So here’s the last post in my series on B2B marketing banana skins to avoid, learned the hard way from my career so far. There are many more than 10 of course. These are the ones that came to my mind when I conceived the series. I may return to it another time, but, for now, I think 10 things to worry about not doing is more than enough.

B2B marketing banana skin no 10 to avoid is this: thinking your product or service will get there. It won’t. Ever.

There aren’t enough resources to develop a product or service into something that you and your customers think is complete. If there were it would be unaffordable and unsellable – if that’s even a word. It’s never complete. In fact it will probably never be close to complete. That’s the nature of things; there are too many competing and conflicting demands.

That’s why the golden rule of B2B marketing and sales is this – SWYG. Pronounced ‘swig’ and standing for Sell What You Got. For us marketers, it’s OK to allow for a marketing lag and promote something we don’t have yet, as long as the typical demand and sales cycle is not much longer than the time you have reasonably allowed for the new product/feature/service to be available for sale.

The word ‘reasonable’ is of course etched with uncertainty, so be careful with the claims you make, or you’ll end up with that most hated of products, the phantom.