The winner of a B2B selection process made the buyer's day-one shortlist 95% of the time, and 94% of buying groups ranked that shortlist before ever contacting a vendor, according to 6sense research. For a new growth leader, that single statistic reframes the job: most of the buying decision is finished before your first call.

The pressure on the people charged with reversing that dynamic is measurable. Gartner found 73% of CMOs describe growth expectations as high to overly ambitious, while marketing budgets have held flat at roughly 7.8% of revenue since 2022. Spencer Stuart puts average CMO tenure at about 4.1 years — among the shortest in the core C-suite.

Growth leaders entering a company face unrealistic expectations around pipeline and revenue numbers, which creates huge pressure to execute immediately, the analysis argues. In the era of AI, execution has become easier and easier. But it doesn't guarantee success — in many cases it runs counter to it.

Why does more execution produce less growth?

Deloitte found 66% of companies report AI productivity gains, yet only 20% report revenue gains. Gartner adds that 72% of sales organizations report low reinvestment of the time AI saves. Go-to-market teams, in short, get caught on a hamster wheel of producing more without the structure to produce something better.

Buyer behavior has changed dramatically, particularly in B2B. Forrester found 94% of buyers now use AI in their buying process. The traditional education play — build awareness volume, drive to an educational PDF, fill the top of the funnel — no longer matches how buyers find answers.

"Those days are over," the analysis states.

Where do buyers actually find and trust vendors?

A more useful framework splits channels into two jobs: some help buyers find you, others help them believe in you.

The data behind that split:

• Pew Research: searchers click 8% of the time when an AI summary appears, versus 15% when none shows up.
• Gartner: 67% of buyers want a rep-free experience, yet 69% want a rep to confirm what AI told them.
• 6sense: 62% of buyers need a seller or vendor to answer AI-related questions that websites don't.

That last figure puts the role of the corporate website itself in question. Standard features, functionality and promotional copy are not enough for buyers who need deeper validation of a brand, the analysis argues.

What does consistency have to do with churn?

McKinsey found inconsistent information across teams is the top reason buyers switch vendors or suppliers. That raises the bar for resource-constrained teams running multiple channels.

Channels that help buyers find you are best served by strong product marketing and content leaders who enable ops personnel to produce consistent touchpoints. Channels that make buyers believe in you require deeper sales cooperation, evidence within the customer base, and top-level thought leadership.

A concrete example: one CEO consistently pushed promotional LinkedIn direct messages that didn't resonate. When he switched to providing value — industry data and his own perspectives — the interactions changed almost immediately. It is easy to declare a channel dead; it is harder, and more productive, to reassess what the buyer needs from it.

One asset that proved effective recently was an industry report breaking down data and lessons from one geography that could apply to another. Delivered in an event context at the right moment, it produced deeper sales conversations in the new market.

What should the first 30 days look like?

The first 30 days as a growth leader may be best spent finding out where the buying process breaks, the analysis concludes. That means asking:

• Do you have enough top-of-funnel volume to be seen, and are GEO and paid ad efforts making buyers aware of what you do?
• Does your website drive deeper interaction, or just high bounce rates?
• Are you creating surfaces where buyers can validate their research and build trust?
• Are your events enabling salespeople to answer deeper questions rather than repeat what buyers already know?

As a fractional marketing leader, the author was recently asked to help a company win its first 10 customers in a new geography. The assessment covered available channels, how sales interacted with buyers, and where to build thought leadership. Telling that story in email and social, combined with effective BDR outreach and a central event, hit the targets — an outcome a traditional split of paid ad spend and standalone BDR work would not have delivered.

The takeaway for incoming growth leaders: use the first 30 days to assess each channel against the new buyer reality and design interactions that let the company scale over time.