There’s a moment I’ve witnessed inside dozens of B2B teams across my career.
Marketing has invested in an intent data platform — Bombora, G2 Buyer Intent, TechTarget Priority Engine, 6sense, Demandbase, take your pick. Dashboards are live. Signals are flowing. A weekly export goes to sales. Leadership is excited. Slides with heatmaps of “surging accounts” get presented in QBRs.
Six months later, the tool is under review. Pipeline impact is unclear. Sales reps say the data is noisy. Marketing says sales isn’t following up. And the vendor’s customer success team is desperately scheduling a “re-engagement call” to prove ROI before the renewal conversation.
This story is so common it’s practically a genre. It pretty much is B2B in 2026
And it’s not a technology problem.
The platforms themselves are genuinely sophisticated. The data, while imperfect, contains real signal. The problem is almost always the same: organisations have invested in signal collection without building the machinery for…
