The QBR Scene We All Know Too Well
The QBR room is tense. Marketing presents slides showing they hit 110% of their MQL and pipeline-sourced targets. Partners add their contribution. But then Sales follows showing they missed the overall pipeline and closed-won number.
Technically, marketing and partner “did their job.” But the business missed. What follows is a round of finger-pointing. Executives lose confidence in marketing and partner efforts. Everyone leaves frustrated, and the next quarter starts with even less confidence.
That’s the broken loop we’re stuck in. And it’s why B2B measurement is overdue for a reset.
The State of B2B Measurement
For the last 15 years, most B2B marketers have measured success using the same handful of models: MQL tallies, sourcing credit, attribution paths, and ROI dashboards.
On the surface, these frameworks look precise. They create charts, percentages, and targets you can report at your QBR. But inside the business, the story often feels very different:
- Finance doesn’t trust marketing’s math.
- Sales says the leads aren’t converting.
- Marketing celebrates “hitting its number,” while the company still misses revenue goals.
It’s no wonder that when we poll B2B marketing leaders, measurement consistently ranks as their top pain, even above hot topics like AI adoption. The truth is, B2B measurement is broken. And here are the five biggest ways.
The Five Big Ways B2B Measurement Is Broken
1. The MQL Obsession
The idea that every “lead” should be captured, scored, and celebrated as marketing’s main KPI was the gold standard just a few years ago. That has lost some traction in recent years, but MQLs still are a main KPI at most companies. But MQLs have always been a shaky proxy for real progress. They often don’t correlate with pipeline or revenue, and they create tension with sales teams who get flooded with names that don’t convert.
2. Sourcing Credit Battles
Marketing signs up for its sourced pipeline target. Partners have a separate contribution. Everyone is accountable for their slice of the pie but only Sales is responsible for the pie itself. The result? A blame game when the business misses its number, even if Marketing and Partner technically “hit” their target.
3. Attribution Theater
Path-based attribution tools promise scientific precision: this ad drove that click, which drove this opportunity. But the reality is far messier. These models ignore non-clickable channels like brand, PR, or dark social. They assume linear funnels in a nonlinear world. And they incentivize teams to double down on what’s easiest to track, not what’s most impactful.
4. Spreadsheet Planning
Most B2B marketing plans still live in Excel. Rows of assumptions, conversion rates, and spend allocations are treated like facts. But when budgets shift or conversion dynamics change, the entire plan collapses. Finance doesn’t plan this way, and increasingly, they don’t accept it from marketing either.
5. ROI Fetishism
Every channel is “measured” by ROI. But channel-level ROI is a trap: it assigns partial credit, ignores cross-channel effects, and creates false confidence. A channel may show a great ROI while the business still misses revenue. Worse, it steers teams toward optimizing slices of spend instead of maximizing portfolio impact.
What to Do Instead
The fixes aren’t complicated, but they do require a shift in mindset. Instead of defending credit, start building confidence.
- Drop MQLs. You can still deliver them to sales if they’re useful, but stop reporting them as marketing’s ultimate measure of success.
- Drop sourcing attribution. The question isn’t who sourced the deal. It’s whether the business hit its pipeline and revenue targets.
- Sign up for the entire pipeline number. Marketing, sales, and partners should co-own one goal. Shared targets drive collaboration instead of finger-pointing.
- Set leading indicators that tie to pipeline. Branded search, account engagement, intent signals, share of voice. These trend with pipeline and give earlier visibility into progress. They also give you KPIs to investigate when pipeline or closed-won is missed.
- Use data science models like Media Mix Modeling (MMM). MMM works off aggregate time-series data to measure the true relationship between spend and pipeline. It accounts for diminishing returns, includes non-gated channels like brand and PR, and makes it possible to run forward-looking scenarios about budget allocation.
How to Get Started This Quarter
You don’t need a big-bang overhaul to begin. Start with a few simple steps:
Investigate First
- Do your MQLs actually correlate to pipeline? If not, lower their visibility but still deliver them to sales.
- Would your sales team be open to a shared pipeline target? Ask if they feel the same misalignment.
- Where are your “new-old” metrics (branded search, engagement, win rates)? Are they tracked and trending with pipeline?
- Can you get CAC or Sales & Marketing Efficiency data? If finance is calculating it, offer to help.
- What metrics do you present today that “look good” when things are actually bad? Flag them as risks to trust.
Then Pitch the Shift
- Frame the problem: “Here’s what we’re tracking. Here’s why it’s not working.”
- Propose the pilot: “Let’s test a shared pipeline target across GTM.”
- Address accountability: “We’re not losing accountability. We’re signing up for more, together.”
- Offer a test: “Try it in one region, segment, or quarter.”
- Sell the vision: “This change lets us plan better, forecast more realistically, and reduce finger-pointing.”
Confidence, Not Credit
At its core, B2B measurement went wrong when it became a game of credit-claiming.
But leadership doesn’t want credit, they want confidence. They want to know that marketing, sales, and partners are aligned on one number. They want to see clear signals when things are off track. And they want the ability to run scenarios, not arguments.
The good news? This shift is already happening. More B2B companies are moving away from MQL tallies and attribution models toward shared pipeline goals and data science-driven planning.
If your measurement today feels broken, don’t just patch it. Rethink it. Drop the credit games, embrace shared goals, and build a measurement system that your C-suite can trust.
That’s how marketing earns its seat at the table; not by owning a slice, but by owning the outcome.