Classic Mistake
Mar 09, 2025
I had lunch with the CEO of a $10M ARR B2B company that had hit a wall. Like 85% of businesses I’ve seen over the past few years—across SaaS, fintechs, professional services, you name it—his company had swapped hyper-growth for a plateau. He walked in flustered, convinced he’d cracked the code on why. Spoiler: He hadn’t.
He sat down, locked eyes with me, and launched in.
CEO: I’ve made the classic mistake.
Me: What’s that?
CEO: I hired the wrong VP of Sales. I botched the decision, and now the team’s floundering. We’re staring down a fundraising deadline with no results to show for it.
Me: Fair enough. But are you sure that’s the root of it?
CEO: What do you mean?
Me: Before we pin it on a sales leader, let’s back up. How busy are your reps? Are they drowning in meetings, or are they twiddling their thumbs?
CEO: Huh. Good point. They’re not that busy, now that I think about it. But I figured the right VP of Sales would light a fire under them—get them prospecting, build pipeline.
Me: That’s a common assumption, but it’s rarely the best use of capital. A VP of Sales isn’t a magic wand for demand generation. They’re there to optimize and convert pipeline into revenue, not create it from scratch. How’s your marketing engine? What’s the team look like?
CEO: We’ve got one person. They’re juggling everything—brand, HubSpot, trade shows, product marketing. The works.
Me: That’s your bottleneck. In my experience coaching CEOs—especially across the three dozen-plus B2B institutions I’ve worked with lately—the order of operations matters. Marketing has to come before sales as a discipline. Sales is critical, no question, but it’s dead in the water without meetings. Meetings are the atomic unit of growth. If you’re hiring a leader right now, I’d argue you need a VP of Marketing to build that demand engine, not a VP of Sales to polish an empty pipeline.
[I could see the lightbulb flicker on above his head.]
CEO: I feel like an idiot. That clicks.
Me: You’re not an idiot. You’re just human. Most founders and CEOs I’ve met—whether they’re running $5M or $50M ARR shops—default to ‘hire a VP of Sales’ when growth stalls. It’s muscle memory. But if your product’s shaky or your meeting cadence is anemic, even the best sales leader can’t save you. You end up burning cash and time, and I’ve seen that movie play out too many times.
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The conversation stretched another hour, diving into specifics—his ICP, his churn rates, the half-baked lead-gen experiments his lone marketer was drowning in. But the takeaway crystallized fast, and it’s one I’ve hammered home with every B2B leader willing to listen over the past few years.
Growth isn’t a sales problem first—it’s a sequence problem. The order is non-negotiable: **Product → Marketing → Sales.
1. Build a great product. If it doesn’t solve a real pain point better than the alternatives, no amount of marketing or sales hustle will paper over that. I’ve seen too many companies limp along with “good enough” offerings, wondering why their CAC is through the roof.
2. Invest in marketing to generate awareness and interest. This isn’t about flashy logos or booth swag—it’s about repeatable, scalable systems to get you in front of the right people. Over the last few years, I’ve watched underfunded marketing teams at B2B firms try to do ten jobs with one headcount. It’s a recipe for burnout, not breakthroughs.
3. Invest in sales to convert that attention into revenue. Only once the pipeline’s flowing does a sales leader earn their keep. The best ones I’ve worked with—at companies ranging from $10M to $100M ARR—thrive when they’re handed qualified meetings, not when they’re cold-calling into the void.
There’s no VP of Sales on earth who can fix a mediocre product or a nonexistent demand engine. I’ve seen it firsthand: a $20M ARR SaaS firm doubled down on sales hires while their inbound leads dried up—two years later, they’re still flatlined. Contrast that with a $15M ARR services company I advised, who shifted budget from a bloated sales team to a lean marketing crew focused on LinkedIn and industry events. They’re up 30% YoY now, with half the headcount stress.
But when you’ve got a killer product *and* a steady stream of meetings? That’s when a VP of Sales becomes a force multiplier. They’ll turn your pipeline into a revenue machine—assuming you’ve laid the groundwork.
For more on how I’ve helped B2B leaders crack this code, check out my work at [Growth in Action with M. Allen LLC](https://matthew-slonaker.mykajabi.com/growth-in-action-with-m-allen-llc).
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Marketing Strategies for B2B Growth
In B2B, marketing isn’t about casting a wide net—it’s about precision, repeatability, and feeding your sales team a steady diet of qualified meetings. Based on my lunch with that $10M ARR CEO and the patterns I have seen across industries, here are actionable strategies to build a demand engine that sets the stage for sales success.
1. Double Down on a Narrow ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
- Why It Works: A great product only shines if it’s aimed at the right people. Too many B2B firms I’ve seen (and coached) waste budget chasing vague “enterprise” or “SMB” labels. Narrowing your ICP—say, “CFOs at $50M-$100M manufacturing firms in the Midwest”—unlocks focused messaging and higher conversion rates.
