B2B Marketing Blasphemy: Why I Put Myself Before the Buyer (and Didn’t Die Doing It)
After 30 years in B2B marketing, I’ve finally said the unspeakable: the buyer is not the center of your universe. You are. Yes, you. The tired, overcaffeinated marketer staring at their seventh “Just circling back” email of the day.
Before you report me to the Content Gods or drag me into a Miro board of shame, hear me out.
I’ve spent the past three years writing a book about B2B revenue marketing. It started off being about the buyer’s journey — and then somewhere between burnout, a minor medical emergency, and several pints of Talenti Vanilla Bean, I realized: marketers are falling apart. Quietly. Elegantly. Sometimes mid-Zoom.
And we’re pretending like it’s fine.
The Unspoken Marketing Meltdown
Forget AI stealing your job. The real threat is marketers slowly unraveling in open office floor plans and Slack threads that never die.
Here’s what’s actually going on:
72% of marketing leaders feel overwhelmed every single day
63% are one bad QBR away from a full-on stress spiral
54% are experiencing “Quiet Cracking” — it’s like Quiet Quitting but with more crying and less quitting
I lived it. At one point, I was checking my blood pressure during Zoom calls like it was part of the agenda. I once got a kidney stone and was genuinely relieved because it meant I could skip a pipeline meeting.
Let that sink in.
This crisis looks different for everyone:
New marketers are thrown into the deep end with a broken compass, no swim lessons, and a boss who thinks “just make it viral” is a strategy
Veteran marketers are wondering what happened to the career they once loved before every project turned into a 37-tab spreadsheet
Sales and marketing are still locked in their decades-long Cold War over who owns the pipeline, and no one’s winning
Here’s the Twist: The Buyer Is Not the Main Character Anymore
I know. Blasphemy.
But here’s the truth: buyers are doing 95% of their journey without ever talking to sales. And you’re expected to fill that gap… while under-resourced, over-scheduled, and being asked to “make something snackable” for the 100th time.
So yeah — it’s time to stop pretending you’re a selfless content monk and admit it: you matter more than your personas.
If you’re melting down like a candle in Q4, you’re not going to build pipeline. Or brand. Or anything besides maybe a nervous twitch.
Your Actual Superpower: Not AI — Just Staying Sane
The marketers who are going to survive this mess aren’t the ones with the fanciest martech stacks or the most robust MQL definitions. It’s the ones who can:
Make decisions with 40% of the data and 0% of the context
Learn faster than a platform release cycle
Influence without authority (basically Jedi marketing)
Stay functional without rage-quitting Slack at 2 PM
Burned-out marketers do not create compelling campaigns. They create passive-aggressive slide decks and forget what day it is.
This Book Was Therapy (For Me — Hopefully You Too)
Over the past three years, I’ve interviewed 50+ marketing leaders, rewritten entire chapters because AI keeps evolving faster than my sleep schedule, and ultimately had to transform the way I think about marketing altogether.
This isn’t a playbook. It’s a survival guide.
It’s the permission slip you didn’t know you needed to stop being a martyr for pipeline and start being a human again.
If you’re tired of pretending to love “growth loops” while secretly Googling how to fake a power outage during meetings — welcome. You’re not alone.