Blog 22 - Leadership in B2B and B2G Growth: How a lack of leaders understanding of your funnel is failing you
The blog this week is from Jeremy
Leadership in B2B and B2G Growth: How a lack of leaders understanding of your funnel is failing you
In the world of bids, frameworks, and government contracts - a lack of understanding in leadership often hides in plain sight. We talk around it—especially in the bids and proposals space—without naming the real issue: strategic failure at the top. And it’s costing companies dearly.
The Hidden Cost of Mediocrity
It’s surprisingly easy to run a mediocre B2B or B2G business. Get on a framework, bid on everything, and celebrate single-digit margins as success. But beneath the surface, these businesses are dangerously exposed. They’re burning out bid teams chasing deals they’ll never win, and they’re mistaking volume for value.
The reality? Most companies are making 80% of their margin from just 20% of their clients. We’ve seen this pattern across 19 clients in 21 months—from 220-person firms to multi-billion turnover giants. And yet, many leadership teams have never been shown how to shape their funnel to reflect this.
What High Performers Do Differently
High-performing businesses aren’t just lucky. They’re deliberate. They:
• Focus on early engagement with clients who are good to work with.
• Prioritize projects that align with their geographic, operational, and cultural sweet spots.
• Invest in relationships where their people thrive and see development opportunities.
These businesses understand that good profit is a symptom of good business. They don’t chase every opportunity—they shape their pipeline to attract the right ones.
The Leadership Shadow
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: poor leadership casts a long shadow. When leaders default to “just bid it anyway,” they signal to their teams that governance and strategic thinking don’t matter. That mindset erodes culture, performance, and ultimately, profitability.
Most senior leaders in B2B and B2G firms have risen through operational excellence—not strategic training. They’ve never been taught how to manage the full funnel: from business planning and marketing to capture, bidding, and client experience. And most leadership development programmes are B2C in flavour, missing the nuances of B2B and B2G growth.
Building Competence at the Top
It’s time to equip the top 20% of your business with the tools to grow it. That means:
• Understanding the full funnel and their role as sponsors of strategic activity.
• Focusing efforts on key clients and capture pursuits—not scattergun bidding.
• Demonstrating behaviours that reinforce good governance and long-term thinking.
We’re now working with more leadership teams than ever—contractors, consultancies, and beyond—to build modules that fill this gap. From webinars and drop-in calls to structured training, we’re helping leaders understand the DNA of good work and good profit.
Final Thought
If you’re in the C-suite—or if you’re further down the ladder and see the need—this is your moment. Promote the conversation. Challenge the status quo. Because leadership isn’t just about managing people. It’s about shaping the future of your business.
Let’s stop bidding so much. Let’s start leading better.
Other Resources
We’re on a mission to help companies like yours win more work.
Here are some other free resources that should help you too. Feel also free to share them with friends and colleagues:
Bid Writing Training - Learn to write winning tenders here.
Writing Crown Commercial Services Bids - Learn to tackle the challenges of writing CCS tenders here.
The Bid Toolkit - We make winning simple.
Our free work winning Podcast, the Red Review, can be found here.
You can also follow Jeremy on LinkedIn for hints, tips and insights here.
100% Typo Guarantee—Our blog posts are free-range. It was hand-crafted with love and sent out unfiltered. There was no review queue, no editorial process, no post-post revisions. Therefore, I can pretty much guarantee that there is some sort of typo or grammatical error or literary snafu. Got a business to run and a four year old to Dad. Sorry.