You assume too much. When you've spent the better part of your life learning your practice and refining your craft, it's often hard to mentally put yourself in the shoes of someone who knows nothing about your business. You don't want to insult your customers - but at the same time, you can't assume that they automatically share your insights, understandings and values. It's your job to share them.

You say too much, too soon. Imagine that you have exactly one minute to persuade an educated skeptic that your product is worth buying. Pick your details carefully, and stick to the few points that represent the widest range of relevant selling topics. Remember - the job of your front line marketing is not to sell your product, but to sell your sales team. Say just enough to get your prospect to pick up the phone, and no more.

You underdramatize. A common failing in much B2B marketing is the failure to tell a compelling story. Forget for a moment that your new model of industrial dehumidifier has a highly sensitive heat pressure control system. How does that make people happier? How does it directly translate to everyday human motives - and what consequences result from those motives, carried into real-life actions? What's the story?

You make it too complicated. When you're the best at what you do, naturally you want people to know it. Often however, experts in sophisticated disciplines make the mistake of trying to dazzle their prospects with their mastery of complication - when in reality, most product and service buyers just want them to cut to the chase. Are you showing off? Are you giving them more than they want right now?

You don't know who you are. This one is very common in this era of mergers, acquisitions, spinoffs and corporate reorganizations, where every clash of corporate culture results in a business identity crisis. Is your marketing currently struggling to make everyone happy, while at the same time obscuring the character of your firm? Find a single common position to take - don't take your family conflicts outside of the family.