be able to extract little information from them. By centralizing the customer in all these processes, and using one system for all data and communication, for example, teams are better able to utilize each other’s knowledge and insights. This not only increases customer satisfaction but also revenue! We previously wrote about the ‘pillarization’ of company functions and how we use the concept of market interaction to think differently about organizations in the piece: From marketing to market interaction.

B2B Strategy is More Widely Supported

The next step is involving all departments in the strategic process. This not only makes the strategy more widely supported but also makes the organization more agile and future-proof. Forbes’ research shows that integration leads to 20% more valuable customer contacts and the identification of additional needs. So, integration improves not just the result but also customer satisfaction, and as we said, in 5 years, customer satisfaction will be the primary factor for distinctive capability!

Read the full report by Forbes Insights