Why CMOs need to own the full customer journey, not just demand gen

B2B CMOs have long been caught in a thankless cycle, generating leads that convert into opportunities for net new customers and taking the blame when revenue falls short. This narrow focus on top-of-funnel metrics not only creates tension between marketing and sales over lead attribution but also ignores the tremendous value marketing can deliver throughout the entire customer lifecycle. The result? Wasted resources, missed expansion opportunities, and a disjointed customer experience. Also read: How Nordstrom’s retail media network has evolved and what’s next Denise Vu Broady, chief marketing officer of data intelligence platform Collibra, has broken free from this restrictive paradigm. By securing ownership of the complete pipeline—regardless of source—and restructuring her team to support both new business and expansions, Broady has engineered a more holistic approach to marketing leadership. Broady’s counterintuitive strategy of reducing pipeline volume to improve quality while simultaneously enabling sales to create their own opportunities offers a blueprint for the next evolution of the CMO role. What prompted the shift to owning the full pipeline? “This is the first time I’ve been with a CEO who has the appetite for this approach. The CEO and global head of sales and alliances both agreed that I should own all pipeline, regardless of source. We have resources to support not just net new acquisition but customer experience for expansions. What’s great now is nobody cares about the source—whether it’s coming from sales, partners or marketing.” How long did it take to build this level of trust? “It took two years. You don’t walk in on the first day and hear, ‘Hey, we trust you so much with the entire pipeline.’ You have to build credibility first. More from Ad Age “The only way to achieve this is to shift marketing from purely creating MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to truly integrating with the rest of the company. Our job is to drive the pipeline for the entire company and build trust across the organization.” Why is it so important to eliminate the focus on lead source attribution? “Why waste time fighting over who sourced it? Look at the complexities—we might work a Google Next event supported by partners, but marketing funds it, sources it and handles lead follow-ups. It’s a different mindset, but you need alignment, especially between the chief revenue officer, CEO and the executive team." How have you reorganized your marketing team to support this approach? “I structured growth marketing to include field marketing, partner marketing, events and the business development representative (BDR) team. An area VP’s single point of contact is now field marketing, which coordinates with everyone else. This creates seamless engagement between the field and marketing, balancing both global and regional functions.” What’s your approach to customer experience within marketing? “Our CX team handles programs and customer advocacy that supports growth marketing for expansions. For example, with our customer meetups, the customer experience team owns the program, but it’s executed with support from field marketing or events. They own the program but don’t run every detail end-to-end themselves.” You’ve mentioned intentionally shrinking pipeline goals. Why is that a good strategy? “We had so much stale pipeline that wouldn’t close. By making lead scoring stricter, BDRs now receive much more qualified inbound leads. We’ve reduced from a much higher coverage ratio to about 5x now. People view pipeline as an indicator for growth, but quality beats quantity. This is the first time in my 28-year career that my pipeline target has decreased in my third year at a company.” How are you enabling sales to create their own pipeline? “We launched a demand center that organizes all our activities by month. For each activity, we’ve created email templates for account executives to use. Instead of marketing sending everything, we’ve crafted messages for account executives such as ‘We just launched this product tour by use case, check it out.’ We’re enabling AEs to create their own pipeline in parallel with our efforts.” Why should CMOs think beyond just driving net new business? “It costs us seven times less to sell into an expansion than to acquire new business. Yet CMOs are typically only responsible for net new customers—then they wonder why the ROI isn’t there. The CMO needs to own the entire customer journey, not just pieces of it. Every week, my two go-to-market peers—the heads of sales and alliances and customer engineering—and I meet to ensure we’re covering every aspect of the customer journey.” How do you get started on the journey? “Don’t just gain alignment and collaboration across the go-to-market function but create trust with the CEO and executive team and be accountable for the entire customer journey.” Don’t Miss: Data-Driven Marketing Playbook—everything you need to know

Why CMOs need to own the full customer journey, not just demand gen

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