Kris Clark Marketing Consultancy

Tag: #demandgen

  • The Village Bakery Problem, Part 1: Demand versus Lead Gen

    The Village Bakery Problem, Part 1: Demand versus Lead Gen

    You are one of two bakers in a small village. Everyone knows you. Your bread is decent. Every morning, people choose between you and the baker down the road.

    There is no new demand to generate. There is just an existing appetite to capture.

    This is lead generation at its purest. And if you look honestly at how most B2B marketing budgets are built, this is exactly the logic underneath them: find the people already looking, rank higher than the competition, convert better at the bottom of the funnel. Fight for the same five percent of buyers who raised their hands this quarter.

    It works, up to a point. But it assumes the village never grows. It assumes every potential customer already knows they want bread.

    What about the person who skipped breakfast for years because nobody ever made it feel worth the detour? What about the company that has been living with a broken process so long they stopped noticing the cost? Nobody is searching for a solution to a problem they have not yet named.

    That is where demand generation begins. Not at the moment of comparison, but much earlier. At the moment of recognition. When someone first thinks, “Actually, this could be different.”

    Here is the thing that gets lost when people debate these two disciplines: technology businesses are still run by people. People who get tired, cut corners, inherit broken systems, and feel the same low-grade frustration your village baker’s customer feels when the bread is stale again, but they cannot quite be bothered to walk further. Emotion and habit drive B2B decisions more than most marketing strategies account for.

    The buyer who already trusts you before your sales team calls is not just a warm lead. They are a different conversation entirely. Shorter cycle. Less price sensitivity. More honest about their real problem.

    Demand generation is the work of becoming familiar before you are needed. It is education, perspective, and the kind of content that makes someone think, “these people actually understand what I am dealing with.” That is not soft marketing. That is pipeline development with a longer fuse.

    Most companies underfund it because the timeline does not fit neatly into a quarter. The result is a marketing function permanently stuck fighting over the same small slice of in-market buyers, wondering why growth feels harder than it should.

    The village can grow. The question is whether your marketing is built to grow it, or just to win the morning rush.

    If this tension already sounds familiar, it is probably worth a conversation. We work with mid-sized B2B companies to build marketing that develops pipeline rather than just chasing it. Book a 30-minute call here, and we can talk through where you are.

  • What tomatoes can teach you about timing, nurture, and conversion rates.

    What tomatoes can teach you about timing, nurture, and conversion rates.

    You can’t rush a tomato.

    You can feed it, water it, support it with string and sticks — but you cannot force it to ripen faster.
    If you pick it too early? It’s hard, bitter, and gets binned.
    Too late? It splits and rots on the vine.

    Sound familiar?

    Good leads are the same.
    They need nurture, warmth, and patience.
    Send the pitch too soon, and you burn the opportunity.
    Wait too long, and it’s gone — or someone else has picked it.

    In marketing and in gardening, the trick is knowing:

    What signals tell you it’s time to harvest
    How to support growth without smothering it
    And how to deal with a glut when all your hard work matures at once

    You want sustainable pipeline?
    Treat it like a tomato — not a turnip.

    #PipelineWisdom #LessonsFromTheAllotment #B2BMarketing #DemandGen #GrowthStrategy #LeadNurture #ConversionTiming #MarketingMindset #TomatoTruths

  • Farming. Fishing. Horseback archery.

    Farming. Fishing. Horseback archery.

    I’m not here to chase every rabbit.

    I’m here to build.
    To cultivate.
    To sustain.

    I can plant the seed, tend the soil, and know when to harvest.
    I can cast a line in the right waters.
    And if the stakes are high enough — I can hit a target from horseback at full gallop.

    You don’t survive the wild — or the revenue rollercoaster — by hunting alone.
    You need to know how to feed yourself for the long haul.

    That’s true for pipeline.
    That’s true for life.

    This is where the series really begins:
    🌱 Pipeline & Life Lessons from the Allotment
    B2B growth strategies, inspired by mud, muscle, and marrow-deep marketing.

    Next up: what tomatoes can teach you about timing, nurture, and conversion rates.

  • Pipeline and lessons from the allotment : new series on hunters vs farming (aka sales and marketing)

    Pipeline and lessons from the allotment : new series on hunters vs farming (aka sales and marketing)

    Start-ups and scale-ups love to call their salespeople “hunters.”

    🚀 Always chasing new leads.
    🎯 Always prospecting.
    ⚔️ Always closing.

    But here’s a fact that’s hard to ignore:
    In the late 1700s, American mountain men died from “rabbit starvation.”
    Surviving only on lean meat — no fat, no carbs, no variety — their bodies gave out.

    What’s the parallel?
    A diet of only hunting new leads is just as unsustainable.

    You need gatherers too.
    You need farmers.
    You need a well-balanced go-to-market engine that cultivates, nurtures, and sustains.

    A healthy pipeline is like survival in the wild:
    🥕 You farm
    🐟 You fish
    🍎 You forage
    🐇 And yes, you hunt

    And me? I’m the farmer.
    I can fish.
    I can shoot from horseback.
    Let’s just say I’m zombie-apocalypse ready — and so is the pipeline.

    This is the first in a new series:
    🪓 Lessons in Pipeline from the Allotment
    Follow along for more field-tested strategies with a backwoods edge.