Marketing's role in complex deals: beyond the funnel

𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀? Here’s a litmus test every marketing leader should run. If your marketing team vanished tomorrow, what would your sales team truly miss? Would they notice fewer leads in the CRM? Or would they miss the clarity marketing brings - 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗗𝗥 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲? Marketing isn’t just about filling pipelines, it’s about building context. It’s the emotional scaffolding that makes a buyer trust your message before your rep ever reaches out. Think of marketing as the air support before ground troops arrive. Without it, sales enters the battlefield blind, facing objections that good storytelling could’ve dissolved long ago. At In Time Tec, I’ve seen how aligned marketing sourced intelligence like industry narratives, competitive insights, and trust-building content that can make sales unstoppable. It’s not about MQLs. It’s about momentum. So, if your marketing disappeared tomorrow and sales said, “We’ll be fine” that’s not a compliment. That’s a red flag I believe. Let me hear it from my Leaders and counterparts what they have to say. Tagging you all to know your thoughts. Jeet Kumar, Sandeep Jain, Munesh Jadoun Sunil Urs, Vijaya Arucapalli, Shubhankar Sharma (SS) Pavan Jangid Apresh Saxena Venkatesh Bachu Nikhil Agrawal Michelle Haynes Skyler Simmons Abram Langston Matt Fratzke Eric Keener,

Marketing teams face an impossible situation. They're asked to generate leads for events. While also - Managing booth logistics. - Shipping products. - Coordinating materials. - Dealing with delayed booth designs. - Chasing external suppliers. The weeks before an event? Pure operational chaos. Expected to run lead generation campaigns. On top of everything else. Here's what most marketing teams do: Send generic invitations to existing customers. "Visit our booth at [Event Name]." "See our new technology X." Product-focused messaging. Zero persona targeting. The same approach everyone uses. The same results everyone gets. Marketing isn't failing at lead generation. They're drowning in logistics. Using outdated playbooks. With no time to think strategically. You can't optimize what you can't focus on. What if marketing could focus on what they do best? Leave the systematic lead generation to specialists?

It’s always framed as marketing earning their seat at the table, but what of the cost of not having them at it? What risks does a company expose themselves to when there is not a trained marketing perspective informing the strategy? With product development, how can you be sure you’re not just building new features for the customers you already have and ignoring investment in what is needed to drive future customer growth? This isn’t even a hypothetical - it’s a common approach in SaaS, where the roadmap is developed through customer and sales conversations, and easily ignores the larger market who don’t consider you at all and can look entirely different to your early cohort. What about pricing decisions? Despite how it’s often done, pricing isn’t just a financial exercise weighing input costs against desired margins and optimal revenue contracts. Value is a huge input into pricing, and is heavily shaped by the audience’s experience of both the problem and the solution. Failure to understand the customer’s value perspectives can cause you to undercharge as easily as overcharge or poorly package. And what of the buying experience? How many B2B sales processes are built around saving the sales team from wasting time by making the buyers jump through hoops? How much business is lost because of a process that is actively hard and unpleasant to buy through, which could have been avoided had a true voice of customer been present? We’ve become so accepting of the narrative that marketers need to demonstrate why they should be in the board room that we’ve stopped asking if those in the boardroom are making poor decisions that a marketer could have saved them from. Everyone might have an opinion on marketing, but it doesn’t make them a trained marketer. And many a leadership team of smart non-marketers has made catastrophically short-sighted and myopic decisions exactly because they underestimated the importance of good marketing thinking.

Friday Hot Take 🔥 : Loop Marketing Is Having a Moment But Let’s Keep Perspective If you were at Inbound this year, you’ve probably heard the term “Loop Marketing” thrown around like confetti. It’s the latest buzzword promising to replace the old funnel and even the flywheel. At its core, loop marketing is about creating a self-reinforcing cycle where every interaction with a customer generates insights or advocacy that feed back into the system. Instead of a one-and-done conversion, you’re designing experiences that continually bring people back and deepen their connection. Think of it as retention + advocacy + feedback + acquisition all feeding each other. AND: just because it’s trending doesn’t mean it’s a fit for every brand right now. Updating your LinkedIn headline to “Loop Marketing Specialist” won’t magically make your programs work. The real shift is about mindset and operations: Building closed-loop data between sales, marketing, and service. Designing post-purchase experiences that reward engagement and fuel referrals. Treating every customer touchpoint as a learning moment. If you’re not ready to break silos, share data, and invest in experience beyond acquisition, the “loop” is just a circle on a slide. So by all means explore it, test it, and borrow what works—but don’t get caught chasing a buzzword. The fundamentals still matter more than the packaging.Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

This might be a little controversial. Who actually cares more about the message inside an organization: marketing or sales? Marketers spend their days shaping it. They turn brand into demand. Every headline, every email, every story is crafted to capture attention and build trust. The message is their craft, and they obsess over how it is told because it defines how the market sees the company. Sales, on the other hand, lives in the moment. They take that message into the real world and turn interest into relationships. Their job is to close, to adapt, to read the room. If a message lands flat, they pivot. If it works, they double down. But here is where the tension comes in. The buyer journey no longer ends when sales picks up the baton. Buyers move fluidly, consuming content, asking peers, and returning to marketing touchpoints even after the first conversation. If content and messaging shape every step of that journey, should marketing really stop at the handoff? Marketing is the only function equipped to maintain message consistency from awareness to close and beyond. It is marketing that understands how narrative builds over time, how tone evolves across channels, and how to create continuity that builds credibility. That is why marketing should have greater control over messaging throughout the entire funnel. Not to replace sales, but to give sales a more cohesive story to carry forward. Because in the end, buyers do not experience your departments separately. They experience one story.

