The real problem
When a company is not growing despite market potential, the problem is rarely where people look first. The most common explanations are the wrong product, the wrong pricing or too little marketing budget. Sometimes that is true. Mostly it is not.
After more than two decades at the intersection of marketing, sales and general management, in corporations, agencies, scale-ups and my own company, I have developed a different thesis: most growth problems are organisational problems.
What I mean by that
Organisational problems sound abstract. What I observe is concrete:
Silo thinking. Marketing optimises awareness metrics, sales counts deals, customer success measures churn, but nobody is responsible for the entire path from first contact to customer loyalty. Nobody looks at the whole.
The leadership gap. Between strategic decision and operational execution there is a zone where nobody is accountable. Everyone contributed, nobody is in charge. Projects get started, not finished.
Decision paralysis. The more stakeholders, the slower the response. While the committee debates, the faster competitor has taken the opportunity.
Why this is so hard to see
Organisational problems hide behind other explanations. “The product isn’t good enough” sounds better than “our product development and our sales team don’t talk to each other.” “The market is difficult” sounds better than “we react too slowly to market changes.”
External explanations protect the ego. Internal causes require a willingness to change, and that willingness is limited as long as the pain isn’t big enough.
What helps
First: look at where responsibility ends. Who owns the handover between marketing and sales? Who owns the one between sales and delivery? Where there is no clear answer, there is often a problem.
Second: shorten decision paths. Not every decision needs to be escalated. Clear ownership, clear authority, and the trust that teams are allowed to act.
Third: use the customer as the common denominator. Departments argue less when everyone is aligned on the same goal: making the customer successful. Not their own metric.
My experience
In one of the largest field marketing mandates in Switzerland, we increased revenue by 59% in 18 months. The key was not a better campaign or a different product. It was bringing sales and marketing together in a shared structure, with clear leadership, shared goals and daily communication.
Growth almost always follows organisational structure. If you want to grow, you sometimes have to change the structure first.