Why Revenue Accountability Is Marketing’s #1 Job
Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.
On today’s episode, Carrie Maurer joins host Sara Payne for a candid exploration of marketing’s impact in complex B2B environments where buying cycles are long, decisions are high stakes, and the revenue impact of marketing matters more than ever. With over 25 years as a CMO and growth leader working alongside CEOs in large enterprises, high-growth companies, and startups, Carrie is uniquely positioned to offer a real-world perspective on how marketing can—and must—operate as a genuine driver of revenue in regulated, highly complex industries.
The episode is anchored around one crucial question: If marketing disappeared tomorrow, would revenue actually suffer? Together, Sara and Carrie dig into what it means for marketing to be accountable to revenue, as opposed to simply activity or awareness metrics. They explore how marketing’s influence goes beyond campaigns or messaging, and instead is about aligning strategy, operations, and storytelling so that growth can happen.
Carrie brings clarity to the often-overlooked design problems that prevent marketing from impacting revenue, emphasizing the importance of leadership decisions, system design, and cross-functional accountability. The conversation moves from practical signals of marketing’s real impact—like buyer momentum and internal champion empowerment—to the nuances of strategic partnership between sales and marketing, and the discipline of sequencing growth activities. Rounding out the episode, Sara and Carrie discuss the value of patience as a strategic advantage and the critical need for marketing to measure and influence decision movement, not just attention.
Thank you for joining the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of B2B marketing depends on it.
Key Takeaways:
Marketing’s True Accountability Is to Revenue, Not Activity
Carrie challenges marketing leaders to reconsider what they measure. Activity metrics—like campaign impressions, downloads, or event attendance—are visible and controllable, but they signal motion, not movement. The real test of marketing’s impact is whether it drives revenue by helping decisions progress within the buyer’s and seller’s organizations.Design Problems Need Leadership Decisions and System Alignment
If marketing’s absence wouldn’t affect revenue, it’s not a failure of people but a sign that marketing hasn’t been designed to influence where decisions are made. Fixing this requires leadership choices around scope, structure, priorities, and operating models—not just more marketing effort.Strategic Partnership Between Sales and Marketing Is Essential
For marketing to have a revenue impact, it must sit at the strategic table with sales, product, and operations. When marketing has commercial fluency—understanding the product, competitive landscape, buyer environment, and internal business case dynamics—it strengthens sales teams, empowers internal champions, and helps navigate complexities that stall high-stakes decisions.Sequencing and Patience Are Strategic Advantages in B2B Growth
In complex sales cycles, the discipline of sequencing—guiding both buyer and seller organizations through the right steps in the right order—is more important than speed for its own sake. Patience, when combined with strategic discipline, accelerates true momentum and ensures decisions progress with confidence, reduced friction, and less risk.Measure Evidence of Movement, Not Just Attention
The most meaningful marketing metrics in complex B2B environments are observable signals that a decision has advanced: stakeholders joining earlier, buyers asking implementation questions, champions articulating the value proposition in their own words, and sales spending more time on next steps instead of re-explaining basics. These are signs of confidence and alignment—core to marketing’s role as a revenue driver.
Subscribe to the Health Marketing Collective to continue learning how strong leadership and marketing excellence are reshaping the future of business. And stay tuned for Part 2, where Carrie returns to explore why so many marketing teams struggle to deliver on true revenue accountability.
About Carrie Maurer
Carrie Maurer is a senior marketing and growth executive with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations across highly regulated and technology-driven industries build brands, scale businesses, and lead through change. She’s served as a Chief Marketing Officer and executive partner to CEOs across large enterprises, high-growth companies, and startups—driving go-to-market strategy, modernizing commercialization, and delivering measurable growth.
Today, Carrie advises companies on growth strategy, market expansion, and marketing innovation at scale—helping leaders align strategy, storytelling, and execution as they navigate increasingly complex markets. Her work goes well beyond traditional marketing, spanning enterprise transformation, product launches, and trust-recovery efforts, all grounded in a belief that marketing works best when it’s deeply connected to how organizations actually operate.
At her core, she believes marketing leaders have a unique opportunity—and responsibility—to shape how organizations earn trust, influence behavior, and drive meaningful outcomes.
