Marketers’ laments about stalled B2B sales pipelines have persisted in 2025. Yet the pressure to generate and convert leads remains intense. Budgets are tighter than ever, competition is aggressive, and B2B companies can’t take their foot off the gas — but more and more are struggling to close those deals.
Times are tough if you’re in sales, and marketers aren’t having an easy time, either. So what’s causing these clogged pipelines? Several factors, like the time it takes to get a contract signed, longer buying cycles, and exponentially bigger buying committees. Is it any wonder that sales cycles seem to take forever to close?
Factors contributing to stagnating sales journeys
LinkedIn research found that over 40% of B2B deals become lost in limbo, mainly due to a lack of consensus. Many suffer from FOMU (fear of messing up). Another study by Bain & Company found that 80% to 90% of B2B buyers begin with a “Day 1” list of their top/favored vendors. So, while they might meet with vendors not on that list, chances are good (90%, in fact) that the company will choose one of those vendors from their original list. The moral of this story? If you want your deal to go through and not languish in the sales funnel, you have to get your name on that Day 1 list.
Here are a few other factors potentially contributing to stuck B2B sales:
Digital gaps
Some B2B companies have yet to fully embrace digital selling, leading to a disconnect with buyers who increasingly prefer online interactions and research. Customer preference for digital sales increased by an average of 50% during the pandemic. In 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will happen online, compared to 14% of B2B digital sales in 2023.
Complex buying committees
Decision-making often involves multiple stakeholders across different departments, requiring a more nuanced approach to reach and influence each person, which increases the sales cycle. According to Marketing Sherpa, 35% of sales cycles for professional or financial services take 8 days to a month, and 17% take 1-3 months. Almost 30% of software as a service (SaaS) sales cycles take 1-3 months, 20% take 4-6 months, and 17% take 7-12 months.
Poor lead qualification
When sales teams receive unqualified leads from marketing, they spend time pursuing prospects who aren’t a good fit. The result? More delays in the pipeline, wasted resources, inconsistent messaging, and frustrated customers. Worse, misaligned sales and marketing teams cost companies 10% or more in revenue loss YOY.
Sales teams typically focus on immediate financial gains, driven by the need to achieve short-term revenue goals and rapidly finalize transactions to meet quarterly targets. B2B marketing often adopts a more extended perspective, emphasizing brand development, lead cultivation, and the establishment of a consistent pipeline of prospects.
This disparity can lead to misalignment, with marketing generating leads with substantial long-term potential and sales perceiving leads as too far removed from their current objectives. Divergent goals can cause friction, with each team advocating for its priorities while not understanding how its contributions integrate into the overall strategic framework.
Personalization
Generic sales pitches fail to resonate with today’s B2B buyers, who are more informed and expect tailored solutions addressing their specific pain points. Account-based selling (ABS) cultivates relationships with key, high-value clients by developing bespoke engagement strategies:
- Custom proposals
- Targeted email sequences
- Solutions designed to address a client’s unique challenges directly
This tailored approach communicates to clients that the business prioritizes and understands their objectives. Technology like AI-enhanced customer relationship management (CRM) systems and marketing automation tools empowers sales teams to deliver highly personalized interactions at scale — a competitive advantage over companies relying on more generalized approaches.
Data use
Not leveraging customer data effectively to understand buyer behavior and adjust sales strategies can lead to missed opportunities. While sales teams, through direct customer interaction, may gain more granular knowledge of their challenges and requirements, marketing teams typically gather their customer intel from data, pre-defined buyer personas, and external research.
Companies sometimes lack a robust CRM system to capture and disaggregate information to build more nuanced customer profiles. If either team fails to capture these nuances, the information given to potential clients may not effectively guide them through the sales process. As a result, teams may receive leads unprepared to convert or lose prospects completely.
Slow response to evolving market dynamics
Failing to adapt to emerging technologies, new customer expectations, and industry trends can leave sellers behind. When teams use different CRM platforms and data systems, the information becomes fractured. A lack of synchronization results in both departments operating with incomplete datasets, leading to operational inefficiencies and critical gaps in pipeline visibility.
Best practices for unclogging the pipeline
Fortunately, there are solutions for resolving a stalled sales cycle.
Sharing goals and KPIs
To align marketing and sales, use collaborative planning sessions to define shared objectives. Each team should articulate its definition of success, such as lead generation for marketing and revenue targets for sales. Establish interconnected KPIs that track the customer journey, prioritizing metrics like:
- Lead-to-customer conversion rate
- Pipeline velocity
- Revenue attributed to marketing efforts
Focus on high-impact indicators, such as customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value, rather than vanity metrics like impressions, to ensure accountability for driving profit. Centralize revenue as the unifying goal, setting a shared target with assigned responsibilities for each team. Conduct biweekly meetings to review progress, address bottlenecks, and refine processes to maintain continuous alignment and progress toward those shared revenue goals.
Crafting buyer personas
Marketing and sales teams should use shared data to develop detailed buyer personas that extend beyond basic demographics by identifying:
- Specific pain points
- Motivations
- Decision-making processes
- Potential objections
By mapping the typical buyer journey, including decision criteria and influencing factors, teams can gain a comprehensive understanding of their target audience. Sales insights from prospect interactions and marketing’s behavioral data help maintain accuracy. These personas can inform the creation of consistent messaging and language, which should “live” in a central location for easy reference by both teams.
Ensuring consistent messaging and branding
Maintaining consistent messaging and branding across marketing and sales teams requires a unified framework detailing:
- Value propositions
- Product/service benefits
- Brand voice
This framework becomes the reference for content creation, sales pitches, and campaign assets. Conduct regular workshops or training sessions to reinforce this framework if resources and time permit. Review recent campaigns and customer insights and adapt messaging to market changes and competitor activity to deliver a cohesive brand experience for prospects, regardless of their position in the pipeline.
How CREA United membership can help
CREA United offers B2B businesses a powerful solution for unsticking B2B deals clogging the sales pipeline by providing access to a highly collaborative and specialized network within the commercial real estate industry. Comprised of over 90 established firms from various disciplines, CREA fosters an organic approach to networking, shifting away from traditional, quota-driven lead generation. Members engage in meaningful information sharing and collaborative business development, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem for success.
The organization’s structure, which includes specialized groups focused on sectors like cannabis, corporate, healthcare, industrial, multifamily, office, and retail, allows members to connect with other professionals operating within their specific verticals. This targeted approach ensures that businesses gain access to relevant expertise and build relationships with individuals who understand their unique pain points and opportunities.
CREA groups provide a non-competitive, confidential environment for exchanging market intelligence, business referrals, and industry knowledge. Members collectively address industry trends, regulatory changes, and best practices, enhancing their ability to serve clients effectively. This approach streamlines CRE transactions by bringing together experts from all relevant disciplines, fostering a synergistic environment where members provide genuine value to each other.
Each group’s combined knowledge and experience significantly exceed what an individual could offer, creating a powerful resource for businesses navigating complex CRE ventures. By fostering trust and facilitating access to a network of reliable professionals, CRE United enables B2B businesses to accelerate deal flow and success.
