Many GTM teams still ask the wrong questions. It’s costing them trust, clarity, and pipeline. Questions centered on critical thinking, buying behavior, and brand recall help GTM teams shift from chasing short-term results to building long-term buyer confidence. If you want better outcomes, if you want to earn trust, ask better questions.
Missed the first 4 parts?
Part 5 gets into how GTM teams can stop the pursuit of more MQLs and focus on earning confidence and trust by asking better questions.
Because if you’re still asking, “How many leads did we get this week?” you’re not solving for what’s stalling your growth.
When pipeline is soft or revenue is lagging behind, the same questions always come up:
That’s leadgen panic in action. And it’s a recipe for bad decisions and looking at the wrong metrics.
Why? Because when we’re reactive we make knee-jerk decisions that put us into a spin cycle.
Instead of solving real problems, we tend to default to short-term busy work and track vanity metrics that look good on dashboards. It’s the reason why so many funnel stages are filled with uninterested buyers and unqualified activity.
FYI, funnels are another outdated trap, but I digress.
It’s best to step back and ask questions that put customers, buying behavior, and timing at the center.
You’ll get better answers for your marketing, your buyers, and your data.
If you’re marketing is broken, more MQLs won’t fix it. Asking better questions will.
Here are a few worth considering:
You get the idea.
Without knowing what’s causing poor marketing results, we remain forever trapped in the leadgen spin cycle. Always reacting. Always chasing our tails.
Once we know why something is happening, the path forward becomes much clearer. It takes the pressure off so we can focus on moments that actually make an impact.
For more, see 12 Questions Every B2B Tech Marketer Should Ask In 2025.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Mark Stouse, CEO of Proof Causal Advisory, posed 12 questions to ask when there’s a push to make things “easy and simple” at work.
Simplifying for clarity is valuable, sure, but oversimplifying complex solutions just to make them feel and sound “easy” is misleading.
Are we simplifying tasks to enhance understanding, or are we oversimplifying to the detriment of critical thinking? Oversimplification can mask underlying issues and distract us with vanity metrics like MQLs instead of focusing on genuine engagement and earning trust with our audience.
That distinction matters, especially in B2B tech where everyone looks the same, smells the same, and says the same things.
When we create MQL factories we lose nuance, oversimplify the process, and skip the hard thinking. And when that happens, we chase the wrong outcomes, ask the wrong questions, and miss what really drives revenue.
Asking better questions demonstrates critical thinking. It’s how mature marketing teams challenge default assumptions and make better decisions.
You don’t need to make your strategy easy. You need to make it effective.
The 6sense 2024 Buyer Experience Report shows that 81% of buyers have already picked their vendor before they ever contact sales.
And they’re doing it quietly. In their own time. On their own terms.
So if your GTM team is focused only on MQLs, you’re way too late to the party.
Buyers want to feel confident. They seek clarity, proof that you’ve done this before. They put their feelers out months before you put them in your funnel.
Ask yourself:
Signals like that build pipeline you can trust.
One of the best questions any founder, CMO, or GTM team can ask is:
“What do we want to be remembered for?”
Because being remembered is more valuable than having a better widget.
You can have a great product and still lose. You can offer better services and still be ignored.
The brands that win are the ones that buyers remember. The ones that help, not pitch. They show up early. They stay visible.
They also know B2B buying is not a linear path to fast money. They understand what brand recall looks like.
B2B Marketing’s fixation with MQLs gave us volume, not clarity. Like drugs, it rewarded short-term fixes and eroded brand health.
If you want marketing to truly drive revenue you need to teach the business how it actually works. And that starts with better questions.
Kerry Cunningham also wrote an excellent piece about The De-Industrialization of B2B Marketing. It’s worth reading and sharing with your leaders.
Thanks for following along this 5-part series on The End of MQLs. If you missed the others, catch them on Achim’s Razor.
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This article is AC-A and published on LinkedIn. Join the conversation!
