The Field is a bi-weekly newsletter about how marketing is designed and run in eMobility companies. It's written from the perspective of a fractional CMO working with founders, CMOs, and commercial leaders in the eMobility field.
The most expensive mistake in B2B is hiring senior sales to fix a marketing problem.
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Hi Reader, When revenue growth slows, the reaction is almost always the same. Hire someone who can sell. A senior sales director. A seasoned business developer. Someone with a network, a track record, and the credibility to open doors. It feels like the right move. In many cases, it is the most expensive mistake a scaling company can make. What I'm seeingA senior sales hire in B2B typically costs between €150.000 and €200.000 per year. Sometimes more, once you include on-target earnings, onboarding time and the months before they reach full productivity. That investment can absolutely be the right one. But only when the foundation is in place. What I see in the field is different. Companies bring in senior sales talent before the positioning is clear. Before there is a consistent answer to what problem they solve, for whom, and why now. Before marketing has built any recognition or credibility in the market. The result is predictable. The sales director arrives and starts pushing. But the market does not know the company. The messaging does not land. Every conversation starts from zero. The senior hire ends up compensating for what marketing was supposed to build. That is not a sales performance problem. It is a foundation problem with a €180.000 price tag. The pattern underneathThis happens because sales feels tangible and marketing feels slow. A sales hire produces activity immediately. Calls are made. Meetings are booked. The pipeline starts moving. Leadership sees momentum. Marketing foundation work is different. Positioning takes time to settle. Messaging takes time to sharpen. Recognition takes time to build. The results are not visible in week one or month one. They compound quietly, until the moment they become impossible to ignore. So when pressure rises, sales gets the budget and marketing gets asked to do more with less. The foundation never gets built. And the next senior sales hire faces the same headwind as the last one. In many scaling companies, there is no one at the leadership level responsible for positioning, for messaging, for building recognition in the right market with the right story. Without that ownership, the foundation stays incomplete. And when results disappoint, the answer is always the same. More sales. More activity. More pressure. The cycle repeats. The foundation stays weak. The cost keeps compounding. How I'd approach itBefore adding sales capacity, I would ask one question. Will this person walk into a market that already knows you, or will they have to explain your company from scratch? If the answer is the latter, the foundation is not ready. No clear positioning. No consistent message in the market. No content that builds credibility before a sales conversation even starts. In that situation, a senior sales hire is not an accelerator. It is an expensive workaround. You are scaling effort before you have built demand. I would start by establishing ownership. Someone at leadership level who is responsible for the foundation, not just for campaign output. Someone who can answer clearly what the company stands for, who it is for, and why the market should care now. Then build the foundation before you scale the team. Define the position. Clarify the message. Create the conditions where sales can do what sales is supposed to do. Not explain the company from scratch in every call. But walk into conversations where the market already knows the name, understands the value, and has a reason to listen. That is what a strong foundation gives a sales team. Not leads. Credibility. A great salesperson cannot fix a foundation problem. They only expose it faster. Your perspectiveHave you seen this pattern? Where did the pressure land in your organisation, and what was the cost? See you in two weeks, Theo Reichgelt Connect with me on LinkedIn |
The Field
The Field is a bi-weekly newsletter about how marketing is designed and run in eMobility companies. It's written from the perspective of a fractional CMO working with founders, CMOs, and commercial leaders in the eMobility field.
Hi Reader, Most marketing inconsistency does not look like a crisis. It looks like momentum. A new campaign launches. A content series begins. A channel gets prioritised. But six months later, everything has quietly stopped. And somewhere in your market, someone else has not. This is not an execution failure. It is a pattern. And it is more damaging than most leadership teams realise. What I’m seeing I will be honest. I recently lost a client. After almost six months of work, they decided to...
Hi Reader, This weekend edition of The Field is about a pattern I see repeatedly in scaling B2B tech companies. Growth slows down. Marketing becomes more important. The company decides it is time to professionalise the function. The logical step feels obvious. Hire a Head of Marketing or a Marketing Director. The expectation is simple. Once this person is in place, marketing will finally be “handled”. In practice, that is rarely what happens. What I’m seeing In many scaleups, the senior...
Hi Reader, In the first edition of The Field, I wrote about the gap between where a company is today and how its marketing is structured and led. That gap rarely shows up in a brand discussion or a strategy document. It shows up in performance. Revenue problems rarely start in sales When numbers dip, forecasts tighten and targets come under pressure, sales is usually the first place leadership looks. Pipeline coverage. Conversion rates. Individual performance. Activity levels. But in many...