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Why CEOs Blame Marketing When the Pipeline Slips · MATCH B2B INSIGHTS

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  It's-it's three weeks before the-the Q3 board meeting, and the sales pipeline
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  looks...
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  well, it looks flat.
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  And suddenly, everyone in the executive suite starts looking at the marketing
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  manager like they've committed a crime.
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  It's the classic scapegoat play, right?
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  Oh, absolutely.
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  The pipeline dips, and the immediate reflex is, "We need new messaging,
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  we need new ads, let's fire the marketing person."
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  It is the-the ultimate low-hanging fruit for a CEO who needs to show the board
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  they're "taking action."
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  It's a-a psychological band-aid, really.
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  As an organizational psychologist, I see this pattern constantly.
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  The average tenure of a B2B marketing manager now hovers around eighteen months.
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  Think about that-eighteen months!
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  You barely have time to understand the product-market fit, let alone build a
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  scalable engine, before you're out the door.
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  Eighteen months is-is nothing in B2B tech or industrial manufacturing where the
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  sales cycle itself can be nine to twelve months!
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  You're literally firing the person who planted the seeds before the first sprout
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  even breaks the dirt.
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  And-and what happens?
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  The next person comes in, spends six months "auditing" the old strategy,
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  throws out the existing agency, buys a new piece of software,
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  and by month twelve, they're-they're facing the exact same pressure.
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  It's a revolving door that costs companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost
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  momentum.
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  Exactly, Dafna.
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  And-and the real tragedy is that we're treating a systemic issue as a personal
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  failure.
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  We need to stop asking "who do we blame?"
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  and start asking "what is actually broken in our operational plumbing?"
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  Yes!
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  It's about moving from emotional reaction to a cold, hard diagnostic.
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  Before a CEO signs that severance package, they need to run a rigorous audit.
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  We've-we've structured this into five core tests.
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  If you can't answer these five tests honestly, you aren't fixing your
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  marketing-you're just creating a new vacancy.
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  Welcome back to MATCH B2B Insights.
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  I'm Benny Fluman, CEO of MATCH B2B, and today we are going deep into the boardroom
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  dynamics of marketing performance.
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  We aren't here to give you generic HR advice or talk about brand awareness "vibes."
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  We are talking about revenue systems, structural alignment,
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  and executive decision-making.
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  And I'm Dr.
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  Alexandra Sterling.
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  My focus is on how organizations actually behave when pressure mounts.
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  Why do smart leaders make hasty, expensive personnel decisions?
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  How do we build cultures where performance is measured objectively,
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  rather than by who has the most convenient excuses?
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  And I'm Dafna Cohen.
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  I look at this from the perspective of infrastructure and plumbing.
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  If the marketing manager doesn't have the right tools, the right data,
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  or a clean hand-off to sales, even a superstar is going to look like a failure on
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  paper.
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  Let's look at the mechanics of why these systems break down.
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  Perfect.
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  So let's-let's lay out the framework.
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  We've developed a five-part diagnostic test that every CEO must run *before* they
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  make the decision to fire their marketing leader.
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  If you fail even one of these tests, the problem isn't your marketing manager-it's
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  your business model, your culture, or...
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  well, you.
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  Let's start with Test Number One: Goal and Metric Stability.
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  Alexandra, you see this from the leadership side.
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  How often do the goalposts move mid-game?
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  Oh, constantly, Benny.
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  It's-it's what I call "shiny object syndrome" at the executive level.
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  A CEO attends a weekend conference, hears about a new competitor doing product-led
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  growth, and on Monday morning, the marketing manager's entire strategy is thrown
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  out.
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  Suddenly, we aren't chasing enterprise accounts anymore; we're trying to build a
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  viral self-serve loop.
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  And they expect this transition to happen in, what, two weeks?
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  If you change the target metrics every ninety days, you have zero stability.
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  You can't evaluate performance if the definition of "success" changes every time the
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  wind blows.
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  Right.
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  If you agreed on a ninety-day plan to build brand authority through deep-dive
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  technical content, and then thirty days in you're asking "where are the
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  direct-response demo requests?"-that's a leadership failure.
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  You've-you've broken the contract.
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  It creates psychological paralysis.
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  When employees realize that their goals are arbitrary and will change before they
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  can hit them, they stop trying to build long-term value.
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  They just focus on "activity theater"-showing slides of busywork to survive the next
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  executive meeting.
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  Which leads us directly to Test Number Two: The Unicorn Trap.
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  This is where a company hires a single "Marketing Manager" and expects them to write
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  the copy, run the Google Ads, manage the HubSpot workflows,
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  design the graphics, write the technical whitepapers, and-and negotiate
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  sponsorships.