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Sara Payne [00:00:10]:
Welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sara Payne, and I'm bringing you fascinating conversations with some of the industry's top marketing minds. Today's conversation is for CMOs and senior marketing leaders in complex B2B environments where buying cycles are long and decisions are high stakes. We'll examine a key question marketing leaders need to ask: if marketing disappeared tomorrow, would revenue actually suffer? Not activity, not awareness, not dashboards— revenue. Joining me to dig into this question is my good friend Carrie Maurer. Carrie has spent more than 25 years as a CMO and growth leader inside exactly these kinds of organizations. Partnering closely with CEOs across large enterprises, high-growth companies, and startups. Today, she works directly with leadership teams as an advisor, helping them think through growth strategy, market expansion, and how marketing actually shows up as a revenue driver in increasingly complex regulated environments.
Sara Payne [00:01:18]:
It's work that goes well beyond campaigns or messaging. It's about aligning strategy, operations, and storytelling so growth can actually happen. Carrie, welcome to the show.
Carrie Maurer [00:01:30]:
Thanks, Sara. It's great to be here. I've long admired your show, and so it's fun to be with you today.
Sara Payne [00:01:36]:
Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you here, Carrie. I know you've spent your career inside of organizations where that question about marketing's impact on revenue really matters. In your experiences, What is it that tells you whether marketing is actually making a difference on revenue?
Carrie Maurer [00:01:59]:
You know, I'd say, you know, if marketing disappeared tomorrow and revenue didn't suffer, the first thing I would say, it's not a reflection of the people. It's a signal that marketing hasn't been designed fully to realize the impact where decisions are actually made. And design problems don't get fixed by marketers alone. They get fixed by leadership choices about scope and structure, priorities, operating models, and accountability. So if we think about revenue accountability and what that means, in my view, in my experience, it means owning the condition that allows decisions to move forward. Both inside the buying organization, but actually inside your own company. In most B2B environments, especially when decisions involve multiple stakeholders, you know, no single function owns momentum. It's shared across sales and product and finance and operations and marketing, and they all influence in a different way.
Carrie Maurer [00:03:06]:
And marketing sits at the intersection between those two systems. So when you think about the external buying organization, where decisions are being evaluated, and the internal selling organization where strategy and proof and positioning and execution are being shaped. Revenue accountability means helping those two systems move forward together. And, you know, from a day-to-day perspective, that responsibility shows up in really practical ways. So Let me just try to put some real context around that, if I might. So on the buying side, we are helping buyers understand the problem clearly and frame it internally. We are equipping champions with language and with proof and framing that they can use in conversations we're not even in as an organization. We are anticipating objections that will surface later across— think about legal and finance or IT or an executive review, and we're addressing them very early in the sales process.
Carrie Maurer [00:04:13]:
And we're ensuring that the story holds together as the decision moves from stakeholder to stakeholder. So that's from an external organization's point of view that marketing is influencing. On the selling side, so on our own organization side, we're helping sales position the solution in a way that aligns with real buyer priorities and risks. And we're bringing competitive and market insight into deal strategy, you know, early enough that it really matters. We're aligning product and sales and leadership on a consistent narrative so the buyer hears one story instead of several variations depending on who might be in the room. And maybe lastly, we're identifying gaps in proof or in messaging or in that could stall the deal later and fixing them before they surface. And so that's where revenue or what revenue accountability in my view looks like in practice, not controlling the outcome of a deal, but influencing the environment in which decisions are made.
Sara Payne [00:05:18]:
I love that. Such really great framing to start off the episode here. I think there's so much we could unpack there as we move through this conversation, but really great framing. And I think people listening to this are going to be like, dang, Kari really gets me. Like, she, she gets this, right? Because they might be feeling that this is, these are design problems. As you said, you know, very beginning of the conversation, some of it's a result of, it's not fixed necessarily by people. It's fixed by leadership decision, decisions and systems designs. And so I think there's a lot of people that are going to be kind of taking a deep breath and kind of sitting back and going like, yes, OK, now let's talk about about, you know, the realities of how we get to that state.
Sara Payne [00:06:08]:
On that note, in trying to make this sort of real for people in this conversation, hypothetically, you walk in as a new CMO tomorrow and your CEO, you know, is very focused on that monthly activity reports as proof of progress coming from marketing. Walk us through a little bit of that conversation you might be having to really reframe the thinking around revenue and decision movement and marketing's role in that.