🔥 Hot take: Most "ABM" isn't really Account-Based Marketing. 🙈 It's just glorified outreach to a list of accounts everyone 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 to land. True ABM? It's about crafting 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 for a select few strategic accounts. Think quality over quantity. One innovative approach I’ve seen? Involve your target accounts as 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 in your thought leadership. For example: This flips the script from "vendor pitching prospect" to a 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘦. And that’s where the magic happens. ✨ What’s your take? Are we overusing the term ABM, or is it evolving?

Do you ever look at your marketing KPI dashboard and think "what's the point?" Not because you can't generate leads. You know ball. But because every MQL you pass over to sales seems to go nowhere. ☑️ Right job title ☑️ Intent signals ☑️ An exciting looking logo, even. Still, if it didn't generate revenue, you don't get credit for anything. Everything you say in your (or your team's) defence is seen as just excuses. Or you "not getting" that revenue is king. You feel further and further away from being seen as the strategic leader that you should be. Something has to change before you give up marketing entirely and go live in the woods. Or start a llama farm. And I'm here to tell you that you can bring about that change. A change that still centres real, strategic marketing, in the fix. All you need is: 1️⃣ To identify the gaps in your positioning. The gaps between what looks like good strategy on the page and what actually drives revenue. (Spoiler alert: after 9 months of spending every waking minute obsessing about this very problem, I've found the four elements that commonly need tightening) 2️⃣ One seller on your side (then we'll let a little thing called competition do the rest) If that sounds achievable and you want to have change in place by January, let's talk. I have a slot at the end of October with your name on it. Everyone is starting to panic about year end. Be the strong leader that brings everything together to turn things around.

Sometimes I feel marketing still isn’t taken seriously enough. It’s treated like sales support. A cost center. A tactical checkbox. B2B founders and senior leaders demand instant results. But they won’t give marketing the time or investment it needs to drive real growth. It leads to overworked teams, campaigns judged on vanity metrics, and zero long-term brand equity. But we've seen it first-hand; when marketing is given space to operate strategically, everything changes. Its influence on pipeline and revenue growth becomes obvious. One SaaS client gave us the space to test bold ad creatives. CAC dropped by 70%. Another saw their brand recognition in-market double within a year. The playbook is simple, people. Companies that keep treating marketing as “support” will lose. The ones that treat it as the growth engine will win.

“Isn’t marketing all about growth?” Someone asked me this the other day - and I had to pause. 👀 Because even though 𝙄 believe it is… …it’s not always seen that way. Earlier this week, I got chatting with someone on the way to an event. We’d just met. Turned out she was a fractional CMO too. Naturally, the conversation turned to marketing. We both shared two frustrations we’ve faced more than once: >> Marketing is often 𝗽𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗱 >> It’s seen as 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 to the business And the impact? It becomes harder to 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴’𝘀 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 It becomes harder to 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 That needs to change. So if you’re a marketer (or work with one), here are 10 steps to make sure your marketing 𝘪𝘴 about growth: 1️⃣ Know your 𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲 – why does your business exist? 2️⃣ Lead with 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲𝘀 – they’re not fluff, they guide how you show up. 3️⃣ Clarify what you 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 – beyond features, what’s the impact? 4️⃣ Know your 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 – who truly benefits from what you offer? 5️⃣ Nurture 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 – talk, listen, support. 6️⃣ Build trust with 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 – it's all about relationships. 7️⃣ Innovate with 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀/𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀 – based on real need. 8️⃣ Align 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 – one plan, one team. 9️⃣ Be a 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗿 internally – collaborate and contribute. 🔟 Track what really matters – and not just the £££. What would 𝘺𝘰𝘶 add to the list?

Marketing = The unsung heroes   ☝️ Sadly, a common reality for so many SaaS companies today.   Forcing marketing teams to waste scarce time & energy on attempting to persuade their colleagues on the *importance* of great marketing (and their very existence!).   – Daily internal marketing – The “what is marketing?” workshops – Presenting ROI reports for everything & anything   We’ve seen it all.   And, whilst there are some important elements here, it takes the marketing leader (and her team) away from the work that really matters.   Incredibly exhausting.   Especially when you figure out there’s no guarantee that any of it will actually change those internal minds. Because changing minds is really, REALLY hard to do.   Truth is, 90% of the time, this battle is LOST. Because marketing can’t win it alone.   If the goal is to grow, then product, sales, marketing, support, and experience must all be in this together.   ONE ecosystem.   Winning, losing, shipping, celebrating, and iterating... TOGETHER.   That’s what the great SaaS companies get right. They’re marketing-led. They treat marketing as the leadership function it is.   And all they obsess over is TRUST.   – Are buyers seeing & hearing good things about us? – Are sources of influence talking about us? – Are buyers seeing this repeated over & over?   Reputation, familiarity, credible sources – all these things and more truly MATTER. And they lie at the heart of great marketing.   That’s where the bigger pipelines, shorter sales cycles, referrals, and longer retention periods come from.   And it drives EVERYONE forward.   #saas #marketing   PS. Sometimes a founder must experience failure to reach this realisation. That or they’re in the 0.0001% that just get lucky.