Panic!

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, not a rock star, but a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

A few weeks ago, I came across an article on Dave Kellogg’s blog, which you may be familiar with; he’s the former CEO of MarkLogic, former CMO at Business Objects, and a respected commentator on B2B sales and marketing.

The article “How to Navigate the Pipeline Crisis” caught my eye, and I squirrelled it away to share, and when I shared it with my regular Rockstar CMO FM podcast collaborator, Jeff Clark, we decided to chat about it (which we are this week), but in the meantime, I thought I’d share it here with a bit of commentary.

Kellogg cites falling SaaS stock prices, rising customer acquisition costs (CAC), challenges with organic traffic from zero-click search, AI-driven disruption, and reports that, for most, pipeline coverage is down, as the basis for his view that there is a “Pipeline Crisis”.

I suspect these trends, and maybe we can toss in some other data from folks like 6Sense on the dark funnel, keep us all a little bit awake at night. It’s clear that while I am a big fan of the fundamentals, the tactical B2B playbook is changing.

The article takes an enjoyable digression to talk about brand, but it then shares 13 things Kellogg would do, which is quite a laundry list of B2B marketing motions, some of which are more obvious than others.

I won’t repeat it all here; it’s a jolly good read, even if the idea of a pipeline crisis is about as gloomy as the January weather here, and hopefully you’ll catch the next episode of the podcast (follow here) when Jeff and I discuss it.

One thing, however, that this extensive article doesn’t cover is that I wonder sometimes if it’s the market, not the marketing, that’s the problem.

It’s all very well to slip into the motion that, of course, we want growth, more revenue, and more pipeline, which will come if we simply crank the marketing handle harder and turn up the temperature in the sales boiler room.

But what if the market is not there or has moved on? Is there demand to support this growth? It’s something I covered in my Tuesday 2¢ LinkedIn newsletter in this article - Growth is Not a Strategy.

And, as you know, the subject line for this newsletter comes from a song, and who better to capture the grim mood of the pipeline crisis than The Smiths, with their tune Panic!

Enjoy! Have a great week.

Cheers!

Ian

Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ….