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Demand Generation & the Revenue Team

Why pipeline comes from creating demand, not collecting contact details.

Demand generation creates the want. Lead generation collects the contact details of people who already have it. Most B2B companies fund the second and report it as the first, which is why the pipeline number never quite matches the lead number. The Revenue Team is what you get when sales and marketing stop running separate scoreboards and share one.

What this covers

Demand versus lead generation · sales and marketing alignment · pipeline over vanity metrics · multi-channel demand · what to measure and what to ignore.

Articles

26 articles in this pillar.

Common questions

What is the difference between demand generation and lead generation?

Demand generation creates the want. Lead generation collects the contact details of people who already have it. Most B2B companies fund the second and report it as the first, which is why the lead number can look healthy while pipeline does not move.

What is a Revenue Team?

Sales and marketing operating as one team, with one definition of a qualified lead and one number they are both measured against. When the two functions score themselves differently, no amount of budget fixes the gap between them.

How do you measure demand generation?

By pipeline created and pipeline influenced, not by form fills. Form fills measure how many people filled in a form, which is a fact about your form rather than about your market.

Does demand generation work for long B2B sales cycles?

Yes, and it matters more as the cycle lengthens. A considered, multi-touch purchase means most of your future buyers are not in market today, so the work is to be the obvious choice by the time they are.

The other pillars

Five subjects we write about, and they connect. Most real marketing problems sit across more than one.

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Zangardi Studio is Patrick and Vanessa Zangardi, with a bench of writers, designers, developers and editors behind us. Most clients buy the whole engine. Any capability can be bought on its own.