Theory of Constraints and B2B Sales and Marketing?

I read an interesting post recently at Salesforce Times … Russian Scientists & the B2B Sales Process.
They give a little bit of background about Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt's book The Goal, a business book disguised as a novel that outlines the basic structure for Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (TOC). Bear with me through a brief definition of TOC to here how Salesforce Times (and I) connect it to B2B sales and marketing…

In a nutshell, TOC (according to Wikipedia) "…is based on the premise that the rate of goal
achievement is limited by at least one constraining process. Only by
increasing throughput (flow) at the bottleneck process can overall
throughput be increased."

What this means is that there is typically (at least) one "constraint" in the manufacturing process that is hampering the completion of your goal. Some sort of supply issue, some sort of technical problem, some sort of scheduling or personnel issue could be the key, if corrected, to improved performance. Where it gets complicated, and what Goldratt's book illustrates extremely well, is cutting through the distractions and "false positives" to discover what the constraint actually is. And of course, what might be even harder, figuring out what your goal really is. 

If you lose sight of what the goal really is, then there is no way to identify the bottleneck.

Coincidentally, before I started at Demandbase I worked for a software company called Maxager Technology which sold exclusively to manufacturers. Maxager focuses on helping manufacturers optimize their product mix based on the products that have the highest "Profit Velocity" which is calculated by combining the profit margin of a product with its production velocity (how long it takes to produce). Production velocity is calculated at the "Velocity Measurement Point," which Maxager defines as "…the point in a manufacturing process where production speed is
measured. It is often the constrained step in the manufacturing process."

Constrained, as in "Theory of Constraints." Maxager's roots in TOC happen to be why I read The Goal a few years back. 

So how does this relate to B2B sales and marketing?

The Salesforce Times article looks primarily at B2B sales. Here's a quote:

"B2B sales is very much like a plant that ‘manufactures’ closed revenue
opportunities. Leads and new opportunities flow into the sales
‘system’, they hit different sales stages and produce a certain amount
of closed deals."

That's a good angle on the sales side…identify the bottleneck that is holding your team back from closing business…but I'm going to talk about B2B marketing, and I am going to make the assumption that your goal is "conversions." People who fill out your form, or download your white paper, or register for your webinar so that they can become leads that you pass over to sales.

One thing you will need to consider when thinking about the "constraints" to completing your conversion goals is what your "Velocity Measurement Point" might be. As any salesperson will tell you, some leads are more valuable than others. Webinar leads are valuable, for example, because of their commitment. These are people that sat through your webinar for an hour! However, when you consider the raw material costs of promoting, advertising, staging, and creating relevant content for the webinar you might find that your "profit margin" is thinner than you had originally believed…

As a B2B marketer, what do you think your "constraint" might be?

I would propose your website as a possibility…the organic traffic visiting your website is inherently valuable because they are proactively searching for something that you have to offer, but the problem is that even the most successful B2B websites "convert" less than 5% of their visitors. That sounds like a bottleneck to me! The question is, what are you going to do about it?