The B2B Baggage We All Carry

Amazing book. But despite the title, it’s not really about the physical gear soldiers carried.

It’s about the invisible stuff.
The baggage.
The experiences, fears, assumptions, and stories that quietly shape how people think and act.

Turns out… B2B has a lot of baggage too. 😅

And we’ve been carrying it for so long that we barely notice the weight anymore.

The Stuff B2B Teams Carry Around

In B2B marketing and sales, the baggage usually looks like this:

📊 Lead generation targets
📈 Lead scoring models
📬 Nurture sequences
☎️ Cold calling scripts
📉 MQL dashboards

None of these things are automatically bad.

But here’s the funny part:

Most of us didn’t choose them.

We inherited them.

From the people before us…
who inherited them from the people before them…
who probably inherited them from someone who once read a blog post in 2008. 🤷‍♂️

The Real Weight Isn’t the Tactics

The heavier baggage isn’t the tactics.

It’s the stories we tell ourselves about how B2B is “supposed” to work.

Stories like:

📖 “Lead generation is how companies scale.”
📖 “Email nurture campaigns create demand.”
📖 “Cold calling is how big deals start.”
📖 “More MQLs = more revenue.”

Over time, these stories turn into doctrine.

New hires don’t just join the company.
They get onboarded into the same old narratives.

When Results Drop… We Don’t Question the Story

Here’s where it gets interesting.

When conversion rates fall, what’s the usual explanation?

❌ “The strategy is outdated.”
❌ “Buyer behavior has changed.”

Nope.

The explanation is usually:

“Execution problem.”
“Wrong process.”
“Not enough activity.”

So the story survives.

Even when reality says otherwise.

The Hidden Cost: Folklore Debt 💼

There’s a term for this: Folklore Debt.

It’s the weight of all the inherited B2B stories we keep carrying long after the market has changed.

Stories that once made sense.
But might not anymore.

Yet they keep shaping:

• how we hire
• how we measure success
• how we structure marketing
• how we build pipeline

Maybe It’s Time to Check the Backpack 🎒

Not everything we carry in B2B is wrong.

But some of it might be.

And the real question isn’t:

“Are we executing the playbook correctly?”

It might be:

“Is this still the right playbook?”

Because sometimes the biggest improvement doesn’t come from working harder.

It comes from putting down the baggage we never needed to carry in the first place.