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  It's insane.
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  They-they want a strategic CMO who will also do junior-level graphic design for five
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  thousand dollars a month.
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  It-it doesn't exist!
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  You've hired a tactical specialist-maybe they're great at running events or managing
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  social media-and then you're angry because they don't know how to build a
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  comprehensive global go-to-market pricing strategy.
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  It's a structural misalignment.
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  You have to match the profile to the actual stage of the company.
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  If you need a builder who can set up the infrastructure, don't hire a pure brand
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  strategist who is used to directing large creative agencies.
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  And vice versa.
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  I had a B2B SaaS client recently who fired three marketing managers in two years.
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  When I audited the role, they were asking this person to manage two external agency
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  partners, write five blog posts a week, optimize their paid spend,
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  and clean up their entire CRM data.
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  One person!
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  The system was designed to crush whoever sat in that chair.
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  Okay, let's move to Test Number Three: The CRM Hand-off.
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  This is the-the classic "Marketing vs.
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  Sales" war zone.
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  Dafna, what does a broken hand-off look like in a typical B2B company?
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  It's simple.
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  Marketing works incredibly hard, spends twenty thousand dollars on a targeted
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  LinkedIn campaign, and generates fifty high-quality, intent-driven leads.
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  They push them into the CRM.
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  And then...
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  nothing.
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  They sit there.
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  The sales team doesn't follow up for three weeks, or when they do,
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  they send a generic, cold email that makes no sense.
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  And then, during the sales pipeline meeting, the Head of Sales says,
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  "These marketing leads are completely useless.
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  None of them are converting."
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  Right?
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  Exactly!
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  "They're just junk."
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  But when you look at the data, the average response time from sales was fourteen
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  days.
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  In B2B, if you don't respond to a high-intent inquiry within twenty-four hours,
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  the lead is dead.
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  They've already moved on to a competitor.
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  But the marketing manager is the one who gets fired because the "revenue from
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  marketing" is zero.
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  We see this all the time at MATCH B2B.
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  We call it "lead leakage."
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  If your CRM pipelines aren't integrated, if there's no SLA-Service Level
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  Agreement-between marketing and sales on response times, then your marketing budget
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  is just...
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  you're-you're throwing it out the window.
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  And firing the marketing manager won't fix your lazy sales process.
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  This brings us to Test Number Four: True Execution Authority.
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  Did the marketing manager actually own their budget and their strategic choices,
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  or were they micromanaged to the point of paralysis by the CEO?
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  Oh, we've all seen the "CEO as Chief Creative Officer."
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  The type who spends three hours arguing about the exact shade of blue on a PDF cover
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  page instead of focusing on market positioning.
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  Yes!
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  "My wife doesn't like that font, let's change it."
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  If the marketing manager has to get approval from three different non-marketing
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  executives just to publish a single LinkedIn post, their execution velocity drops to
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  zero.
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  They-they become order-takers.
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  They stop taking risks, they stop innovating, because it's easier to just do what
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  the boss says, even if they know it won't work.
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  It's a control issue.
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  If you don't trust them with the budget and the strategy, why did you hire them?
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  If you treat them like an assistant, don't blame them when they deliver
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  assistant-level business results.
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  Which leads us to the final, and perhaps most critical test,
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  Test Number Five: The Feedback Loop and the Performance Improvement Plan,
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  or PIP.
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  But I-I don't mean the HR paper-trail PIP where you're just documenting a paper
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  trail to avoid a lawsuit.
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  I'm talking about a high-integrity, diagnostic PIP.
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  Yes, a strategic PIP is not a death sentence; it's a-a laboratory experiment.
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  You isolate the variables.
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  You say, "Okay, we agree there's a performance gap.
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  For the next sixty days, we are going to remove all the noise.
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  We are giving you clear, stable goals, a dedicated budget, and daily alignment.
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  If the system is clear, and you still can't execute, then we have our answer."
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  It's about removing the excuses.
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  If you run a high-integrity PIP and the marketing manager still can't deliver on
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  agreed-upon, realistic deliverables, then-and only then-do you know it's a
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  capability issue.
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  It gives the CEO absolute clarity, and frankly, it gives the employee a fair,
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  data-driven chance.
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  And if they fail that test, then you part ways.
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  But you do it cleanly, you protect the systems, you document the processes,
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  and you make sure you don't just hire the exact same profile to repeat the exact
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  same cycle.
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  Exactly.
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  Before you fire, diagnose.
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  Make sure you aren't punishing a person for a structural failure that you created.
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  Well said, Alexandra.
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  That's all the time we have for today's episode of MATCH B2B Insights.
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  Run these five tests before you make your next move.
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  Talk soon, everyone.