Every B2B commercial engine I have worked in ran on the same object. The lead.
As a CRM object, it goes back to the first sales force automation systems. Salesforce made it the default: a separate record, then a “Convert” button. Most CRMs still copy that model today. The idea had real appeal: wrap any business’ first engagement into one simple object, and call it a lead.
Simple, yes. But that simplicity delegated the whole complexity of what the engagement actually is. What kind of engagement? When? What triggered it, and who gets the credit? Converted into what, another lead? Where does a late-stage lead end and an early-stage opportunity begin?
Nobody answered those questions the same way. A whole industry of services grew in that gap, spending time and money to produce mostly activity. In B2B tech at least, the loss has been huge.
We had an excuse
We did not have a better way.
First came automation. Then scale, with distributed SaaS architecture. Then a lot of data, sometimes insights, sometimes even knowledge. But no intelligence.
So put yourself in the shoes of a revenue leader. Very high expectations to build revenue, and so many people to impress: the board, the ELT, peers, sellers, clients, prospects, partners. You need an object that looks like performance, but is not as accountability-prone as an opportunity.
The lead was the best solution. And a whole industry got to work delivering on it.
In hindsight, it was not a bad approach. It helped a lot of people get some deals, and a lot of others get paid for a service, agencies and marketers especially.
Two parents, no child
But no one ever agreed on what a lead was. So MQL and SQL started popping up.
Sales and marketing began debating the lead’s value like two parents discussing the future of their child. Without the child, here the actual person, even being aware of their status.
Both the marketer and the seller want revenue. Only the seller is compensated on it. So the definitions are biased, and the object becomes a source of friction, then distraction, and eventually mostly waste.
Blind silos
Today a CEO can clearly define the level of engagement below which they simply don’t care. Most leads sit way below that level. They keep driving an insane amount of waste, and the old sales and marketing friction has morphed into cynicism, or no collaboration at all. Blind silos.
The lead remains an empty shell. Marketing fills it with whatever level of engagement it considers good enough, then goes down the rabbit hole of attribution, so that accountability remains dignified.
Nobody wins
The person on the other end, considered a prospective buyer (wrongfully, most of the time), got very little value from that level of engagement. A call they didn’t ask for, about a project they may not have.
The seller gets nothing to work with. A name, an activity history, no intent. More calls, more sequences, more time spent on the wrong people.
The marketer spent time, effort and budget to produce it, and will spend more defending it.
Three people. Nobody wins.
Intent, then focus
Define your intent through precise targeting: who you want to win, why now, and who decides. Then measure only its application, and nothing less.
That is how the commercial engine meets the new standards of the era of intelligence, artificial or not.
Efficiency. Lean. Focus.
The model I use instead fits in four words: Target, Offer, Engagement, Measure. I lay it out in this article.
Curious where your own commercial engine stands? I run a free diagnosis on demand, built on public data only. Send me a message. The full diagnosis, with your data, is where we start working together.