When 50% of B2B marketing organizations are living in denial about their actual performance, we have a problem worth talking about.
In today's Revenue Marketing Raw episode, Jeff Pedowitz and Dr. Debbie Qaqish stripped away the comfortable lies marketing leaders tell themselves about their performance. No corporate speak. No sugarcoating. Just an uncomfortable conversation about the gap between perception and reality that's costing companies millions in unrealized revenue.
The conversation started with a simple question: How do marketing leaders know they're really using their tech stack effectively?
The answer? They don't.
"Your head of MarTech is telling you that you're using it well," Pedowitz observed. "But when you dig deeper with three or four polite questions, you discover they're using maybe 10% of what they bought."
Think about that. You're spending $150,000 a year on a platform and using 10% of its capabilities. That's not just waste—it's competitive disadvantage. While you're using your Ferrari as a grocery getter, your competitors might be on the racetrack.
Here's a scenario that played out with a client just weeks ago: Marketing proudly announces they're 20% over their SQL goal. Leadership should be thrilled, right?
Wrong.
Sales is measured on revenue. Marketing is measured on SQLs. And nobody verified if those SQLs actually align with what sales needs to hit their number.
"If you're going to make your whole goal for the year about SQLs and sales has a target of revenue, you're already at a disconnect," Pedowitz explained. "Your perception—the CMO is going to think they're doing great. But that goal doesn't match the revenue goal that sales has."
One of the most striking examples from the episode involved a company's HubSpot "expert" who was so undertrained, the recommendation was immediate: "Get rid of him and get you some talent, because every day that you are not optimizing HubSpot...is another day that you're leaving revenue on the table."
Dr. Qaqish pulled no punches: "Talent is probably the number one reason why we don't use as much of the MarTech stack as we could. Therefore, we don't really get the revenue generation for marketing that we could be getting."
Perhaps the most revealing insight came from discussing revenue marketing maturity assessments. When teams take these assessments, CMOs and senior leaders consistently rate their organizations significantly higher than their teams do.
"They're detached from what's actually really happening on the ground," noted Pedowitz. "They think things are better than they are, but their teams are telling them otherwise. And you have to believe your team."
The solution isn't complex, but it requires something many leaders struggle with: vulnerability and genuine curiosity.
Instead of asking "How's everything going?" and accepting "Fine" as an answer, Qaqish suggests asking:
These questions do two things: they reveal the true state of operations, and they inspire teams to think strategically rather than just showing up to do a job.
"If you don't have a team that's excited about learning and is constantly curious and is always looking for ways to do things better...you're going to constantly push down, push down, push down," Qaqish observed. "When the world that we're in today, it should be coming up."
The best ideas for optimization should come from the people using the technology every day. But that only happens in a culture where experimentation is encouraged, failure is safe, and innovation flows upward.
When asked what percentage of B2B marketing organizations have a significant perception gap, Pedowitz didn't hesitate: "At least 50%. And the bigger the organization, the bigger the gap."
This isn't about failure. It's about unrealized potential. The difference between operating at 70% while thinking you're at 90% isn't just a 20% gap—it's millions in revenue left on the table.
"Vulnerability doesn't make you weak," Pedowitz concluded. "Feedback and asking questions and not knowing—that's authentic. It doesn't make you weaker as a leader. It makes you stronger. And it makes your team stronger too."
The perception gap isn't just costing you money. It's preventing you from becoming the revenue powerhouse you could be. The question isn't whether you have a gap—statistically, you probably do.
The question is: Are you brave enough to find it and fix it?
Watch the full unfiltered conversation on Revenue Marketing Raw. Because comfortable lies don't drive revenue—uncomfortable truths do.