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The B2B Roundtable

The B2B Roundtable

Written by: Brian Carroll
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The B2B Roundtable is a podcast about what dashboards miss in B2B revenue systems. Most GTM teams manage what their dashboards can measure. But the breakdowns that cost real revenue often live underneath – in handoffs, definitions, follow-up gaps, scoring assumptions, and the friction buyers feel but reports don’t reveal. Hosted by Brian Carroll, GTM system advisor and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, the show features candid conversations with GTM operators, leaders, and thinkers about how revenue systems actually break – and what it takes to fix them. Learn more at https://www.markempa.comCopyright 2026 markempa Careers Economics Management Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales Personal Success
Episodes
  • Why GTM Rebuilds for the Enterprise Start With Clarity, Not Campaigns, with Corey Livingston

    Why GTM Rebuilds for the Enterprise Start With Clarity, Not Campaigns, with Corey Livingston
    Jul 28 2026
    A company reaches a key moment. The strategy changes, the target buyer shifts, and leadership decides to focus on the enterprise market. But the go-to-market system underneath the business may still be built for an earlier stage of growth. Corey Livingston shares why rebuilding your GTM should start with understanding and clarity, how marketing can build trust with sales before results appear, and what leaders should measure before the pipeline is visible. About this episode Financial reports show how a business is doing, but they don’t show if the go-to-market engine is ready to support the company’s next phase of growth. That is the tension at the center of this conversation with Corey Livingston, Vice President of Marketing at DartPoints. Corey has spent more than two decades leading B2B marketing through growth and change. She has worked inside companies moving upmarket, entering new segments, and trying to build several GTM motions at once. Her starting point is not another campaign. It is understanding the growth hypothesis, determining whether each motion is in the build, activate, or scale phase, and getting the organization aligned around what it can realistically produce next. We talk about why moving into enterprise requires more than changing the target account list, how marketing earns credibility with sales, why alignment must extend below the CRO, and what leaders often get wrong during the first 90 days of a GTM rebuild. About Corey Livingston Corey Livingston is the Vice President of Marketing at DartPoints. She has more than two decades of B2B marketing experience, including leadership roles at Level 3 Communications and OneNeck Solutions, as well as fractional CMO work across multiple companies. Her work focuses on GTM strategy, sales and marketing alignment, enterprise growth, and helping companies build the operating systems required for their next stage of growth. Connect with Corey Follow Corey Livingston on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Why healthy dashboards can hide a broken GTM system 00:49 What dashboards miss in a GTM rebuild 02:36 Why moving upmarket changes the entire motion 05:35 How to diagnose the gap between strategy and execution 09:02 How marketing earns sales’ trust before results 17:58 How to decide which GTM motion comes first 21:00 What to measure before pipeline shows up 26:23 What leaders get wrong in the first 90 days A few things worth taking away Financial reports show business performance. They do not show whether the GTM system is mature enough to support the next stage of growth. GTM is a lifecycle, not a switch. Leaders need to know whether a motion is being built, activated, or scaled before deciding what to measure. Moving upmarket is not just a strategy shift. Enterprise buyers require more credibility, stronger proof, deeper content, and tighter coordination with sales. A corporate strategy is not the same as a go-to-market strategy. The organization still needs clarity about how growth will actually happen. Sales trust comes from clarity, follow-through, and quick wins, especially while the longer-term GTM system is still being built. Alignment with the CRO is not enough. Marketing also needs to earn the trust of frontline sales leaders and the people doing the work every day. You cannot scale every motion at once. Investment decisions should connect to the company’s growth hypothesis, resources, timing, and near-term revenue needs. Pipeline is a lagging indicator. Operational readiness, engagement from the right accounts, and qualified meetings can show whether the motion is beginning to work. For an early enterprise motion, one of the most useful questions is: are we meeting with the right person at the right account, and are they moving to a next step? The first 90 days of a GTM rebuild should begin with diagnosis. Leaders often create problems by trying to fix the system before they understand it. A few lines that stuck with me “I look at GTM as more of a lifecycle, not a switch.” “A corporate strategy and vision is not a go-to-market strategy.” “Sales trust comes from creating clarity. It comes from follow-through and quick wins.” “You can’t scale everything at once.” “You can’t get to pipeline without engagement.” “Are we getting a meeting with the right person at the right account?” “Most leaders try to fix things too fast in the first 90 days.” Listen and subscribe Subscribe to The B2B Roundtable wherever you listen to podcasts. Transcript Brian Carroll: Welcome to The B2B Roundtable. I’m Brian Carroll, and we’re going to talk about something people don’t often talk about. A company hits an inflection point. The strategy shifts, the buyer changes, and the dashboard shows green. But the system underneath was built for a different version of the business. The gap doesn’t show up in a report. It shows up when things start to stall, and nobody can explain why. My guest today is Corey Livingston. She has...
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    31 mins
  • Why B2B Buyers Really Buy: The Hidden Buyer Journey with Scott Gillum

