More Leads Aren’t the Answer: 5 Ways B2B Marketers Can Build a Better Growth Engine

1. Stop Marketing to a Lead and Start Marketing to the Buying Group

For years, marketers built demand generation programs around individual leads. That model no longer reflects how complex B2B purchases happen. Buying groups have grown, with eight or more people potentially involved in a complex sale where each stakeholder can bring different priorities, concerns and personal risks to the decision. That changes our job as marketers. It's no longer enough to identify someone who may be interested in a product. We need to understand the larger group influencing the decision and help those people develop enough confidence—and enough internal agreement—to move forward. Brian made an important point: one of our biggest competitors isn't necessarily another company. It's the status quo. Doing nothing often feels safer than making the wrong decision. Great marketing should help buyers become confident enough to change that.

2. Look for Revenue Lost in the Seams

One phrase from Brian really stuck with me: revenue gets lost in the seams. Those seams exist between marketing and sales development, sales development and sales, and sales and customer success. Everyone may be working toward revenue, but they're being measured differently along the way. Brian shared an example of a company generating thousands of leads every month. The problem wasn't lead volume. It was what happened next. Leads weren't being acted on consistently, there were multiple routing processes, and marketing and sales didn't even agree on what constituted a qualified lead. Before investing in more demand, marketers should understand what's happening to the demand they already have. Sometimes the greatest growth opportunity isn't adding more to the funnel. It's fixing the leaks.

3. Work Backward From Revenue, Not Forward From MQLs

Brian shared an example that should get every marketing leader's attention. A demand generation team produced 150% of its pipeline goal—and the company still missed its revenue target. On the dashboard, marketing looked successful – but in real life, the business was not. Brian recommends looking from the bottom of the funnel up. Who became a customer? Why did we win? Why did other opportunities stall? Why did buyers choose the status quo? How much of the pipeline was truly qualified? I've always believed marketers need to look beyond opens, clicks and other surface-level measures, and the same principle applies here. A green dashboard doesn't necessarily mean you have a healthy growth engine. Ultimately, marketing's job isn't to manufacture MQLs or pipeline; it's to help create revenue.

4. Buying Signals Need Interpretation, Not Just Automation

B2B marketers have access to an incredible range of signals today—from firmographic and contact data to intent, behavioral activity, leadership changes, acquisitions, and new product launches. But a signal isn't the same thing as an opportunity. Brian compares signals to smoke. Smoke tells you something may be happening, but you still need to understand the fire. The value comes from asking the next question: What might this change mean for this particular buyer and the problem we solve? That's where strong data and human judgment need to work together. More signals aren't necessarily better. Understanding which signals actually matter to your ideal customers—and what those signals mean—is where the real opportunity lies.

5. Use AI to Scale Relevance, Not Just Activity

AI has made it incredibly easy to do more. A process that once produced 10 outbound emails can now produce 10,000. But as Brian put it, AI has helped companies scale activity without necessarily scaling relevance. And this is one of the most important distinctions B2B marketers need to understand right now. Brian sees a much better role for AI: use it to research accounts, bring multiple signals together, prepare salespeople for conversations through role playing and simulated buyer personas, analyze markets, and help teams understand buyers more deeply. That's a very different application than simply automating another 10,000 messages. AI should help people think and engage better—not just help our systems produce more.

Fix the System Before You Feed the Funnel

At the end of our conversation, I asked Brian what he would have B2B marketers stop doing tomorrow. His answer was simple: push back on the demand for more leads. That doesn't mean lead generation is no longer important. It means we need to understand the entire growth system before assuming volume is the solution. Are we targeting the right companies and the complete buying group? Do marketing and sales agree on what a qualified opportunity looks like? Are leads actually being followed up on? Are we interpreting buying signals intelligently? Are we helping buyers build enough confidence to move away from the status quo? And, most importantly, are all those activities producing revenue? For me, that's the real lesson from this conversation. B2B marketing doesn't need more activity for activity's sake. We have technology—and now AI—that can generate more activity than ever before. The competitive advantage will come from knowing which activity actually matters.

Listen to the full B2B Influence Podcast conversation with Brian Carroll for more insights on buying groups, demand generation, buyer signals, sales and marketing alignment, and using AI to build a smarter B2B growth engine.