At some point in the last couple of years, the word "lead" stopped describing reality.
Most enterprise teams already use ABM strategies to target accounts. They map buying groups. They orchestrate across stakeholders. To be clear, ABM isn’t new, but many still measure revenue as if one engaged individual = one opportunity.
The thinking hasn't caught up with the process.
Over the past five years, buyer behavior has shifted decisively toward group-based decision making. Digital research deepened. Committees expanded. Internal consensus became the barrier. Now AI is accelerating the drift, inflating engagement metrics and making individual activity an even weaker proxy for intent.
A recent Forrester report on the B2B Revenue Waterfall argues that lead-centric systems distort performance because they fail to reflect the reality of buying groups.
We’re reading that report through the lens of themes we’ve been covering here: credibility gaps, activity inflation, confidence as conversion, and structural alignment between sales and marketing.
The lead isn’t dead. Not exactly.
It’s just not the right unit of value anymore.
In this issue:
We’re fully in the age of the buying group
Opportunity: Redefining the unit of growth
—Jay & Adam at FamousFolks
💼➡️💥
💥 MARKET MOVES:
We’re fully in the age of the buying group
The most important shift in B2B over the past decade has been a change in the buyer.
Forrester’s latest work makes the case plainly: the B2B buyer is a buying group, not an individual. Decisions are made by collections of stakeholders each with different incentives, risk tolerances, and definitions of value.
We all understand this, so on its face it sounds obvious.
But most demand engines still behave as if one engaged person equals one potential deal.
You’re not going to need all those fingers for this new way of thinking about revenue.
Five people from the same company download assets related to the same solution. Traditional systems often record five leads. In reality, that’s one emerging opportunity, one buying group coalescing around a need.
Lead-based waterfalls were built for a world where individual inquiries flowed toward qualification and handoff. The updated revenue model shifts the focus to opportunities connected to buying groups, tracked from targeted account through engagement, prioritization, qualification, and into pipeline.
In this environment, an individual lead tells you very little.
Buying group momentum tells you much more.
👉 Takeaway:
If the buyer is a group, your revenue model can’t be built around individuals.
🤝 Buying groups don’t buy features. They buy confidence.
We help B2B teams create buyer confidence through sharper messaging, disciplined creative decisions, and brand systems built to scale.
Rethinking how your revenue engine works?
🌋 DEMAND & GROWTH:
Opportunity: Redefining the unit of growth
If the buyer is actually a buying group, growth logically cannot be measured in leads.
It has to be measured in opportunities.
Most enterprise teams have adopted ABM, so the surface layer of creating demand has changed, but the deeper layer of how demand is measured often hasn’t.
Revenue performance is reported through individual activity. MQL volume, lead velocity, cost per lead, etc. This is where the thinking has to change.
Our example above of five stakeholders from the same company engaging around the same solution clearly shows the disconnect: lead-based systems count five potential deals. In reality, it's one opportunity gaining internal momentum.
TFW you realize you’ve been tracking the wrong metric.
Forrester reframes demand around opportunities with connected buying groups, tracked from targeted account through engagement, prioritization, qualification, and into pipeline.
Engagement is interpreted collectively. Progress is measured at the opportunity level. Instead of marketing optimizing individual activity and sales inheriting fragmented leads, both teams align around advancing coordinated buying-group momentum within a shared opportunity.
Then the questions become:
How many buying groups are forming around a defined need?
How deeply are they engaged?
How fast are those opportunities progressing?
👉 Takeaway:
In an AI-accelerated market where activity is abundant and surface engagement is easy to generate, counting people becomes less useful.
What matters is coordinated intent. When you redefine the unit of growth from lead to opportunity, the dashboard often looks smaller. It also becomes more honest.
🔥 FAMOUS TAKE:
If you’re still reporting on MQL volume, you’re measuring noise.
Buying decisions are made by committees. Revenue emerges from consensus. Counting individuals in an AI-saturated market creates the illusion of growth.
—Jay
Thanks for reading. You could be spending your time anywhere. We’re glad you’re here. 💥
—Jay & Adam
Heads Up: In each issue of B2BOOM!, we highlight services from our crew at FamousFolks or friends we trust. When you see the 🤝, it means we’re sharing something we genuinely back. We only shout out things we believe are truly valuable for your business. No shady promos, just stuff we stand behind.