Service 03 · Fractional CMO · CCO · CGO
Pipeline your board can verify without your interpretation.
Marketing generates an enormous quantity of measurable activity, most of which explains nothing about revenue. This is the work of connecting every channel to a pipeline number that sales has agreed to — and then making that number grow.
In short: Revenue and pipeline work connects demand generation directly to commercial outcomes. It covers ICP definition, channel mix and economics, account-based marketing, lifecycle and CRM, and attribution — all instrumented against pipeline targets agreed jointly with sales rather than activity targets set inside marketing.
You probably need this if
- Pipeline is thin, inconsistent, or impossible to forecast
- Reporting shows impressions, clicks and MQLs but not pipeline contribution
- Attribution does not work, so budget decisions are made on instinct
- Sales does not trust marketing's numbers and builds its own
- Cost per qualified opportunity is unknown or uncomfortable to look at
- Channel spend is allocated by precedent rather than by return
How pipeline actually gets built
Pipeline is a function of three things: how many of the right accounts you reach, how many of them enter a conversation, and how many of those convert. Most companies over-invest in the first and under-invest in the second.
The discipline is reduction. Report pipeline generated, pipeline converted and cost per qualified opportunity. Everything else becomes diagnostic — useful for explaining why a number moved, never presented as the number itself.
The reporting discipline
Reduce reported metrics until only revenue-linked ones remain: pipeline generated, pipeline converted, cost per qualified opportunity. Everything else is diagnostic. Mixing diagnostic metrics into board reporting is the fastest way for a board to lose confidence in marketing.
Proof
€220M in net new pipeline generated across more than twenty European markets for Watson AI, with a €55M budget. Revenue grew 23% year on year and the SMB customer base grew 73%, reaching €30M ARR by year three. Read the IBM case study →
The sequence
How this runs
Every checkpoint is agreed before the engagement starts. You should never wait a quarter to find out whether it is working.
Week 1–2
Baseline
Current pipeline volume, conversion by stage, win rate and channel contribution established. Wherever the number collapses is where the work starts.
Month 1
Fix the definitions
One ICP and one qualified-opportunity definition, agreed with sales in writing. Without this, every subsequent measurement is contested.
Month 1–2
Rebuild the mix
Channels assessed on cost per qualified opportunity rather than cost per lead. ABM built for named accounts where deal size justifies it. Volume demand generation where it does not.
Month 2–3
Instrument and scale
Attribution configured, reporting reduced to revenue-linked metrics, weekly pipeline review with sales in the room. Scale what converts, cut what does not.
Common questions
Questions about revenue and pipeline
What is a realistic pipeline target for B2B marketing?
The ratio matters more than the absolute number. Pipeline coverage of three to five times the revenue target is a workable benchmark, with marketing accountable for a defined and agreed share. What makes the target credible is not its size but whether sales has signed up to the same definition of what counts as pipeline.
Should we do account-based marketing or demand generation?
Deal size decides it. Where a single account justifies dedicated effort — typically five figures upward with a multi-stakeholder buying group — ABM returns more per pound. Below that, volume demand generation is more efficient. Most companies at Series A need both, run separately with separate economics, not blended.
Our attribution is broken. Where do we start?
Start with the definitions rather than the tooling. Most attribution failures are definitional — inconsistent stage criteria, opportunities created in different ways by different people, no agreed source-of-truth. Fixing the CRM configuration before fixing the definitions produces precise measurement of the wrong thing.
Related
Next step
Which of the five failure modes do you have?
Book a free thirty-minute revenue audit. I will identify the single biggest commercial constraint in your business and give you three things to act on — whether we work together or not.
Book your free audit30 minutes · No pitch · Actionable regardless of outcome