Where Businesses Should Focus Their Efforts for Maximum Growth
- Ray lang
- Feb 26
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Pt.7 Beyond the Funnel: Sales vs. Marketing | The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Trap of Scattered Focus
Most businesses fall into the same trap—they try to do everything at once. Social media, paid ads, SEO, networking, cold outreach, content marketing. The logic? "More activity means more results." But in reality, it means burnout, confusion, and wasted resources.
🚨 The result? A lot of effort, little impact.
Growth isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing the right things that actually move the needle.
The reality is, most businesses aren’t growing because they’re drowning in distractions. They're jumping from one initiative to the next, chasing the latest marketing trend, convinced that "one more tactic" will unlock their next level of success. But without focus, these efforts become just noise—burning cash, draining energy, and delivering nothing tangible.
In this section, we break down where businesses should focus to drive real, measurable growth—based on data, efficiency, and return on investment (ROI). Because throwing more at the wall isn’t strategy—it’s just guesswork.
The 80/20 Rule for Maximum Growth
📌 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your efforts.
🔴 Common Mistake: Businesses get caught chasing new tactics, platforms, and trends instead of optimising what's already working.
✅ The Fix:
Double down on the highest-converting strategies instead of adding more channels.
Refine, optimise, and scale what’s already bringing in sales.
Data-backed insight: Companies that focus on fewer priority initiatives are 16% more likely to be in the top tier of their industry than those who spread their focus too thin.
🌐Source Forbes
How to Build a High-Impact Growth Plan
The Pareto Principle isn’t just theory—it’s the foundation of high-growth businesses. 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts, yet most businesses waste time trying to spread themselves thin across everything. Stop doing more—start doing what actually works.
Pareto’s Principle applies across every stage of business:
80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers.
80% of your sales come from 20% of your products/services.
80% of your operational inefficiencies come from just 20% of the problems.
Growth isn’t about adding more—it’s about eliminating what doesn’t serve you.
📌 Step 1: Diagnose the Bottleneck
Where is revenue leaking? Identify the weakest link in your sales funnel and fix that first before adding more complexity.
Lead flow, conversion rates, or customer retention—where’s the breakdown?
📌 Step 2: Prioritise High-Impact Actions
Struggling with conversions? → Your sales execution needs fixing
Not enough leads? → Invest in high-intent lead generation, not broad-reach marketing
Need higher profits? → Focus on up-sells, retention, and increasing customer lifetime value instead of chasing new customers
📌 Step 3: Set Clear Metrics for Success
Track sales conversion rates, marketing ROI, customer retention, and revenue growth
If a channel or strategy isn’t producing real revenue, drop it
Double down on what’s delivering tangible results
📌 Step 4: Scale What Works, Eliminate What Doesn't
If a strategy isn't yielding tangible revenue, cut it
Amplify efforts on the highest-ROI activities to scale faster
Businesses that focus on the right 20% of growth actions outperform competitors by 2-3x.
🌐Source Forbes
The 3 Areas for Business Growth
Every successful business optimises three areas that drive sustainable revenue growth:
Sales Execution (Highest ROI & Fastest Revenue Impact)
💰 Why it matters: Sales isn’t just a function—it’s the heartbeat of revenue growth. If your sales performance is weak, nothing else you do will compensate for it. More leads won’t save a poor sales team.
🚀 The Impact:
Fixing lead qualification, follow-ups, and closing skills delivers immediate revenue growth.
Training sales teams on objection handling can improve win rates by up to 50%.
Automating sales processes reduces manual work, accelerates deal flow, and frees up time for high-impact sales activities.
Sales process optimisation can boost revenue by 35-50% within a year.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (More Sales Without More Leads)
💡 Why it matters: More leads won’t fix a leaking sales funnel. If you’re only focused on increasing traffic instead of improving conversions, you’re leaving money on the table.
🚀 The Impact:
Enhancing your sales funnel increases conversion rates, delivering higher revenue without increasing marketing spend.
Improving website and sales page performance can increase sales by 25-40%.
A/B testing call-to-actions, offers, and messaging can improve conversions by 30% or more.
Even a 1% conversion rate increase can result in 10-30% more revenue.
🌐Source Forbes
🚀 Growth isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what works and doubling down on what delivers actual results.
The Takeaway: Focus on What Actually Drives Growth
✔ Fix sales performance before increasing marketing spend.
✔ Optimise conversions before adding new lead sources.
✔ Retain & expand existing customers for sustainable growth.
✔ Cut distractions—double down on what’s proven to work.
Growth isn’t about doing more—it’s about focusing on the highest-ROI activities.
📌 What’s Next?
We’ve now covered the full marketing vs. sales debate, the importance of sales improvement, and where businesses should focus for maximum growth. Tomorrow we’ll conclude with a full summary, key takeaways, and a roadmap for implementation.
🚀Stay tuned.
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