In the high-stakes world of B2B sales, no path to a closed deal is perfectly linear. According to Forrester’s Demand, ABM, And Customer Marketing Survey, 2024, 56% of opportunities handed off to sales fail to close successfully. The preponderant focus that still exists on identifying new opportunities in demand and account-based marketing (ABM) means that revisiting stalled or detoured deals has significant untapped potential. Adaptive programs provide a structured approach to reviving these opportunities, ensuring that they’re not prematurely discarded and that marketing and sales investments yield maximum returns.
Why Opportunities Stall, And Why They Shouldn’t Be Abandoned
Deals can detour for various reasons, including shifting buyer priorities, budget constraints, or internal changes within the buying organization. When this happens, these opportunities are often deprioritized and fall out of the sales pipeline altogether. But this doesn’t mean they lack potential.
Frontline marketing teams can effectively develop strategies to reengage buyers using insights gained during the buying process. Capturing and sharing first-party data — such as updated time frames, missing features, or evolving business needs — ensures that these stalled opportunities remain within the broader B2B Revenue Waterfall™, ready for reactivation when the time is right.
Designing Adaptive Programs To Restart Deals That Detour
To revitalize stalled deals, organizations must align marketing, sales, and customer-facing teams around shared insights and adopt an adaptable and automated approach to buyer engagement. Adaptive programs leverage standardized reason codes to diagnose why opportunities have stalled and determine the appropriate actions for reengagement. These codes clarify the reasons, context, and next steps for detoured opportunities, ensuring targeted treatments and messaging. Businesses can effectively address setbacks and move opportunities back into the sales pipeline with greater precision and impact by systematically reactivating and recycling deals through tailored demand programs.
Accelerating Deals With Program Plays
Forrester’s framework emphasizes using specific acceleration program plays to tackle the core reasons for detours. Each play is designed to address a particular buyer concern:
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- Budget. Demonstrate the value of the solution to obtain the necessary budget.
- Authority. Identify and engage unresponsive or new buying group members and ensure that they align with other buying group members.
- Need. Showcase how the solution addresses critical business challenges and demonstrate the value of the solution’s functionality.
- Urgency. To reinforce the importance of timely action, prioritize and create a sense of urgency around the buyer’s challenge ahead of other challenges the business faces.
Closing The Gap In B2B Revenue
By adopting adaptive programs, businesses can reduce inefficiencies, maximize their marketing ROI, and increase the likelihood of closed deals. Detoured opportunities shouldn’t represent failure but rather an opportunity to refine your approach, leveraging data and insights to meet buyers where they are in their journey.
Read the Forrester report, Harnessing Adaptive Programs To Revitalize Deals That Detour, to explore these strategies in greater depth and learn actionable steps for implementation. This comprehensive report provides insights into how adaptive programs can transform stalled deals into successful outcomes. Forrester clients can also schedule a guidance session or inquiry to discuss this important topic for all B2B marketers.