    Why B2B Buyers Really Buy: The Hidden Buyer Journey with Scott Gillum
    Jul 14 2026
    Most GTM teams have gotten very good at tracking what buyers do. They can see form fills, intent signals, CRM activity, demo requests, and pipeline movement. But those systems often miss the people, pressure, risk, trust, and hidden stakeholders shaping the actual decision. In this conversation, Scott shares what he learned from studying more than 10,000 buyers across 15 industries, including why so many people who influence a deal never appear in the CRM, why B2B buying is more emotional than we admit, and how personality, culture, and hidden stakeholders shape complex deals. The big question behind this episode is simple: Even if our lead systems worked perfectly, would they really explain what drives a buying decision? About this episode In complex B2B sales, the visible buyer journey is often only part of the story. The CRM may show one set of contacts. The real buying group may include several others. The business case may look rational. The actual decision may be shaped by fear, trust, confidence, internal pressure, and personal risk. Scott Gillum calls this The Hidden Buyer Journey. His research shows that many of the people who influence deals are never entered into the database, and many of the signals that matter most are not captured by traditional lead and pipeline systems. Scott and Brian discuss: Why human-to-human selling still matters as AI and rep-free buying growHow one sales team nearly missed the real executive concern in a dealWhy 85% of buyers in a buying group may not be visible in the databaseWhy complex B2B buying is emotional, even when the process looks rationalHow personality and culture influence buying decisionsWhy empathy is not a soft skill in complex salesHow sellers can use AI to become better with people, not just louder at scale About Scott Gillum Scott Gillum is the founder and CEO of Carbon Design, a marketing services firm focused on understanding buyer behavior and improving B2B growth. He is the author of The Hidden Buyer Journey: How Personality, Culture, and Hidden Stakeholders Decide Your Deals. Scott’s work focuses on the hidden forces that shape B2B buying decisions, including personality, buying-group dynamics, organizational culture, and the stakeholders who influence deals but often never appear in CRM or marketing automation systems. Scott Gillum on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Introduction: Scott Gillum and The Hidden Buyer Journey 01:06 The human-to-human selling relationship 02:15 When the CRM tells the wrong story 04:10 The 85% of buyers missing from the database 06:14 The emotional gap in complex sales 08:03 Buyer confidence versus vendor confidence 11:28 The two-thirds rule and personality-based selling 15:16 Why empathy is not a soft skill 18:18 How sellers should adapt under pressure 20:44 Using AI to move closer to the customer 23:42 Closing thoughts A few things worth taking away 1. The CRM may not show the real buying group Scott shared an example of a deal where the sales team thought the need was real-time project profitability. But late in the deal, the CEO’s behavior showed a very different concern: cash flow. The visible activity told one story. The person with the most influence over the decision was telling another. 2. Hidden stakeholders are not a small problem Scott said his team found that 85% of buyers in a buying group were not in the database. In one example, a company gave its team 100 contacts for an opportunity. After reading the email threads, they found nine people in the actual buying group, and only two of those nine were in the system. That changes how we think about attribution, lead management, sales process, and account strategy. 3. Complex B2B buying is emotional because the risk is real Scott put it plainly: buying the wrong iPhone may be frustrating, but nobody gets fired for it. Making the wrong million-dollar SaaS decision is different. That risk creates pressure. And that pressure shapes how people make decisions. 4. Buyers need confidence in themselves, not just confidence in the vendor One of the most important ideas in the conversation is that sellers often believe their job is to make the buyer confident in the vendor. But in a complex sale, the buyer also needs confidence in their own decision. They need to believe they can defend the choice internally, manage the risk, and survive the consequences if things do not go perfectly. 5. Personality and culture shape how people buy Scott explains what he calls the two-thirds rule: certain personality patterns tend to concentrate in industries, roles, accounts, and buying groups. That does not mean every person is the same. But it does mean sellers and marketers can get smarter about how different buyers process information, evaluate risk, and build trust. 6. Empathy is not soft. It changes outcomes. Scott shared an example from email analysis where a seller who showed empathy and understood the buyer’s situation had a much better path through the deal than ...
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    24 mins
  • B2B Brands Are Too Measurable to Be Memorable, with Lindsay Cournoyer