Carrie Maurer [00:06:45]:
The first thing I might do as a new CMO is certainly going to look at the metrics that we're using to assess marketing and are we measuring for busyness? Or are we, are we really measuring for revenue momentum?
Sara Payne [00:07:01]:
Yes.
Carrie Maurer [00:07:02]:
And that's the conversation I'd want to have with my team as much as I'd want to have it with a, with a CEO. Um, and, um, because oftentimes what's really happening isn't a metrics problem, it's a measurement gap. And so our teams today measure activity because it's visible and it's controllable. So even things like, you know, top of the funnel metrics with marketing qualified leads or engagement rates or downloads or impressions or all those things that everybody in marketing is going to be familiar with or understand, those things signal motion but not movement. And so internally, dashboards can light up all day long and show that sort of momentum, but externally buyers may still be uncertain or stalled or unable to move the decision forward. And that's when you're going to see if marketing disappeared, nothing's changing because you're not impacting that external movement that you really need. And oftentimes revenue doesn't stall because marketing isn't working hard. It stalls because the work being measured isn't influencing the, you know, those moments that actually move decisions forward, especially in the moments when buyers have to justify a decision to someone else.
Carrie Maurer [00:08:26]:
So I would say, you know, I would look at certainly signals that marketing is actually helping the decision move, you know, move forward. And that would look like, you know, are buyers being asked, you know, beginning to ask implementation timing or rollout questions instead of just product questions? If we can start to measure those things, Then we know that the work that we're doing again collectively as an internal organization that marketing plays an important role in is really influencing the revenue implication downstream. You know, are additional stakeholders joining meetings earlier in the process rather than appearing late as blockers because they're involved the more signal you're getting that there's a real interest in moving forward. Champions begin explaining the solution internally in their own words instead of asking marketing to restate everything. So if we're still seeing the internal champion continue to ask us, an organization, which marketing again plays a role in, to continue to restate a value proposition or restate state that, um, the solution that we're bringing, they're going to have an impossible time championing that internally. Um, and if the sales team is spending less time re-explaining fundamentals and more time planning next steps, the process is just gonna— sales process is going to go that much faster. So I think those are practical, observable indicators that confidence and alignment are increasing and not always the easiest to put on a, say, a digital dashboard. And those are things I'd want to double-click on if I'm sitting down as a new CMO again, whether I'm sitting with my team or I'm sitting with the CEO and really saying, how— what is the impact marketing is having here and where are we putting our time and energy?
Sara Payne [00:10:29]:
No, those are really great examples. Thank you for, you know, elaborating on what those helpful signals are, because I mean, I took a lot of notes there. Just, I think there's a, there's so much that's very telling in that about the seriousness of that customer and how close they are, right, to making a decision and what role marketing can play in helping to support that. You talked earlier about owning the conditions for growth and using that phrase. Let's talk a little bit more about that. I've heard you say, you know, in high-stakes B2B decisions, buyers don't stall because they lack information. They stall because something feels unresolved to them or maybe even risky. What does that shift mean for what marketing is actually responsible for?
Carrie Maurer [00:11:25]:
I would say marketing Um, you know, when you think about the, the discipline of marketing becoming strategic, the thing that we can do is create that discipline around sequencing. And let me try to unpack that just a little bit because that may sound like a bunch of words, but it's really marketing's job to help decisions move forward. And to do that, we have to guide the buying process in a way— so the buying process itself is as important as any content or any collateral or any material that we could ever create in marketing. And sequencing isn't only about what happens inside the buying organization. Again, it's also about how the buying organization and the selling organization move together, as I mentioned earlier. So, um, I think anytime a decision involves multiple stakeholders, like we often see in these complex B2B deals, um, or has real operational, financial, or reputational risk, um, the stall becomes something important, um, as an indicator that something hasn't been resolved yet. So I think at selling teams sometimes create friction unintentionally, introducing new information too late or responding reactively to objections or shifting the narrative at different stakeholders engaged. And that's really when the discipline and sequencing means guiding both the systems in the right order.
Carrie Maurer [00:13:05]:
And, you know, in this context means paying attention to what the buyer needs next. And that's really the role I think marketing and ensuring that selling organizations prepare to meet the need with clarity and consistency.
Sara Payne [00:13:20]:
Yeah, I love that. You mentioned earlier the internal champion and they're, they play a really key role in all of this. And it's a really good sign when they start to be able to represent the value proposition in their own words internally. What can marketing do better to support that internal champion through the process, right, of of bringing forward a recommendation internally without overstepping sales and the role that sales plays there?
