π΅π»ββοΈ Pipeline Leaks
How marketing and sales jointly create sales pipeline leaks and extend sales, and how to fix it
Today weβll cover:
How marketing and sales jointly create sales pipeline leaks
Why B2B buying processes becomes longer
How to fix sales pipeline leaks and shorten the sales cycle.
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How marketing and sales jointly create pipeline leaks.
Reality: Most marketing and sales teams miss 85% of intent and engagement signals because of account blindness.
Account blindness = lacking a comprehensive view of all historical interactions at the account and buying group level with strategic accounts.
As a result, sales teams lose momentum while marketing maintains siloed demand gen that costs millions in the pipeline.
What makes the problem even worse is the friction points across the buyer journey.
Every year, B2B companies complain that sales cycles become longer. But they ignore 4 fundamental reasons that extend the buying process.
Letβs review them.
1. FRICTION POINTS ACROSS THE BUYER JOURNEY.
When B2B buyers arrive at the vendor's website, they want to see WITHOUT talking to SDRs:
-How does your product work, and what makes it different?
-Industry use cases
-Price
-Product overview (sandbox or self-trial)
B2B companies hide this information because they assume competitors can steal it, the price will scare the prospect, or the price requires a lot of customization.
As a consequence, they deal:
-No show-ups and ghosting leads
-Long sales cycles
*Read our buyer journey guide here: https://fullfunnel.io/buyer-journey/
2. LACK OF BUYER ENABLEMENT.
Despite the enthusiasm of your Champions for your product, they still need to secure budget approval and convince other members of the buying committee.
During the buying process, they will get dozens of questions about:
-Budget justification and ROI
-Vertical use cases
-Migration, security, and onboarding
If you are not supplying your Champion with the content to address these questions, the buying cycle extends.
*Read our buyer enablement guide here: https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/buyer-enablement
3. LIMITED BRAND AWARENESS.
Again, even if your Champion is super excited, but other buying committee members have never heard about your product, the sales cycle extends.
Nobody wants to risk.
*Read our cohesive demand generation guide here: https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/cohesive-b2b-demand-generation-model
4. UNQUALIFIED SALES REPS.
B2B buyers want thorough answers to their questions when speaking with sales reps. They don't want to go through BANT qualification and a boring demo, followed by phone and email follow-ups from a junior SDR.
We are not in the "Wolf from Wall Street" movie. Sales reps are consultants first, sellers - second.
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What's included with the course access:
12 modules covering step-by-step ABM strategy development: goal decomposition, ICP, account list building, ABM team, warm-up and activation playbooks, reporting, scaling ABM and building a cohesive ABM & demand gen function.
Short explanation videos and "how to" examples. We believe it's better one time to see a practical example then listen to the theory hundreds of times.
5 orchestrated and ready-to-use ABM playbooks and a detailed explanation
Report dashboard for 4 types of ABM programs: new revenue, pipeline acceleration, expansion and churn prevention
Live case studies and examples of the campaigns we implemented with the clients of Fullfunnel.io in the past few years
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Planning & Presenting a Pilot ABM Program to Execs and Sales Framework
Minimal viable stack recommendation and guidelines on how to use it to avoid ramping up budget and being pressured to show ROI for the purchased $50k software
How to fix sales pipeline leaks and shorten the sales cycle.
Here is a 5-step process to fix it.
1. CREATE A UNIFIED ACCOUNT ENRICHMENT AND RESEARCH.
Define what information about target accounts you need to collect to:
- Qualify accounts
- Segment accounts by tiers and opportunity probability
- Create a personalized solution/offer
Aside from standard firmographic information (company size, HQ, revenue, etc) add account research questions you want both marketing and sales to collect and store in CRM.
Make sure all conversations, meeting notes, account insights are added to the CRM.
On the contact level, add all buying committee members and power users.
2. DEFINE IMPORTANT INTENT AND ENGAGEMENT SIGNALS.
Include signals on both account and contact levels:
- High-intent website page visits
- Engagement with content and ads
- Event sign-ups
- Content consumption in content hubs
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3. DEFINE IMPORTANT BUYING PROCESS TRIGGERS/SIGNALS.
Analyze closed-won deals and define signals that triggered the buying process:
- Funding
- Hiring for specific positions
- Strategic initiative announcements in annual reports
- Past Champion or Power User joined a target account
- Asking for a vendor recommendation in the communities
- Creating a new business unit
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4. DEFINE THE PROGRAM OWNER.
Usually, B2B companies buy different technology to capture these signals and expect marketing and sales to track them asynchronously. This never works.
You need a program owner who creates a holistic process of capturing and cross-sharing signals and manages the tech stack.
The only tech vendor I know that currently helps with all 4 steps is Demandbase with its new Agentbase solution.
This is the first time Iβve seen AI effectively used, where AI agents work on a unified data set for accurate and shared insights in marketing and sales.
5. MAKE SENSE OF EVERY SIGNAL AND DEVELOP PLAYBOOKS ALIGNED WITH THE SIGNAL INTENT.
Not every signal is equal and means buying intent.
Understand where your buyer is in their journey and provide the next step aligned with their current needs, not your wishes.
6.REMOVE FRICTION FROM THE BUYING PROCESS.
Tailor your marketing message to your ICP
Show price estimate (product calculators help)
Create product tours, product overview videos, interactive demos or sandbox accounts
Share detailed vertical use cases
Prepare content your buyers need during the buying process
Make sure everybody in your company who talks to customers knows your product well and understands the ICP's jobs to be done.
A lot of teams try to find a new tactic a new tool to fix their sales pipeline. Quite often they ignore what creates leaks in it:
-lack of unified account enrichment and research
-lack of tracking important intent and engagement signals
-lack of capturing buying triggers
-lack of playbooks aligned with the level of intent
When doing more with less, make sure you don't have any friction in the buying process and fix the leaks in the sales pipeline.
Drive pipeline THIS quarter with full-funnel ABM programs.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but donβt do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you donβt know how to fix it
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales canβt get even a reply.
You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets
We can help.
We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.
Listen to Full-Funnel Live - Capturing demand signals.
*If you want to attend the next live episode, sign up here to receive an invite. Usually, we host them every Wednesday at 4 pm CET (Central Europe) - 11 am ET (Eastern Time).
In this episode of Fullfunnel Live, we talk about capturing demand signals.
Tune in to learn:
Capturing demand and engagement signals to identify highly engaged accounts
How to avoid account blindness in CRM
How to match your playbooks with the level of demand
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