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51% of Companies Met Sales and Revenue Targets in H1 2024
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This week’s edition includes:
GTM Research: 51% of Companies Met Sales and Revenue Targets in H1 2024
Spotlight: Convertiv (a GTM Certified Agency)
Announcing the “GTM is Better Together” Breakfast Series for 2025
51% of Companies Met Sales and Revenue Targets in H1 2024
A weekly deep-dive into new GTM research and insights.
As we near the end of 2024, the latest GTM Benchmark Report reveals insights into the performance of B2B companies across several go-to-market metrics, including:
Marketing pipeline
Sales velocity
Revenue attainment
Our findings highlight both areas of progress and continued challenges for organizations adapting to economic shifts and evolving market dynamics.
Sales and Revenue Performance in H1 2024
This edition of the GTM Benchmark report shows a slight improvement in sales and revenue targets.
Approximately 46% of companies report expected or better-than-expected sales cycle lengths, while 51% have met or exceeded their revenue goals. That number is slightly better than last year when 56% reported missing revenue goals.
However, half of companies are still struggling, with deals taking longer than anticipated and revenue falling below forecasts.
This trend underscores the need for businesses to adapt their go-to-market strategies in response to prolonged economic uncertainties.
—> Download the 2024 Fall GTM Benchmark Report Here
1. Marketing Pipeline: Performance Under Pressure
Marketing pipeline remains a critical area of concern.
In H1 2024, 54% of companies fell short of their pipeline targets, slightly improving from 57% at the end of 2023.
Pipeline performance varied by company size:
Enterprise companies saw significant improvement, with only 43% reporting lower-than-expected pipeline performance, down from 64% in 2023.
Small and mid-market companies faced challenges, with over half falling short of pipeline targets.
Marketing Pipeline Takeaway: Enterprise companies are adjusting more effectively, possibly due to larger budgets or more substantial alignment with target account strategies.
However, smaller companies still struggle, pointing to the potential benefits of focusing on high-quality buyer engagement using Total Relevant Market (TRM) and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) insights over a broad total addressable market (TAM) approach.
This shift allows companies to achieve efficient growth with reduced marketing expenditure.
2. Sales Velocity: Slowing Sales Cycles Demand Strategic Adjustment
Longer sales cycles persist as a challenge, though the report indicates a decline in the percentage of companies experiencing extended cycle times, down from a peak of 81% 12 months ago to 54% in July 2024.
Despite this improvement, the trend of prolonged cycles is far from over, with only 31% of companies seeing no change in sales velocity.
Enterprise companies faced the most significant challenge, with 62% reporting longer sales cycles.
Small and mid-market companies saw some relief, with fewer reporting prolonged cycles compared to 2023.
Sales Velocity Takeaway: Companies should emphasize clear ROI and time-to-value in their messaging to counter extended sales cycles.
CFOs are often cautious about approving new expenditures, especially those perceived as non-essential, so focusing on measurable outcomes can expedite deal closure.
3. Revenue Attainment: Mixed Success Across Company Sizes
Revenue attainment remains an area of moderate success. In H1 2024, 49% of companies missed their revenue goals, slightly improving from 56% in 2023.
The report reveals notable differences based on company size:
Enterprise companies showed resilience, with 56% achieving or exceeding revenue targets, up from 41% in 2023.
Small and mid-market companies struggled, with 60% falling below their revenue goals.
Revenue Attainment Takeaway: The upward trend among enterprise companies suggests that larger organizations may have more established revenue strategies or greater flexibility to adjust to market conditions.
However, mid-market companies must focus on refining revenue-generating activities to close the gap.
Key Takeaways for B2B GTM Teams
Marketing Pipeline Management: Companies using a 2-3x pipeline multiplier should consider shifting towards 4-5x, even with high-quality leads. It’s critical to align with a well-defined TRM and ICP rather than pursuing a larger TAM. This approach fosters efficiency and may reduce the need for extensive marketing budgets, allowing smaller companies to compete more effectively.
Sales Cycle Acceleration: Emphasizing ROI and time-to-value can help speed up sales cycles. This focus is crucial as CFOs, often the final gatekeepers in the purchasing process, look for assurances of tangible impact before approving investments.
Revenue Stability and Growth: Enterprise companies lead in revenue attainment, highlighting the potential for other businesses to learn from their success in establishing scalable revenue strategies. Mid-market companies should assess how they can replicate these approaches within their resource constraints.
Do you need help with your GTM strategy and execution?
GTM Partners works with B2B companies who need help with GTM, whether you just need a few tweaks or a full reboot of your strategy.
We’re booking now for 2025 planning work, including:
GTM Assessment: Over 1000 companies have done GTM Assessment to build their GTM Strategy. You can do it too here
Advisory: We work one-on-one or with your entire GTM team to execute your plan using our proprietary GTM Operating System and the frameworks we’ve built to accelerate your growth. We can do this on a project basis to address specific needs or help you through a total GTM transformation.
GTM Certification: We offer Go-to-Market certification for individuals, teams, and agencies using our proprietary GTM Operating System.
We’d love to chat more about your needs and how we can help.
Spotlight: Convertiv (a GTM Certified Agency)
Convertiv is a go-to marketing agency for high-performing web, demand, and ops teams. They help fast-growing companies optimize digital experiences to drive efficient growth.
Their unique Team-as-a-Service model enables Convertiv to easily integrate with client teams and focus on serving web, demand, and marketing ops teams with expertise and tactical execution to maximize pipeline generation and improve growth efficiency.
Convertiv’s core philosophy is that eliminating program inefficiencies and reducing tech debt creates streamlined, agile go-to-market motions that produce measurable results. And they have 15+ years of experience with more than 250 clients and more than $20B in collective exits to back that claim.
Convertiv clients typically range from scaling startups to global brands who lack the resources or team alignment to:
Enhance digital performance
Increase demand generation
Overcome tech debt and funnel inefficiencies
Build streamlined, high-performing marketing operations
Scale pipeline generation
Improve campaign visibility
“The GTM OS Certification aligns closely with Convertiv’s commitment to sales and marketing efficiency, visibility, and operations-enabled growth. The GTM OS approach enhances our ability to align teams and coordinate across web, demand, and marketing ops. This certification has expanded our ability to drive cohesive, data-driven decision-making across campaigns, making it a perfect complement to our core strengths.”
~Tim Radwanski, Co-Founder, EVP Strategy, Convertiv
Join Convertiv’s Attribution Workshop
In 2024, growth-focused organizations were often forced to make decisions based on incomplete and imperfect data from the MarTech stack. Although the foundational tools were often in place, they weren’t effectively instrumented to unlock the data needed to deliver actionable revenue and pipeline intelligence.
Join one of Convertiv’s 75-minute workshops designed to work with digital demand and growth teams to assess your current processes and stack and help you better understand where gaps may exist between your web analytics, forms, routing, MAP, and CRM.
Announcing the “GTM is Better Together” Breakfast Series for 2025
We’re hitting the road again in 2025!
If you are an agency or a GTM technology company that would like to sponsor our series of CXO breakfasts around the country, we’d love to talk.
We’ll be visiting cities like Atlanta, Boston, New York, San Francisco, and more to invite 10-20 C-level executives to attend a learning breakfast about the GTM Operating System. You can invite a customer to speak and invite prospects to attend.
To learn more, book some time with Sangram to see how it works.
We’ve been loving seeing everyone share their GTM O.S. certifications on LinkedIn.
To learn more about getting certified, check our website for the details!
Love,
The GTM Partners Team
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