When there are problems within sales teams, opportunities plummet, conversion rates decline and commissions dwindle. The frustration becomes real.
Yet most of these negative outcomes can be avoided. But the teams must know what the challenges are.
In this article, we have gathered the main causes of the annoyances felt in terms of B2B sales . Each of the pain points was revealed by professionals who have directly experienced frustrating situations during their careers. If you want to retain your salespeople and strengthen your sales team , you should prevent one of the following 8 situations to occur at your marketing and dirty processes.
1 – Warm up cold prospects
Does the questions such as "where do marketing find these prospects ?" Or "Why do they transmit them when they are obviously not suitable? Are common in the sales teams . And it is normal for the seller to be frustrated since converting ready for purchase prospects is the best of doing. But it is not surprising when you know that at least 50 % of prospects do not correspond to what you sell .
In fact, it may not be for lack of marketing teams. It is more likely that the problem is in terms of your systems and processes . Indeed, several flaws can cause this problem: a lack of alignment between the teams, qualification criteria , absence of follow -up and feedback, unsuitable strategies, insufficient data on prospects or ineffective qualification processes.
If this happens, you need to rethink your strategy, processes and tools . To do this, you can use Smarketing techniques .
2 – Not having enough accounts in your name
Most B2B sellers don't like to run out of accounts in their name. In fact, more accounts mean more chances of closing deals. It is quite logical. Still, most sellers can't help but chase big logos . The truth is, salespeople love a challenge. And the prospect of a huge payday with big brands is a real thrill for them.
Note, however, that if a prospect is simply not interested , you are wasting time and resources trying to close a deal with them. You'll be more likely to achieve your goal by focusing on a prospect that's ten times smaller, but who is actually in the market for your product .
3 – Losing an opportunity to close a deal
There's no greater frustration for salespeople than when they discover that a perfect prospect was looking for a solution, but their logo appears on a competitor's website. The obvious question is: why not start the conversation in time?
Sometimes the salesperson doesn't enter the conversation early enough. It's also possible that he missed it completely. In both cases, the main cause of these lost opportunities is limited visibility of the buying journey .
A complete and easy-to-use automation tool like Magileads is enough to solve this problem.
4 – Time wasted not selling
It's annoying to waste time on bad deals. However, it seems that sellers find it even more frustrating to waste time not selling at all. In fact, studies show that every day, they spend
- 21% of their day trying to write persuasive messages
- 17% enter data
- 17% to prospect and research potential customers
- 12% to go to internal meetings
- 12% to schedule calls
So only 21% of the day remains for actual conversations . If we refer to the Pareto rule, focusing on these 21% is what they have to do best.
Fortunately, the majority of these tasks can be automated or avoided using marketing automation . Sometimes knowing which accounts should be prioritized helps you avoid overwork and focus on revenue-generating tasks.
Read also: 20 essential tips for B2B sellers in 2025
5 – Inability to find or access the right content
According to a study, 80% of content created by marketing is not used by sales , a figure that concerns both teams. Why are these resources underutilized?
There may be two main reasons for this: it is too difficult to find the right content or no available content corresponds to the stage of the purchasing course of a prospect. Here is a resource that explains how marketing can start creating content for a buyer, wherever he is in his career.
6 – Limited knowledge of b2b prospects
Salespeople hate feeling unprepared for calls . But in reality, B2B buyers complete more than 70% of their buying journey anonymously before even speaking to a representative. In fact, it's difficult to know exactly what prospects watched.
However, it is possible to find out about the keywords and competitors that prospects have searched for. This provides valuable insight into prospects.
You can learn how to prepare for a B2B sales interview by watching this podcast:
7 – Errors due to poor alignment
The lack of harmonization between your teams can cause unfortunate errors (too much time to transmit documents to customers, marketing which contacts prospects in the midst of negotiation of an incentive sale, etc.
In addition, some prospects are transmitted to sales too early, when they are far from ready to buy. These lukewarm prospects should still be followed by the marketing department. Note that the ideal point in the purchase journey of your prospects, when they are on the market for your solution, is between the consideration phase and the decision phase . When the accounts are engaged at the right time in their purchasing journey, an average improvement of 120% of the revenue has been found.
When sales, marketing and customer service work in close collaboration, they can align themselves with accounts, objectives, personas and key performance indicators (KPI).
