Hello!
Has this ever happened to you? Somewhere between $30M and $80M ARR, conversion rates start declining while pipeline volume keeps growing.
Marketing generates more MQLs. Sales closes more deals. Revenue still increases. But the “efficiency” of the entire system is deteriorating and it slowly progresses until the problem is deeply embedded.
Industry data shows the average B2B company loses 80-85% of MQLs before they become SQLs. Most teams convert at 15-20%. Top performers hit 25-35%. That 10-15 point gap isn't a sales execution problem or a lead quality problem, it stems from an architecture built at a time when the company grew on founder connections and leveraging early momentum.
What Leadership Gets Wrong
When growth decelerates, the typical response is predictable:
"We need more pipeline"
It’s a favorite refrain of CRO’s and CEO"‘s. increase marketing spend, add headcount, run more campaigns. Pipeline volume goes up. Conversion rates stay flat. The quality problem gets buried under the volume problem.
"Sales execution is the issue"
Solutions jump to more enablement, tighter forecasting, pressure on quota attainment. Performance improves marginally. But buyers are still confused about differentiation, the wrong accounts keep entering the pipeline, and sales compensates for upstream GTM failures.
"Marketing needs to scale faster"
Solutions jump to “more” - more campaigns, more tools, more dashboards. Execution excellence inside a broken system just scales the problem.
The real issue? The GTM architecture that worked at $10M ARR is still running at $50M ARR. Execution improved while the system underneath it didn’t change.