- How to Do It:
- Audit your best customers: What unites them? Revenue? Headcount? Pain points? Use that to refine your ICP.
- Build content (e.g., case studies, whitepapers) that speaks their language—less jargon, more “here’s how we saved a peer of yours $2M.”
- Example: A SaaS client of mine went from targeting “tech companies” to “Series B SaaS with 50-200 employees.” Leads tripled in six months because their webinars hit the bullseye.
- Your Lens: This ties to your “great product” step—marketing amplifies what’s already working, but only if you know *who* it’s working for.
2. Leverage LinkedIn as Your B2B Workhorse
- Why It Works: LinkedIn’s where your buyers live—75% of B2B decision-makers use it for research (per recent X posts and web data). It’s not just a platform; it’s a demand-gen engine if you use it right.
- How to Do It:
- Organic: Post value-first content 2-3x/week—think “3 Lessons from a $10M ARR Stall” (sound familiar?). Share client wins or industry traps you’ve seen. Engage in comments to spark conversations.
- Paid: Run Sponsored Content ads targeting your ICP by job title, industry, and company size. Use a lead magnet (e.g., a 5-page PDF on “Fixing Pipeline Droughts”) to capture emails.
- InMail: Have your team send 10-15 personalized messages/day to warm prospects. Keep it short: “Saw you’re [role] at [company]. We’ve helped similar firms cut churn 20%. Thoughts on a quick chat?”
- Your Lens: This is about generating meetings efficiently—LinkedIn’s precision beats spraying budget on Google Ads when sales cycles are long and trust matters.
3. Build a Content Engine Around Pain Points, Not Features
- Why It Works: B2B buyers don’t care about your product’s bells and whistles—they care about their problems. You’ve seen this: a $15M ARR manufacturer grew 30% by focusing on “how we got meetings” over “hire more reps.”
- How to Do It:
- Map your ICP’s top 3-5 pains (e.g., “stagnant revenue,” “high CAC”). Create content—blogs, videos, one-pagers—that tackles those head-on.
- Distribute via email nurture campaigns (HubSpot’s great for this) and industry forums (e.g., Slack groups, Reddit niches).
- Example: A client of mine in logistics wrote “Why Your 3PL Is Costing You More Than You Think” and gated it behind a form. It drove 50+ VP-level meetings in 90 days.
- Your Lens: Marketing’s job is awareness and interest—content that resonates gets you in the door before sales takes over.
4. Partner with Industry Influencers and Events
- Why It Works: Trust is currency in B2B, and third-party validation cuts through noise. You’ve likely seen trade shows mismanaged (that lone marketer juggling everything), but done right, they’re goldmines.
- How to Do It:
- Influencers: Identify 5-10 voices your ICP trusts—analysts, bloggers, even X power users. Co-create content (e.g., a webinar) or sponsor their work for exposure.
- Events: Skip the $20K booth. Host a 20-person dinner at a key trade show or a virtual roundtable. Invite prospects and one big-name speaker. I’ve seen a $5M ARR firm land a $1M deal from a $2K dinner.
- Your Lens: This scales meetings without scaling headcount—critical when marketing’s under-resourced.
5. Automate and Measure the “Meeting Machine”
- Why It Works: Efficiency separates winners from plateaued firms. You’ve coached CEOs to treat meetings as the metric that matters—automation makes it repeatable.
- How to Do It:
- Use tools like Apollo or Outreach to automate outbound sequences (e.g., email → LinkedIn touch → call).
- Track “meetings booked per week” as your North Star, not vanity metrics like impressions. A $10M ARR client of mine went from 2 to 15 weekly meetings by tweaking subject lines and timing.
- Integrate with your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce) to see which channels deliver.
- Your Lens: This is the bridge to sales—without meetings, even the best VP of Sales is dead weight.
Key Takeaway
Marketing in B2B isn’t about brand fluff or sales heroics—it’s about building a pipeline that flows. From my work with over three dozen firms, the pattern’s clear: underinvest in marketing, and you’re stuck hiring sales leaders to fix a problem they can’t solve. Get the sequence right—product, then marketing, then sales—and growth isn’t a gamble; it’s a system.
- Start Small: Pick one strategy (e.g., LinkedIn) and nail it before expanding.
- Invest Early: A $50K marketing hire or agency now beats a $200K VP of Sales fishing in an empty pond.
- Test Fast: Run 30-day experiments—tweak, measure, repeat.
Want more? Check out [Growth in Action with M. Allen LLC](https://matthew-slonaker.mykajabi.com/growth-in-action-with-m-allen-llc) for case studies and playbooks from the trenches.
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