The Elephant in the Boardroom: We Don’t Buy the Way We Sell

B2B marketing and sales systems have been built around funnels, gated content, and MQLs. Yet that’s not how marketers or salespeople buy themselves. Research from Gartner, The CMO Survey, 6sense, and TrustRadius shows that buyers constantly move in and out of non-linear journeys. Most prefer self-serve information and make decisions based on brand familiarity. To fix the disconnect, B2B leaders need to rebalance short-term lead gen with long-term brand building, align metrics to real buying signals, and simplify the path to purchase... just like how they would buy!

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Takeaways

• Marketing has drifted from the 4Ps: Only 25.8% of marketers influence pricing and 7.2% distribution, leaving “Promotion” as the default focus.
• MQLs don’t reflect reality: Forrester and experts like Kerry Cunningham highlight why lead gen masquerading as demand gen is misleading.
• B2B buying has NEVER been linear: Gartner finds buyers loop across jobs, involve 6–10 stakeholders, and complete most research before sales contact.
• Buyers want self-serve: TrustRadius reports that lack of pricing transparency is a top frustration, and shortlists are shrinking to familiar brands.
• Brand matters more than ever: Binet & Field’s research and LinkedIn’s 95-5 rule show that long-term growth comes from brand memory, not form fills.

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The B2B Sell-Buy Disconnect

Marketers don’t buy the way they market.

Salespeople don’t buy the way they sell.

And yet this is the system they keep building. Funnels. Gates. Attribution reports. MQL handoffs.

If we wouldn’t buy this way ourselves, why do we expect our customers to?

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How B2B Marketing Lost Its way

For the past 15-20 years, B2B Marketing has drifted from strategy to tactics.

The 4Ps still exist, but most teams only control one of them: Promotion.

Pricing lives with Finance. Place lives with Ops. Product lives with Product.

According to MarketingWeek, just over a quarter of marketers (25.8%) influence pricing, and only 7.2% play a role in distribution.

That vacuum gave SaaS a chance to redefine marketing as lead generation. “Demand gen” became another name for filling forms. Forrester and 6sense's Kerry Cunningham have both argued that MQLs don’t reflect how people actually buy.

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The Transactional Trap

Funnels and attribution models look pretty on a dashboard. But buyers don’t move in straight lines.

Research from Gartner shows the B2B journey is non-linear (hasn’t it always been?!?). Buyers have always looped, revisited, and often repeated steps out of order over weeks, months, and even years before creating their Day 1 list.

And in complex B2B deals, 77% of buyers say their latest purchase was “very complex or difficult”, with 6–10 decision makers involved and most research done before speaking to sales (AdvertisingWeek).

So while GTM teams celebrate form fills, most real buying happens elsewhere.

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The Cost of Misalignment

For CEOs: Wasted spend. Growth slows when funnels don’t reflect reality.

For CFOs: Inefficiency. Chasing MQLs inflates CAC and distorts ROI.

For CMOs: Frustration. Defending metrics everyone knows don’t map to revenue.

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A Better Path (End of MQLs continuation)

There is a way forward.

Brand + Buying Signals + Sales Alignment = Better Buying Experience

• Rebalance brand and activation. Les Binet and Peter Field’s research shows long-term growth comes from balancing brand building with sales activation (often cited as a 60:40 split, though the ratio varies by category).
• Meet buyers where they are. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute has popularized the “95-5 rule”: only 5% of buyers are in market today, which means your brand has to stick in memory until the 95% come back into market.
• Align to real signals. Forget MQL theatre. Track signals of buying intent (behavioral, contextual, and causal) over vanity metrics.

The good news is many seasoned B2B Marketing leaders are calling out the elephant and getting back to basics.

The mood is changing.

For more, dive deeper with the End Of MQLs series.

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Final Thoughts

in a nutshell, Marketers don’t buy the way they market. Salespeople don’t buy the way they sell.

And just like the buyers they are marketing and selling to, they never have either!

It’s time to stop forcing buyers through systems we wouldn’t tolerate ourselves.

The best time to reset was yesterday.

The second-best time is now.

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