Top Mistakes That Agencies & B2B Businesses Make

Avoid these big mistakes that prevent businesses from growing.

Matthew Larsen
November 04, 2024

1. Trying to apply tactics that work with their network and referrals to cold traffic like cold email, ads, content.

Referral/network leads are about as warm and easy as it gets.

It is a different game with ads, cold email, and content.

2. Not doing (insert method or thing) because "it feels icky"

Ads, cold emails, webinars, paid products come to mind here.

3. Not trying something because "it's not standard" or "they've never seen anyone else do it before"

4. Only offering their main, recurring service

99% of any target market will be unqualified for this, and if you only have your main recurring service, you're essentially discarding this 99%.

5. Not tracking or understanding LTV: CAC

If you have a net lifetime margin of $10,000, you can spend $10,000 to get a client & not lose money.

That is obviously not preferable but most people don't understand how much they can actually spend to acquire a customer.

6. Trying to hire people to do every little thing

There's a lot of stuff that can ONLY be done by you. No one else cares enough and knows yours audience/service like you do.

YOU need to learn to do most things yourself.

You can delegate it once it is complete and proven to work.

7. Incorrect balance between lead gen and client work

Client work and results are very important, yes, but the #1 rule of having a B2B business is that every client leaves eventually.

At a very minimum, 50% of your day needs to be spent on lead gen and promoting the biz.

8. Offering too many different services

This hurts literally every part of your business because your focus is split.

Your margins will be worse (need to hire too many people), your results will be worse, your systems will be worse and your messaging will be worse.

9. Not creating assets or posting content

It is difficult to own a niche or target market if you don't have assets or content.

You are just another pseudo-anonymous person offering the same service as 100s of others do.

It is the only thing you can do to differentiate yourself.

10. Copying their competitors instead of other industries

Copying competitors in 99% of cases is like "the blind leading the blind."

It is way better to take common practices in other industries and adopt them into your own.

This is a video on How Lead Generation Actually Works. Feel free to give it a watch.

Tell me what you think. I always want to make these newsletters as useful as possible.