By someone who’s seen great products die under the weight of bloated pipelines and broken funnels.
I once worked with a founder who proudly told me, “We’re generating over 20 leads monthly.”
Three months later, the product was struggling, the sales team was overwhelmed, and the revenue graph looked flatter than a spreadsheet error.
More leads weren’t the answer. They were the problem. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth:
“Sometimes, startups don’t drown from starvation. They bloat from indigestion.“
The Great Lead Illusion:
In the early days, leads felt like gold dust. Every form submission, every demo request, every download triggers a “Dopamine Hit.”
Founders chase volume, thinking that if they just pour enough traffic into the top of the funnel, some magic will happen at the bottom.
But magic doesn’t scale.
What they end up building is not a revenue engine—but a noise machine. One that demands more Founder’s Time or more SDRs, more follow-ups, more nurturing, more tools, more dashboards—until the team burns out chasing people who were never meant to convert in the first place.
The illusion is this: more leads mean more growth.
The reality? More leads often mean more distraction.
What Most Founders Miss:
Founders often mistake interest for intent. A download isn’t a deal, a webinar attendee isn’t a buyer, and a LinkedIn like isn’t a lead.
But when you’re bootstrapped, burning runway, or trying to please investors, it’s tempting to chase numbers you can screenshot.
This is where it gets dangerous.
Because what you’re optimizing for is the wrong thing. You’re measuring volume instead of velocity. You’re incentivizing MQLs over meaningful conversations. You’re giving your team more to do, not more to win.
What you really need is not more leads. It’s more qualified, conversion-ready moments.
The Silent Killers: Leaky Funnels and Lazy Qualification:
Most startups leak revenue at three invisible points:
- Poor Qualification – You’re talking to the wrong people at the wrong time. They’re curious, not committed.
- Inconsistent Messaging – Your pitch morphs from one rep to another. The product sounds different in every demo.
- Bloated Buyer Journeys – No clear path to decision. Just scattered touchpoints, long silences, and ghosting.
The result? Conversion rates drop. Sales cycles stretch. And your best salespeople spend half their time doing admin and re-explaining value instead of closing deals.
All while the “leads generated” number looks great on a dashboard.
From Volume to Velocity: The Conversion Mindset:
The most successful founders I’ve worked with flipped the script.
They stopped asking, “How do we get more leads?”
And started asking, “How do we move serious buyers faster?”
This shift in mindset is everything.
- It changes how you qualify, moving from checklists to conversations.
- It changes how you demo, focusing less on features and more on fit.
- It changes how you follow up, not to “check in,” but to co-navigate decisions.
It forces marketing to think beyond awareness—and start building buyer enablement. It aligns sales around solving, not selling. It creates a rhythm where your team stops chasing interest and starts cultivating intent.
But in that rhythm, there’s a role that often goes unnoticed—yet it quietly orchestrates everything behind the scenes.
Not sales. Not marketing.
The bridge between the two.
That role? It’s the one that listens before it pitches. Surfaces objections before they stall. And translates your product’s complexity into customer clarity.
Most teams call it “presales.” But founders who value conversions know it by another name:
Their unfair advantage.
Product-Led is Not a Free Pass Either
Some founders point to PLG (Product-Led Growth) and say, “We don’t need to sell. The product speaks for itself.”
Sure. But even products need a path. And paths need nudges, context, timing, and trust. Whether you’re sales-led, product-led, or community-led, conversion doesn’t just happen. It’s designed.
Founders who understand this stop glorifying traffic and start investing in important touchpoints.
The Founder’s Real KPI: Conversion Confidence
Ask yourself:
- Do you know why someone converts?
- Can you replicate it across your team?
- Is your pitch repeatable, provable, and friction-free?
If not, no number of leads will save you.
Because growth isn’t about attracting more.
It’s about converting better.
You don’t need a bigger funnel. You need a sharper spear. So here’s the question I’ll leave you with:
Are you chasing popularity—or building persuasion?
#B2BConversionJourney #Presales #PresalesStrategy #GTM #B2B
