GTM Live — “How to Shift from ‘Marketing-Sourced Pipeline’ to Real Visibility”

Host: Passetto (Carolyn Dilks & Trevor Gibson)
Date: September 26, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode tackles a core challenge in B2B SaaS go-to-market (GTM): the limitations of “marketing-sourced pipeline” as the primary metric for measuring marketing effectiveness. Hosts Carolyn and Amber (Passetto co-founders) break down why pipeline creation is harder than ever, why volume-driven metrics and siloed measurement are failing, and how elite organizations are instead driving growth by exposing the “pipeline black box”—the unmeasured handoffs and activities between marketing lead creation and opportunity conversion. The episode explores how to create true visibility into the prospecting engine, move beyond vanity metrics, and systematically optimize pipeline with scientific rigor.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Problem with “Marketing-Sourced Pipeline”

• Volume Approach is Broken:

  • The traditional playbook focuses on filling the pipeline through tactics like more events, more SDRs, or increased ad spend—without clear evidence these efforts translate into closed-won revenue ([08:36], [26:44]).
  • Even as marketing creates more leads, what happens to those leads after they’re passed to SDRs is largely invisible—leading to wasted effort and misattributed success ([10:48]).

• Misaligned Metrics & Siloes:

  • Organizations measure marketing, SDR, and sales performance separately, creating competition for credit and blind spots in the actual buying journey ([04:38], [14:06]).
  • "Your measurement system is broken. We are iterating so fast, things are changing all around us. But we're using measurement and KPIs a decade old." – Amber [06:38]

• The “Pipeline Black Box”:

  • There’s little to no systematic insight into what really happens between a lead being generated and an opportunity being created. Key steps in SDR/BDR prospecting often go unmeasured ([10:48], [17:13]).

2. The Factory Analogy & The Case for Actual Visibility

• Pipeline as a Factory:

  • Carolyn and Amber illustrate pipeline creation as a multi-step factory, not just a funnel. Marketing supplies “raw materials” (leads, demo requests, intent data), which then move on a “conveyor belt” to SDRs/BDRs for prospecting ([18:05], [24:20]).
  • “No factory would operate that way...they know exactly how many raw materials they need from what suppliers. GTM should be no different.” – Carolyn [26:44]

• What Organizations Fail to See:

  • Most GTM teams only track the beginning (lead source) and end (opportunity creation), with a complete lack of visibility into the “black box” of prospecting effort, activities, and outcomes ([17:13], [18:05]).
  • “Teams are working contacts multiple times and oftentimes they get lost in the shuffle...We have no way to understand where they are in the factory.” – Amber [10:48]

• The Cost of Waste:

  • Massive waste occurs when leads that won’t convert eat up SDR/BDR resources. For example, taking 100 calls for 10,000 unqualified contacts just to yield a handful of ops ([18:05]).
  • “You're throwing names into your factory...your Lucy person is taking them off and throwing them in the trash...No factory would operate that way.” – Carolyn [26:44]

3. What Elite Orgs Do Differently: Systematic Measurement & Pattern Detection

• Expose the Black Box:

  • Track and analyze every step post-lead creation: why a rep picked up the lead, how often they reach out, time between stages, disqualification reasons, and how all these patterns affect pipeline yield ([18:05], [24:20]).
  • “We want to know exactly what the reason was that they decided to call them...how long it took...how many activities. Did they disqualify, and why?” – Carolyn [18:05]

• Identify Patterns, Not Just Volume:

  • Instead of fixating on lead source, identify repeatable "patterns" leading to high-converting deals—e.g., which combination of marketing trigger + rep outreach + sales sequence yields the best results ([16:09], [18:05]).
  • “You have patterns that are playing out in your factory. Some are good, some are wasteful. That’s what you want to see and amplify.” – Amber [16:09]

• Smart, Collaborative Optimization:

  • Once patterns and success levers are clear, marketing, sales, and demand teams can collaborate to “engineer” more high-performance pipeline, rather than throwing resources at unproven channels ([29:09], [34:27]).
  • “You can collaboratively start to engineer—if we know that type of person is moving through the factory at this velocity, with this conversion to pipeline, let's get more of those people.” – Carolyn [26:44]

4. The Mindset & Practical Shift

• Move from Siloed to Systemic:

  • True pipeline creation is a systematic, cross-functional process. Tunnel vision on “sourced” metrics incentivizes defensive, non-collaborative behavior ([30:11], [31:15]).
  • “The first thing that needs to happen is you need to zoom out...engineering pipeline today is a systematic process where one single thing you did in marketing is not an accurate lens.” – Carolyn [31:16]

• Actionable Questions To Ask Internally:

  • Are we tracking 100% of prospects sales works, or only some?
  • Do we know the trigger for every single outreach and its result?
  • If prospects return, does that history stay visible, or does it vanish? ([36:15])

• Proof and Results:

  • When measurement shifts to factory-like precision, result improvements show in core metrics—win rates, speed to opportunity, and budget justification ([26:44], [34:27], [38:12]):
    • “Our win rate on opps went from 13% to 24%.” – Carolyn on Passetto customer [26:44]
    • “Marketing got a $2.2M spend increase for the year—because they illuminated the black box and had the data to back up their ask.” – Carolyn [34:27]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Old Way:

  • “Our measurement system is broken...KPIs a decade old. That is always going to drag you back down and continue to create misalignment across your teams.” – Amber [06:38]

• On Attribution Battles:

  • “If something gets tagged as SDR source, the marketing team is like, wait a sec, that lead came through an event. I’m going to go spend all my time trying to justify that instead of focusing on what I’m supposed to do.” – Carolyn [14:06]

• On GTM as Factory:

  • “Imagine a car factory putting a bunch of extra doors on the line just in case. Totally wasteful...GTM should work with the same level of precision.” – Carolyn [26:44]

• On Patterns Over Volume:

  • “Volume metric after volume metric and none of this is putting it together as a causal system for how these prospects are moving to pipeline in your revenue factory.” – Amber [16:35]

• Career Implications:

  • “I think it's great if you can come to the table saying, like, hey, this is how we're wasting a bunch of our budget. You're going to earn a lot of respect at the table.” – Carolyn [41:38]

Important Timestamps

• Why “marketing-sourced pipeline” is a flawed metric: [04:38]
• The pipeline black box explained: [10:48], [18:05], [24:20]
• The factory/conveyor belt analogy: [18:05], [24:20], [26:44]
• Examples of tracking waste and repeatable patterns: [16:09], [29:09]
• How to advocate for the new approach internally: [31:15], [34:27], [36:15]
• Career/professional implications for marketing leaders: [41:38]
• Rapid fire objections from status quo marketers with responses: [43:59]–[48:00]

Takeaways for Revenue Leaders

• Move beyond volume and vanity metrics—siloed, “sourced” tracking hides more than it reveals.
• Illuminate the prospecting black box to diagnose waste and opportunity in your real pipeline engine.
• Adopt a factory mindset: Map, measure, and optimize every repeatable step between lead engagement and opportunity, enabling collaborative and scientific pipeline growth.
• Own and advocate for transparency—admitting past inefficiency is career-enhancing, not damning.
• Push for better data and cross-team collaboration, even if you have to run old and new metrics in parallel at first.

This episode provides actionable insights for forward-thinking revenue leaders, marketing heads, and GTM operators ready to leave outdated playbooks behind and grow pipeline with clarity, efficiency, and long-term control.