Carrie Maurer [00:13:56]:
Yeah, I think, um, so it's interesting, when buyers get stuck, it's usually not because they've lost interest. In my experience, it's because they reached a point where information alone isn't enough. And they need help navigating the decision. And this is where I think our B2B marketing expertise really shows up, but it's in support of that salesperson who is the interface to that champion. So there is this old adage in enterprise technology, and I might be dating myself here, Sara, but you don't get fired for buying IBM. And what that really reflects is that buyers gravitate gravitate towards decisions that feel credible, defensible, safe, and something that they can stand behind, not just technically sound. So helping create that sense of defensibility requires more than messaging. It requires real commercial sort of fluency, if you will.
Carrie Maurer [00:14:59]:
And today's B2B marketer, you know, the way that we enable that or the way that we are You know, the things that we need to be skilled with in order to be fluent and have the ability to help, you know, build that defensibility, if you will, within that key stakeholder is pretty expansive. And so, you know, I might go as far as saying that today's B2B marketer, in order to be effective at enabling that environment, They need to understand the product well enough to translate features into operational or financial outcomes, not just, not just regurgitate features, but they have to translate that into outcomes. They need to understand the competitive landscape well enough to anticipate any comparison buyers will make internally. They need to understand the broader market forces shaping the buyer's environment so they can help frame urgency and relevance. And they need to understand how decisions are actually made inside the buying organization, how businesses— how business cases are built, how risk is evaluated, how different stakeholders view the same decisions. And when marketing has that level of fluency, it becomes valuable in, I think, two ways really. It helps the buying organization make sense of the decision, But it helps, to your point just a minute ago, the selling organization prepare for the conversation that will determine whether the decision survives. And that often means helping internal champions prepare for conversations with their internal stakeholders and conversations marketing will never be in, of course, but can absolutely influence.
Carrie Maurer [00:16:50]:
And at that point, marketing isn't just communicating value, it's truly helping buyers navigate complexity and move decisions forward with confidence. And that's an important distinction.
Sara Payne [00:17:02]:
Absolutely. And what, what you're describing really is a close strategic partnership between marketing and sales. And in, in those organizations where you have been successful in building exactly what you're talking about, I have to imagine that sales is very sort of welcoming, if you will, to the role that marketing is playing, because it is setting them up for better success in closing that deal, right? They've got, they've got a tremendous amount on their plate already. And for marketing to be able to come in with this level of sort of, of, of insight and messaging support that is sort of customized to overcoming some of these hurdles they might face, Tell me about that. I mean, is, is that true that when you've built this, that sales has been very, you know, open to that, that partnership? And, you know, I'm sure it depends on the personalities and folks involved, but talk about that a little bit.
Carrie Maurer [00:18:06]:
I, I do think it really depends on the organization. I think it depends on if marketing is at the table.
Sara Payne [00:18:13]:
It's true.
Carrie Maurer [00:18:14]:
I think you've raised this in your prior conversations with marketing leaders, and that is getting marketing to the strategic table. And it is also why we have to ensure, though, if marketing is going to be strategic, we have to, as a marketing organization, have the competencies that I mentioned a bit ago. You have to, you know, we have to certainly have top of the funnel activity and drive leads into the pipeline. But oftentimes in complex B2B, you know, deals, in my experience, is you're not throwing a net out there and bringing leads in the door. What you're doing is you're enabling the sales organization to get out there and engage in a way that they can then begin the conversations with these prospects or even expand the conversation with existing customers. And so if marketing is at the right table and involved early enough in these strategic processes, we can help bring, you know, that sequencing that we just mentioned to fruition. But it's first and foremost getting your marketing leader and your marketing team at that strategic table and that partnership between marketing, product, and the sales organization or the growth team, depending on how you refer to it internally, you know, all together.
Sara Payne [00:19:44]:
Love that. Thank you. Thank you for going there, because I think a lot of different organizations and marketing leaders sort of face different realities in terms of the seat at the table and just how the teams are structured and different personalities and leadership philosophies, etc.
Carrie Maurer [00:19:58]:
And I hear so many— I mean, it's such an important point to make because There's probably folks listening today who are like, oh, I get more requests for PowerPoint revisions or for event planning or for, you know, those types of— I need more collateral and I need an asset to take with me. And, and those are important things for marketing to do. But that is not where, you know, if you want your marketing organization to be a strategic partner You've got to, you've got to elevate how you engage with them.
