The $700,000 Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

Three years ago, The Pedowitz Group was spending close to $700,000 annually on marketing technology. We had all the toys, all the platforms, all the bells and whistles. We were the kid in the candy store who couldn't say no.

Then we woke up.

We discovered we didn't even know who was logging into what. We had admins who weren't even with the company anymore. We were drowning in possibility while gasping for productivity.

Sound familiar?

Today on Revenue Marketing Raw, Dr. Debbie Qaqish and I had a brutally honest conversation about the capacity crisis plaguing marketing organizations—and it's not what you think.

The 20% Reality Check

Here's the uncomfortable truth we need to face: Most marketing teams are using less than 20% of their MarTech capabilities.

Let that sink in. You're paying for a Ferrari and driving it in first gear. Every. Single. Day.

But it gets worse. While vendors keep rolling out "1,001 new features" every quarter, marketing teams are still using marketing automation like it's 2010—as a glorified email tool. Meanwhile, your poor marketing ops person (if you still have one) is trying to manage 10, 20, sometimes 30 different systems.

As I pointed out, "This isn't your mama's marketing ops anymore."

The Hamster Wheel of Hell

The real problem isn't the technology—it's that marketers have become so busy doing, they have no time for thinking. They're running so hard on the hamster wheel that they can't slow down long enough to realize they're not actually going anywhere.

The symptoms are everywhere:

  • Zero time for experimentation
  • No bandwidth for learning new features
  • Constant reactive mode ("Oh my God, we need to do this NOW!")
  • Consensus paralysis (spending months trying to get everyone to agree)
  • The annual platform migration dance ("This tool isn't working, let's switch!")

As Debbie shared on the show, after returning from Inbound this year, we could have spent a solid week just exploring HubSpot's new features and figuring out how to apply them. And that's exactly what we did. Three weeks later? We're seeing astronomical improvements.

But how many marketing teams have that luxury—or more accurately, make that choice?

The Missing Ingredient: Marketing Enablement

Sales has sales enablement. They have entire teams dedicated to making sure reps are trained, equipped, and constantly improving. But as Debbie asked today: "How many damn companies have anything called marketing enablement?"

The answer is almost none.

Where are the learning labs? Where's the innovation time? Where's the space to experiment without fear of sending the "wrong" email?

Marketing has become so risk-averse, so focused on doing it "right" the first time, that they've forgotten that innovation requires experimentation. And experimentation requires failure. And failure requires time.

The Path to Reclaiming Your Capacity

Here's what needs to change, starting today:

1. Block Out Think Time

Some of our favorite CMOs are blocking Friday afternoons for their teams. No meetings. No campaigns. Just time to think, strategize, and explore. If you can't afford a full day, start with two hours a week.

2. Act Like IT (Seriously)

IT departments don't say yes to everything. They have a priority queue based on business objectives. Marketing needs to adopt the same discipline. As Debbie told a CMO recently: "You need to act like a fricking IT department."

3. Kill the Consensus Culture

Consensus doesn't mean unanimous. Stop wasting months trying to get everyone to agree. Make a decision and move forward. As I so eloquently put it: "Make a decision already."

4. Create an Innovation Budget

Not a technology budget—an innovation and learning budget. Allocate 10% of your resources (time and money) specifically for experimentation. This is your downtime from the hamster wheel.

5. Stop the Platform Hopping

Before you switch from platform A to platform B, ask yourself: "Are we actually using what platform A can do?" Nine times out of ten, the answer is no. Fix your process before you fix your tech stack.

The $700,000 Lesson

Remember that $700,000 we were spending on MarTech? We cut it by 80%.

Today, we're more productive and effective than we've ever been. Not because we have less technology, but because we're actually using what we have. We experiment constantly. We fail fast. We learn faster.

Your Move

As we head into budget season (or as I call it, the "budget season, spend season" dance), ask yourself:

  • What if you could unlock just 10% more capacity from your team?
  • What if you actually used 30% of your MarTech instead of 20%?
  • What if you gave your team permission to experiment and fail?
  • What if you said no to the next urgent request that doesn't align with your objectives?

The technology has finally caught up to the promise. AI is here. The platforms are more powerful than ever. The intelligence is at our fingertips.

But none of it matters if you're too busy running on the hamster wheel to stop and use it.

Stop the Insanity

As Debbie shared, when she saw her first Eloqua demo twenty years ago in a hot, crowded room, her eyes lit up like Christmas morning at the possibilities. She was a VP of Sales turned CMO, and she immediately saw the vision for what this technology could be. Two decades later, we're still not fulfilling that promise.

Not because the technology isn't there. But because we won't slow down long enough to use it.

Debbie and I have been at this since 2007, when we first met (I was running professional services at Eloqua, she was buying it for Knowledgestorm). We discovered we lived around the corner from each other in a city of 5 million people. And here we are, still telling marketers the same things we were telling them back then—except now we have a lot less patience.

It's time to stop the insanity. It's time to reclaim your capacity. It's time to get off the hamster wheel.

Your team is operating at 20% capacity. The other 80% is waiting for you to be brave enough to claim it.

Catch the full episode of Revenue Marketing Raw with Dr. Debbie Qaqish and Jeff Pedowitz, streaming now. New episodes drop every week—same time, same unfiltered truth.

What's your team's biggest capacity killer? Drop a comment below and let's get real about what's holding marketing back.