How to Treat Imposter Syndrome In B2B Marketing & Sales Roles Turnover in B2B marketing and sales roles has been trending upward for five years, with a rise in reported feelings of imposter syndrome. For business owners, this means stagnating revenue and sales leads. A new book outlines a simple solution.

Since 2020, there has been a widespread increase in imposter syndrome in the workplace, and it is quietly ravaging the lead-generating and revenue-generating capabilities of business-to-business (B2B) manufacturers and distributors.

According to research from Asana's Anatomy of Work report, 62% of knowledge workers reported experiencing impostor syndrome in 2022. Data from EDN says 66% of Gen Z workers and 58% of millennials have experienced imposter syndrome. And recent research from NerdWallet found that 78% of leaders experience workplace imposter syndrome.

The workforce is shifting in uniquely dynamic ways, particularly in B2B. Employees are job hopping more frequently. Loyal staff are moving to senior roles more rapidly, partly as a form of employee retention and partly because those roles simply must be filled. Gen Z and millennials are drawn to work in other industries. Working from home is eroding the bonds of camaraderie that historically kept feelings of isolation and inadequacy at bay.

Experts say dealing with imposter syndrome early can help businesses retain talent and get more reciprocal value from each team member.

How B2B Manufacturers and Distributors Deal with Imposter Syndrome

According to John Buie, co-author of the new, best-selling marketing and sales lead generation strategy book "Imposters on the Zoom!", standard approaches exist to addressing imposter syndrome in organizations.

"Businesses are hiring consultants to weed out imposter syndrome with all kinds of different strategies," Buie says."And I feel a lot of these strategies aren't of any real value to the workers struggling with these emotions every day, or to the business that wants to help so those employees can reach their potential, and of course provide value back to the business that's investing in them."

Buie suggests strategies like naming feelings, reframing failure as learning, visualizing success, and eliminating negative self-talk.

"There's nothing wrong with those approaches. From a mental health standpoint, they're valuable, and that's important," he says. "But that puts a lot of focus on individual willpower, which seems negative or at least counterintuitive to me."

Imposter syndrome is a leading cause of workplace burnout. Research from Asana says burnout impacts the decision-making capabilities of 70 percent of C-suite leaders. The findings also showed that anyone suffering from burnout is at a higher risk of having low morale, being less engaged, making more mistakes, and leaving the company.

Jason Hagerman, co-author of "Imposters on the Zoom!" says, "There are other nebulous strategies organizations are being told to use to counteract the burnout associated with imposter syndrome, like more thoughtful staffing, structures to support work-life balance and behavior modeling."

But, he says, an obvious strategy is often overlooked. "It's getting measurably better at the job," Hagerman says."It's learning, then applying that learning tomorrow and the next day and the next week. Actually, it means learning the industry, engaging or re-engaging with the challenges their organization solves, and getting better at the impactful things that get seen, recognized, and acknowledged in the business. Learning what to do, when to do it, and where to find the information that makes you look like a rockstar when you don't feel like one."

A Blueprint to Beat Imposter Syndrome

The challenge with "getting better at the job" is the investment in time. It can take years of learning, experience, testing, failing, and struggling to reach a point of insightful competency in an industry.

"The point of writing our book was to reshape that time investment to something more valuable for everyone in the business," Buie says. "We wanted to make a template everyone in the organization can follow to contribute value to the business, make work easier, and make every marketing and sales initiative more fruitful. But most importantly, to help everyone learn the steps to work together and generate leads and revenue for the business."

According to Buie, the best way to beat imposter syndrome is to create facts that counteract the feelings.

"For B2B marketing and sales professionals, that means generating a steady and increasing volume of leads and sales for the business," Hagerman emphasizes. "For leaders, that means understanding more clearly what those marketers and sales professionals are doing and evaluating them quickly and competently in their language."

The most basic approach to achieve this is to make learning active in the organization and provide everyone with clear, detailed, step-by-step processes. For employees, reading about the business is less valuable than creating assets for the business. Reading case studies about customers is less valuable than interacting with them and creating success stories. Webinars about email marketing are less valuable than creating email marketing campaigns with case studies, and so on.

In education, this is called scaffolding. Teachers use it to nurture students into critical thinkers. However, the approach rarely applies to B2B marketing, sales, and leadership.

"You start with something small and get a fulsome understanding of it in the context of the business and your role in the business, like a single value proposition for a product,"says Buie. "Then you incorporate that understanding into customer-facing assets for the business. You do that repeatedly, and you generate real value for the business while learning and avoiding missteps."

Hagerman adds, "There are no quick-fix bullet points. It has to be a process with defined steps and direction. However, because the process is practical and immensely detailed, the outcomes for both the business and the person struggling with imposter syndrome are powerful. It doesn't matter if it's the founder of the business or the marketing intern. Scaffolded, active learning about the business and the industry is the best way to get past imposter syndrome."

Buie and Hagerman suggest a simple way for owners to better understand the business they own, operate, or work in and feel more confident in their ability to perform tasks.

They elaborate, "Click on your business' website right now and find a statement meant to convince prospects to buy from you. Maybe it's offered fast shipping, superior product quality, or the lowest prices. Write it on the left side of a blank sheet of paper. At the top right of the same blank sheet of paper, in big letters, write, 'Why do they care?' Beneath, record every possible reason this matters to the purchasers of your products, end-users of your products, and owners of the businesses you sell to. Think about their days. Their stress, colleagues, KPIs, and home life."

According to Hagerman and Buie, once businesses finish this simple activity, they have already started on the first layer of their scaffolding. They successfully dug deeper into their customers' experiences than most leaders and B2B marketing and sales professionals. They are already less of an imposter than they think. The next thing they need to do is find a blueprint.