Sara Payne [00:20:31]:
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things you mentioned earlier was around sequencing, and I want to talk a little bit more about that. And this idea I know you're super passionate about is that, you know, in B2B growth, patience can be a strategic advantage. Patience is not about inaction, it's about discipline. Can you tell us a little bit more about, unpack that and/or explain what it looks like in practice?
Carrie Maurer [00:21:07]:
Yeah, I think again, I couldn't agree more that the discipline and sequencing are critical and especially in these complex B2B sales environments. And really how you think about— how I think about it anyhow is it gets to a point actually where marketing isn't just supporting sales, it's supporting the internal seller. And I think when we think about sequencing and we think about the role marketing can enable both through giving that salesperson the capability to help support that internal champion through that sequencing process, or we directly are supporting those internal champions. That becomes where we can add real value when we help buyers walk into a room with legal, finance, IT, or any executive and say, here's why this makes sense for us. Here's why now, and here's why this is the safest path forward. And when marketing helps the buying organization and the selling organization move forward in sync, decisions simply move faster and they have less friction and they have less rework and they just have less risk. And I think that's where that sequencing and understanding that buyer, the process with which they have to go through is really, really important. So I'll stop there.
Carrie Maurer [00:22:51]:
I could keep going, but I'm going to just pause and see if that's the direction you wanted to go.
Sara Payne [00:22:55]:
Yeah, no, and obviously these things take time to build, right? And so there's this theme coming through, right? And as we talk about not just sequencing, but the discipline. It's not urgency for urgency's sake, right? It's, it's taking the time to slow down and build this and make sure it's sequenced correctly. And that's where then the organization is going to be able to breathe and that confidence builds because they're going to see that, that strategic foundation that was missing is finally there. And I think that's when that confidence is going to rise pretty quickly.
Carrie Maurer [00:23:38]:
I agree. And I think it's where everything ties back to the issue. When we think about how we have a conversation with the CEO or we think about metrics, if when we think about useful signals, So, and this is where everything ties back to where we started this conversation, or when we think about that conversation with the CEO and how we think about the measurement or effectiveness of marketing. If marketing's job is to help decisions move forward, then marketing should measure evidence of movement, not just evidence of attention. And we certainly are so accustomed to clicks and downloads and did somebody attend an event. And those are useful signals. They tell us whether something caught attention, certainly. But whether a message resonated enough for someone to take a first step is only just a tiny set of the equation.
Carrie Maurer [00:24:42]:
Again, valuable, but those metrics answer a different question. They tell you whether people notice something. They don't tell you whether a decision, you know, progressed. I think that's the thing that really where we want our marketing organization to influence is whether a decision that a company is making internally progressed or not. And when we're talking about revenue impact, the more meaningful question becomes, did the conversion— or did, sorry, did the conversation advance to a new stage? Did additional stakeholders become involved? Did key concerns become clear? Or those are observable signals that confidence and alignment are increasing. So I think, you know, it's, it's, that's the dynamic I think we really want to eventually have marketing get to and influence.
Sara Payne [00:25:33]:
Yeah, I love that point so much, Kari. And really, as I think about this whole conversation we've had today, one of my big takeaways is, you know, when B2B marketing works, it's because it's accountable. And that accountability is to revenue, to helping those buyers feel more confident moving forward and to making those decisions. Easier. I think you've described that beautifully. And I want you all to know that we're going to continue this conversation with Kari in a Part 2 episode coming out in a couple of weeks, where we'll dig into why so many teams struggle to deliver on that accountability. And I'm really looking forward to that part of the conversation. Kari, thanks so much for being here and bringing such a grounded, real-world perspective to this.
Carrie Maurer [00:26:18]:
My pleasure. Thanks, Sara.
Sara Payne [00:26:20]:
And in the meantime, Carrie, before we get to episode 2, where's the best place for listeners to connect with you?
Carrie Maurer [00:26:26]:
I think LinkedIn would probably, you know, be the best place and the quickest way.
Sara Payne [00:26:31]:
Wonderful. Thanks again, Carrie. And thank you to everyone listening. If this conversation has resonated, be sure to subscribe to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. We'll see you next time.
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