B2B marketers are under more pressure than ever to justify every dollar in their demand gen mix. Channels are multiplying, buyer journeys are splintering, and the age-old question — what’s really working? — has never been harder to answer with confidence. Meanwhile, AI is reshaping what’s possible faster than most teams can keep up with.
On March 10, we brought together two practitioners who know this world inside out: David Cruse, B2B Demand Generation and Revenue Operations Specialist at Enhancio, and Marc Sirkin, Founder of Marc Sirkin Consultancy. Between them, they’ve built, optimized, and, just as importantly, shut down demand gen programs across some of the most competitive B2B markets out there.
The result was one of the most practical sessions we’ve hosted in the TIMS series, packed with real takeaways and actionable insights from two people who’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and why so many well-intentioned campaigns still fall flat. From evaluating the buyer journey without fooling yourself about funnel stages, to what AI in demand gen will look like twelve months from now, David and Marc covered the full picture.
Watch the full session on-demand here.
If you missed it live, everything below captures the key takeaways, including the frameworks, the hard truths, and the practical fixes you can take back to your campaigns today.
Getting acquainted
Madelaine Oppert, SVP of Global Marketing at TechInformed and our host, opened by asking both guests why they wanted to be part of this conversation.
Marc shared that his last company was sold to SEMrush, a move that reflects the broader shifts happening in buyer behavior, marketing strategy, and the rise of AI.
David brought a healthy skepticism around the hype, describing “smoke and mirrors” around where AI will land in demand generation, alongside a genuine passion for content syndication and proving its ROI.
What’s most misunderstood about demand gen performance?
When growth feels stuck, most teams go looking for a tactical fix. Strategy and tactics are interlinked — you can’t have one without the other and treating them as separate is where a lot of organizations go wrong. The starting point, as Marc put it, is the revenue spine of the business: how it’s being optimized, and whether the right resources are in place to execute.
David pointed to three structural weaknesses he sees repeatedly. The operational handoff — the daily breakdown where basic best practice simply isn’t happening. Manual validation leading to inconsistent lead routing. And accountability, or the absence of it: “too many chiefs trying to understand what’s going on within the demand engine.”
On the marketing versus sales divide, Marc didn’t mince words: “the whole frame of marketing and sales is totally broken.” Technically there’s one funnel. In practice, most organizations behave as if there are two, and nobody wants to have that conversation.
Madelaine grounded it simply — both teams are working “for the greater good of the organization,” and when they stop competing, attribution gets cleaner and the focus shifts to what matters.
How has the buyer journey changed?
“When was the last time you consumed a piece of content that wasn’t delivered to you via some kind of algorithm?”
For most of us, we can’t remember. Over the last 18 months, that shift has compounded. AI has changed how buyers get answers, traditional SEO rankings are harder to earn, interest rates are constraining budgets, customer acquisition costs are climbing, and B2B sales cycles are getting longer. Marc called it a “perfect storm.”
Demand gen programs need to mirror these changes, not fight them. Too many teams are bogging themselves down in complexity, from disconnected tactics, and multi-touch interactions that don’t connect, to data that technically shows what’s working but isn’t being acted on. Madelaine called it “funnel fatigue” — new tools and AI layers keep getting added, each promising simplicity, but collectively making life harder for already time-starved teams.
Sometimes the best results still come from good old human work.
How do you defend your demand gen spend?
Demand gen is only defensible when every dollar is tied to validated, stage-appropriate leads. David outlined what he calls a Spend to Revenue model — first, review how investment is being optimized; second, reduce spend on underperforming channels based on what the data shows, not assumptions.
Digital marketing is chaotic right now. Campaigns aren’t deterministic, they’re “chaos driven,” as Marc put it. The real question every team needs to ask is what their organizational incentive is. If the goal is cheap leads, that’s exactly what you’ll get. You get what you give.
It’s also worth getting aligned internally on what success looks like — whatever that is, it needs to be relevant to the business, not just what everyone else is benchmarking against.
And perhaps the most counterintuitive takeaway of the session: David made the case that “cheap leads can work” — but only with the right reporting infrastructure and a Spend to Revenue model behind them. It’s a concept worth unpacking further, and one we’ll be exploring with David on our insights page in the coming weeks.
How do you reduce customer acquisition costs?
Take stock before making any changes. Set a consistent measurement framework across channels, listen to what the data is telling you, and be careful about assumptions. Moving too fast risks, in Marc’s words, “inadvertently blowing it up.”Channel-by-channel analysis, with patience, is the only reliable path.
On the operational side, too much lead waste happens simply because workflows aren’t standardized, routing isn’t optimized, and reporting is fragmented. Centralize reporting, enforce consistent workflows, sharpen lead scoring models, and get hyper-specific with your ICP. As David put it, “sales can’t convert the unconvertable.”
Both agreed: all of this takes time. Time that marketing doesn’t always have. Strategic thinking, proper planning, and the discipline to stick with a framework long enough to see results.
How is AI changing the buyer today?
Marc raised a concern that doesn’t get enough airtime — the risk of buyers being influenced by AI-generated answers that are confidently delivered but potentially inaccurate. For established brands, AI can amplify credibility. For brands with poor reviews or a weak presence, it amplifies that too.
There’s also a personalization problem. If you’ve told an AI tool you prefer Nike, and then ask it for shoe recommendations, it will show you Nike, because that’s what it has learned about you. Competing brands may never get a look in, not because they’re worse, but because the algorithm has already decided. Marc even raised the question of whether websites will remain relevant at all in a world of AI-generated summaries. No definitive answer, but it’s not a hypothetical anymore.
David’s take: AI is changing how buyers compare solutions, and marketers need to adapt. Treat data and operations as a core function, not a support role.
Q&A: What the audience wanted to know
With a large number of questions coming in by the end of the 60-minute session, our guests managed to answer the majority. Here’s what our audience wanted to know:
At what point should sales be involved in demand gen campaigns?
Can marketing operate without LLMs?
When CAC starts rising, how do you identify the real cause?
How do you reduce lead waste?
Where will AI have the biggest impact on demand gen in 12 months?
Catch up on the demand gen conversation
Watch the full on-demand recording here — including the complete Q&A with David and Marc.
And if this conversation got you thinking about your own pipeline, our next live session goes even deeper: Pipeline Reality Check: If less than 1% of leads close, what are we really optimizing for? — a 22-minute executive breakdown of what separates converting campaigns from stalled pipeline.
