The One Metric Silently Killing Your Marketing (and How to Fix It)

Last week, I grabbed beers with Bill, a former CEO of mine from early in my career. He told me that his company has been struggling with lead generation and he has basically hit the reset button on their marketing.

Bill has a background in sales (coincidentally also a background in brewing beer as a homebrewer and at Triple Crossing, the very brewery where we had this conversation), and was struggling to figure out how to rebuild a marketing program from the ground up that would support a new direction for the company. 

We spent the better part of two hours catching up, geeking out about AI tools, and discussing the work of Jason Lemkin, a prolific business thought leader and one of the founding members of the SaaStr community and conference. But most of our conversation centered on marketing metrics, on which we had some friendly disagreement.

Including when I worked for him, Bill had always set lead-based goals for marketing—X number of MQLs per quarter, for example. I countered by suggesting he make his marketing leader responsible for dollars of pipeline or revenue generated. 

The next morning, I woke up to this message from him.

He’d apparently asked Jason Lemkin’s AI chatbot for a second opinion. The AI agrees with me.

Revenue. Always revenue.

It’s incredible to me that so many businesses still task their marketing leaders with delivering a certain volume of Marketing Qualified Leads and not much else. They build compensation plans around it. They structure board reports around it. And in doing so, they inadvertently sow the seeds of inefficiency, inter-departmental conflict, and stalled growth.

Bill’s dilemma isn't unique. It's a trap many businesses fall into. And it got me thinking about the fundamental misalignment that a lead-based goal creates. It's time we moved on. Here’s why your marketing leader needs to be accountable for dollars of pipeline and revenue—not just the leads that feed them.

Imagine you are a marketing leader (you very well may be!). You are smart, driven, and have a number to hit. Your bonus is tied to delivering 1,000 MQLs this quarter. The business's ultimate goal, of course, is revenue, but your primary, most immediate incentive is that MQL number.

What do you do? What any rational person would: optimize for the metric you are paid to deliver.

The quarter starts strong, but by the middle of month two, you’re pacing behind. The pressure mounts. You need to open the spigots. So, you reallocate your budget. The thought-leadership content and community-building efforts are impossible to attribute directly to an MQL this quarter. So, you dial them back and put those funds toward a "State of the Industry" report. It’s broad, appeals to everyone (and therefore, no one specific), and you promote it with bottom-of-funnel lead gen ad campaigns with broad targeting on LinkedIn. You might even buy a list to cold email—a cardinal sin, but the pressure is immense.

The MQLs start pouring in. The chart goes up and to the right. By the end of the quarter, you hit 1,124 MQLs. You get your bonus. On paper, you’re a hero.

But what happens next?

The sales team is drowning. They’re wading through a swamp of leads from students, competitors, and tire-kickers who just wanted the free report. Their follow-up emails bounce. The people they do reach have no idea why a salesperson is calling them. The sales development reps (SDRs) spend their days doing triage instead of selling. Their morale craters.

The sales leader looks at their dashboard. The number of MQLs skyrocketed, but the MQL-to-Opportunity conversion rate has fallen off a cliff. The sales cycle has lengthened because they’re wasting time on junk. They miss their quota.

The CEO looks at the final numbers. Marketing hit its goal. Sales missed theirs. Who is to blame? The finger-pointing begins, and the toxic cycle of mistrust between Sales and Marketing deepens. The business didn't get what it needed—revenue—because it incentivized the wrong activity.

When Marketing is on the hook for pipeline or revenue, this entire scenario changes. You are no longer incentivized to find the cheapest leads; You’re incentivized to find the best leads. Your focus shifts from quantity to quality. You’d rather have 100 MQLs that have a 20% chance of closing than 1,000 MQLs with a 1% chance. You start asking Sales, "What are you hearing on calls? Which talking points are resonating? Which accounts should we be targeting?" They become partners in pursuit of a common goal: revenue.

Let's stick with the world of misaligned metrics and consider another scenario. This one is more subtle but just as damaging to morale and strategy.

Most companies set lead goals using some simple backward math. It goes like this: "We have a revenue goal of $1 million. Our average contract value (ACV) is $10,000. That means we need 100 new customers. Our sales team's close rate from an opportunity is 25%, so we need 400 opportunities. And our marketing team's MQL-to-opportunity conversion rate is 10%, so… we need 4,000 MQLs this year, or 1,000 per quarter. Go get 'em, Marketing!"

This seems logical. But the "A" in ACV stands for "Average," and averages can be deceiving. They hide the variability that is the reality of every business. Not all deals are created equal.

Now imagine you still have that same goal of 1,000 MQLs, but you are a different type of marketing leader. You feel ownership over the performance of the company, not just your personal metrics. You argue that the team should focus its energy on attracting a smaller number of high-value, perfect-fit customers. Instead of casting a wide net, you want to throw spears.