    B2B Brands Are Too Measurable to Be Memorable, with Lindsay Cournoyer
    Jun 23 2026
    About this episode Here’s something most B2B marketers know but do not always say out loud. We have gotten very good at measuring things. Attribution. Pipeline metrics. Sourced revenue. Influenced revenue. Cost per lead. And yet, a lot of B2B brands are still forgettable. Not because the marketers are bad. Because the system keeps pulling them toward what can be tracked, reported, and defended in the next pipeline review or board meeting. That is the tension at the center of this conversation with Lindsay Cournoyer, Fractional CMO and Brand Marketing Consultant at LC Consulting, and former CMO at Blue J. Lindsay has led marketing at companies including Axonify, Coconut Software, and Blue J. At Blue J, an AI-powered tax research company, she helped 5x revenue and raise $122 million in Series D funding. But that is not the main reason I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to talk with Lindsay because while that growth was happening, she made a brand bet that many B2B marketers would struggle to defend on a dashboard. She invested in out-of-home advertising. Billboards. Elevator ads. Radio. Physical media in a B2B SaaS company. That is not the usual B2B playbook. But Lindsay believed the company needed something that the usual performance channels were not delivering: awareness, trust, and memory in buyers’ minds before they were ready to enter a sales process. Her line from LinkedIn captures the problem clearly: “B2B brands are so obsessed with being measurable that they forget to be memorable.” That is where this conversation starts. We talk about why performance marketing can capture demand but cannot create all of it, how Lindsay made the case for out-of-home inside a B2B SaaS company, what she measured before and after the campaign, and why brand work can feel risky when marketing already has to justify itself more than other functions. If you have ever felt pressure to optimize for a metric instead of an outcome, this episode is for you. About Lindsay Cournoyer Lindsay Cournoyer is a Fractional CMO and Brand Marketing Consultant at LC Consulting. She has led marketing at B2B companies including Axonify, Coconut Software, and Blue J, where she most recently served as CMO. At Blue J, she helped the company grow revenue 5x and raise $122 million in Series D funding. Lindsay works with B2B SaaS founders and leadership teams on brand strategy, messaging, and go-to-market. Connect with Lindsay Connect with Lindsay Cournoyer on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Introduction: B2B Brands Are Too Measurable to Be Memorable 01:53 Why Brand Has to Create Demand Before Performance Captures It 03:29 The CEO Saw the Brand Problem 04:24 The Marketing Tax and Why Brand Needs CEO Support 07:35 Making the Case for Brand Inside the Business 10:11 How Lindsay Measured Awareness and Consideration 13:50 Staying Steady When the Bet Feels Risky 16:55 What to Do When Your Company Doesn’t Value Brand 22:26 How to Make the Case for Brand Investment A few things worth taking away Performance marketing has a role, but it mostly captures existing demand. Brand helps create the demand performance later captures. B2B buyers need to remember you before they are ready to buy. If you are not already planted in their mind, you may never make the shortlist. Out-of-home can be targeted in B2B when you know where your buyers work, commute, gather, and pay attention. The marketing tax is real. Many marketing leaders spend too much time justifying their function rather than doing the work that creates long-term value. A CEO who understands brand changes the entire marketing environment. Without that support, big brand bets are much harder to make. Brand can be measured, but not always through the same dashboard logic as demand generation. Lindsay used pre- and post-campaign surveys to measure awareness, perceptions, consideration, and likelihood of purchase. A brand campaign can move more than awareness. In Lindsay’s case, they saw an increase in awareness and purchase consideration. Sometimes the best thing a marketer can do is accept the reality of where they are, protect their sense of worth, and look for a better environment where marketing is understood. If a CEO does not understand brand, use examples from their own life. Show them how brands earn memory before the buying moment. Sometimes you have to earn the right to make a brand investment by first showing how marketing contributes to pipeline and revenue. A few lines that stuck with me “B2B brands are so obsessed with being measurable that they forget to be memorable.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “Marketing’s true job is to carve out that place in your buyers’ brains.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “We have to build brand awareness and trust and credibility before you really step on the gas of performance marketing.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “There are companies out there who actually get it. They are very hard to find, but they are out there.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “Sales ...
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    25 mins
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