B2B’s Favorite Illusion: Mistaking the Channel for the Cause

Picture this. You run a small business. Forty years strong. Every sale comes through mail order. Real envelopes. Real checks. The kind of stuff that makes Gen Z break out in hives.

Your daughter, freshly minted MBA, says:
“Dad, we need a website. Customers expect it. We’ll get more sales if we put it online.”

But you scoff.
“Nonsense. Our revenue comes from mail order. Mail order is the source. Always has been.”

In your mind, it’s airtight. Customers come through the door marked “mail order,” so clearly mail order caused the business.

This isn’t loyalty to the channel. It’s blindness to the fact that the channel is limiting you.

B2B’s Version of the Mail Order Trap

This is exactly how B2B still treats MQLs.

We think deals happen because of MQLs. We think sales cycles start because of BDR cadences. Why? Because we’ve designed a world where that’s the only visible entry point.

We set up one door. We force every buyer through it. Then we point at the door and say, “See? That’s where deals come from.”

It’s like confusing the doorway for the architect.

The Retargeting Illusion

This logic is the same as why retargeting looks like magic.

Of course people who already visited your site convert more often. They were already hungry. Retargeting didn’t cook the meal. It just showed up with a doggy bag.

It’s like a restaurant owner tipping the valet for “bringing in all the customers.” The valet didn’t cook the steak. He just parked the car.

MQLs are the valet.

The Numbers Don’t Lie (They Just Laugh at Us)

• Buying is done by groups and committees, not lone wolves.

• It takes about a year.

• Buyers interact 100+ times before signing.

• They make their shortlist before your rep even says hello.

• The vendor on top at the first conversation wins 80% of the time.

Does that sound like your MQL door is doing the heavy lifting?

We Built the Illusion Ourselves

Then we institutionalized it.

MQLs became goals.
Lead scoring became religion.
SDRs became addicted to the pipeline drip.
Attribution models became the funhouse mirrors that make it all look real.

We didn’t just build a door. We built a cult around it.

Open More Doors

If you only leave one door open, buyers can only walk through one door. That doesn’t mean the door caused their interest.

Growth means building more doors. Meeting buyers further down the street. Talking to them before they stumble into the one door you left open.

That means:

• Letting them self-educate without your forms tripping them up

• Tracking signals across the whole journey, not just the part you like to measure

• Marketing that creates demand, not just collects it

You can keep tipping the valet. Or you can finally admit the customers were coming to eat long before he grabbed the keys.