Bad Habit One: Over-reliance on Sales Advice
In the current economic climate, where the market is highly competitive and the economy is sluggish, companies are pushing for sales revenue and profits to the extreme. The sales department, due to its direct contribution to revenue generation, has become increasingly important within the company. B2B marketers, who are at the back end of the sales process, sometimes overly rely on sales advice to meet the company’s performance demands. This reliance causes marketers to hide their unique insights into the market and simply follow sales advice, which may lead to overlooking macro market trends and potential opportunities, resulting in marketing strategies that lack comprehensiveness and forward-looking perspectives.
Habit Two: Bearing the Burden of a Cost Center Under the business theme of cost reduction and efficiency improvement in major enterprises, the marketing department’s budget and all expenses incurred by marketing personnel are regarded as the company’s costs, making the marketing department a cost center. This leads marketing professionals to habitually believe that reducing costs is the only way to relieve the company’s burden. As a result, they dare not optimize and invest in the marketing budget reasonably, nor dare to carry out medium- and long-term brand promotion activities. Everything revolves around cost reduction, merely to meet the short-term requirements of the company and sales. However, in fact, reasonable planning of the marketing budget and bold attempts at new marketing methods may bring about a brand reputation improvement and product promotion effect far exceeding the cost, creating greater value for the enterprise.
Bad Habit Three: Centered on the Boss’s Preferences Since the marketing department cannot generate sales revenue directly like the sales department does, even if marketers obtain some sales leads through their professional skills, the effect on the overall growth of the company is relatively limited. Moreover, they may encounter various obstacles set by the sales department. The survival drive of marketers prompts them to try to stabilize their positions by winning the recognition and trust of the boss. As a result, marketers blindly cater to the boss’s preferences, doing whatever the boss likes, and even forget the original intention of marketing, which is to meet customer needs and be market-oriented in formulating marketing strategies. This behavior leads to marketing activities possibly deviating from the actual market demands and failing to truly touch the target customers.
Bad Habit Four: Overemphasizing the Role of Professional Skills Many B2B marketers believe that as long as they master professional skills such as being proficient in marketing theories, skilled in promotion and publicity, familiar with digital marketing technologies, capable of new media operation, and able to utilize advanced means like AI to improve marketing efficiency, they can stand out in the company, be at the forefront of the times, and open up new battlefields for the company. However, in the organizational structure and ecosystem of the company, the marketing department needs to collaborate with multiple departments such as sales, product, customer service, finance, and procurement. Relying solely on professional skills is difficult to maintain effectiveness in the complex corporate environment. The professional skills of marketers must be combined with teamwork, communication coordination and other abilities to exert greater value in the corporate ecosystem.
Bad Habit Five: Fantasy of Meeting All Demands The marketing work in an enterprise is like a hub, connecting various departments. As a result, marketing personnel often encounter various demands from different parties. The finance department requires strict control of marketing costs and provides detailed expense breakdowns to ensure that expenditures have quantifiable returns; the product department hopes to precisely convey the product features and advantages, and formulate promotion strategies based on product stages to help gain competitive advantages; the sales department expects to obtain sufficient high-quality potential customer leads, and use effective activities to stimulate customer purchase intentions; the human resources department needs to assist in employer brand building to attract talents; the customer service department hopes to do a good job in customer education to alleviate post-sale pressure; the boss, from the strategic height of the enterprise, requires enhancing brand awareness, expanding market share, and increasing sales performance. When marketing personnel strive to meet the demands of all parties, they often struggle to keep up but neglect the core mission of deeply understanding the market and customers, and formulating targeted and innovative marketing strategies. In fact, we should learn to prioritize, center on the market and customers, combine the strategic goals of the enterprise, reasonably coordinate the expectations of all parties, and avoid blindly catering, which leads to a lack of focus and inability to focus on the core marketing goals.
Bad Habit Six: Lack of Ability to Highlight One’s Contributions B2B marketers often undertake crucial tasks but their achievements are frequently overlooked due to poor presentation. For instance, organizing large-scale marketing events, from research, planning to resource integration, promotion, and effect evaluation, they invest a lot of effort. Successfully hosting such events can enhance brand awareness and attract potential customers. When promoting products, carefully crafted content is precisely targeted, changing customer perceptions and enhancing competitiveness. However, marketers often assume that their achievements will be noticed, but this is not the case. Without active presentation, they may be regarded as routine work. Marketers should regularly present the positive impact of their activities on performance and brand image using data. They should also share highlights and challenges in cross-departmental meetings to gain recognition and resources.
Bad Habit Seven: Forced Compression of Personal Development In the current predicament, many B2B marketers believe that their own development is entirely dependent on the development of their companies. As long as the company is doing well, they think they can obtain a better survival space for themselves. Therefore, they neglect to step out of the framework of the company and view the improvement of their own capabilities and career planning from the perspectives of the industry and the market. However, the development of the company is not always smooth, and the market environment changes rapidly. Only by continuously improving their ability to face the external market, broadening their career development paths, and striving to learn and evolve themselves can marketing talents maintain competitiveness in the constantly changing environment and achieve sustainable development.
At the performance analysis and year-end sprint sharing meeting of the HEALTHSMILE MEDICAL marketing department on December 2nd, Mr. Edward, the president of the company’s international trade department, pointed out the seven major problems existing in B2B marketing in 2025, and encouraged everyone to keep changing themselves, continuously improving services, continuously generating value, and providing customer-oriented services.
Post time: Dec-03-2025