You work with Sales to identify 50 dream accounts. Your team creates bespoke content, runs personalized ad campaigns, and hosts an exclusive webinar just for them. The strategy is a roaring success. You generate only 200 MQLs that quarter—a fraction of your MQL goal. Your CEO is nervous.

But here's what happens down-funnel:

Let's do the math. 80 opportunities x $25,000 ACV x 30% close rate = $600,000 in revenue.

In the old model, 1,000 MQLs x 10% conversion = 100 opportunities. 100 opportunities x $10,000 ACV x 25% close rate = $250,000 in revenue.

Your new strategy delivered more than double the revenue with one-fifth of the leads. The company blew past its revenue goal. The sales team is ecstatic. The business is healthier than ever.

But what about your personal performance? Under a strict MQL-based model, you missed your goal by 80%. You failed. You were told all quarter that you were behind. You don’t get your quarterly bonus and you might even be put on a performance plan. 

This is not a hypothetical. This has literally happened to me. It creates a terrible morale issue where marketers are penalized for doing the right thing for the business.

When you shift the goalpost to pipeline value or, even better, revenue, you empower your marketing leader to be a strategist, not a volume-based button pusher. You encourage them to hunt for whales, not just net minnows. It aligns their success with the company’s success, period.

The animosity between Sales and Marketing is one of the oldest and most tired tropes in business. In fact I told Bill that, when I worked for him, marketing and sales were pretty siloed. 

Marketing’s complaint: "We slave away to generate all these leads, and the sales team just lets them sit. They don't follow up fast enough, and they mark everything as 'unqualified' without giving them a chance."

Sales’s reply: "Marketing has no idea what a real lead is. They send us garbage from webinar attendee lists and expect us to turn it into gold. We’re wasting our time chasing ghosts when we could be closing real deals."

This isn't because the people in these departments are inherently lazy or incompetent. It's because the system pits them against each other. When Marketing's job ends the moment a lead is passed over the fence, they have no vested interest in what happens next. Their part is done. They toss the "leads" over the wall and hope for the best.

Sales, in turn, loses faith in the quality of anything that comes from Marketing. A lead labeled "MQL" becomes suspect by default. This leads to poor follow-up, which then "proves" Marketing's point that Sales is lazy, and the vicious cycle continues.

Tying Marketing to pipeline or revenue is the single most effective way to break this cycle. It forces them into a true partnership. It demolishes the wall and replaces it with a shared table.

Suddenly, the conversations change:

When a marketing leader has a pipeline or revenue quota, they can’t just throw leads over the wall. Their success depends on those leads converting. They are financially and professionally motivated to ensure that Sales has everything they need to win the deal. The "us vs. them" mentality evaporates, replaced by a unified "we."

What's the MQL value of a great podcast? Or a thriving user community? Or being seen as the authoritative voice in your industry?

If you're only measuring MQLs, the answer is "not much, at least not this quarter."

A relentless focus on short-term, easily-attributable leads starves the very activities that build a powerful, enduring brand. Brand and awareness initiatives are the bedrock of sustainable growth. A strong brand is a force multiplier for all your marketing and sales efforts. It:

But these activities are notoriously difficult to measure with last-touch attribution models. The person who eventually requests a demo may have first heard about you on a podcast six months ago, seen a post from your CEO on LinkedIn, been in your newsletter for a year, and then finally clicked a Google Ad. The ad gets 100% of the MQL credit, and the brand-building activities get zero.

A marketing leader judged solely on MQLs has no incentive to invest in the podcast, the community, or the newsletter. In fact, they have an incentive not to, because every dollar spent there is a dollar not spent on a "proven" lead-gen channel. This is dangerously shortsighted. 

Holding marketing accountable for revenue changes the entire calculation. A strategic marketing leader understands that brand isn’t just fluff; it's a critical asset that makes hitting the revenue number easier and more predictable in the long run. They can justify the budget for that "untrackable" podcast because they know it's filling the top of the funnel with right-fit people who will eventually convert, even if the path is long and winding.

It allows them to build a balanced portfolio of marketing activities—some for immediate demand capture, and others for long-term demand creation. This is how you build a company that not only grows but endures.

My former CEO, Bill, is right to be hitting the reset button. The shift from measuring leads to measuring revenue isn't just a change in metrics; it's a fundamental change in philosophy. It's the difference between running a marketing department and running a revenue engine. It elevates the role of the CMO from a lead-gen manager to a true business leader and strategic partner to the CEO.

If you're a CEO or founder, I urge you to look at what you're asking of your marketing leader. Are you incentivizing activity or results?

And if you're a marketing leader still living under an MQL quota, it's time to start the conversation. Build the business case. Show the math. Advocate for the metric that truly aligns you with the health and success of the entire business.

It’s time to stop counting leads and start making it rain.