10 Questions You Must Ask of Your Organisation

What are the key factors that determine whether your organisation is going to be able to realise its full potential? The quality of your people and of your product offerings is clearly critical. But if you have a B2B focus and are competing in high-value, complex sales environments with lengthy decision making cycles, I’d like to suggest 10 questions you should be asking of your organisation...

The questions stem from our observations of some of today’s most successful B2B sales and marketing organisations, as well as research published by (amongst others) the Harvard Business Review, CSO Insights, SiriusDecisions and the Aberdeen Group. They serve as the foundation of Inflexion-Point’s recently updated Business Scalability Matrix - you can download a copy here.

In the meantime, here are 10 questions to get you thinking:

1. How clear is our market focus? Is it largely reactive, or does it revolve around a clear definition of our ideal customer?
2. How repeatable are our solutions? Are they largely hand-crafted for each customer, or are they highly replicable across our target markets?
3. Do we stand out from the crowd? Is it hard for our prospects to understand what sets us apart, or do they regard us as truly unique?
4. Are we still selling products or “solutions” - or are we focused on achieving clearly defined outcomes for our customers?
5. Is our marketing still largely outbound - or have we successfully integrated business social media into our sales and marketing activities?
6. Is our sales process random, formalised, or dynamic - or somewhere in between? Have we adapted it to changing market conditions?
7. Are we focused on driving the sales process - or on facilitating our prospect’s buying process? How effectively are we addressing their motivations or concerns?
8. How successful is our CRM implementation? Do our sales people see it as a necessary evil or something that enables them to be more effective?
9. How completely are our sales and marketing activities integrated? Do they act independently or are they fully aligned?
10. How do our customers view us? As an approved vendor, or as a trusted partner - or somewhere in between?

You can download the full set of questions - in a format that will help you assess your current performance - here.

How does your organisation shape up? What are the most important areas for improvement? And are there any other factors I may have missed?