This article is based on a conversation with demand generation marketing experts in a TrustRadius Leaders Tell All panel. You can watch Convergence of Hyper-Personalization, Brand, and Tech in Modern Demand Gen here.

In B2B demand generation, the obsession with volume has created bloated funnels filled with low-intent leads. But leading marketers are making a clear shift: from chasing more to prioritizing quality. They’re using data, buyer behavior, and smart targeting to serve up intent-driven content that accelerates the journey—not just fills the funnel.

“We’re shifting from a quantity metric down to quality,” said Candace Gregg, Senior Director of Demand Gen at BloomReach. “Understanding our TAM, understanding our ICP, understanding where we win, and then bringing in the right leads and opportunities in the companies that we know we can win and that will serve their business as well.”

While a flood of leads might please a dashboard, it rarely pleases sales. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee high conversion.

“When we generate 3x the number of leads that we need to get to that S2 number for us, it actually hurt our conversion rates,” Candace explained. “Whereas when we scoped down who we were targeting, what we were trying to bring in, it actually helped our sales team focus… and there wasn’t all this noise around stuff they probably shouldn’t have been paying attention to.”

This isn’t just theory—it’s backed by performance data. Focused targeting drives better outcomes and creates space for personalization and relevance.

This shift from lead count to conversion rate and velocity is also reshaping how marketing and sales teams work together.

“We’re not having discussions about source, and we’re not having discussions about quality, but really discussions around conversion,” said Kristen Hogan, now CMO of Apptio, an IBM Company. “At the end of the day, it’s the conversion.”

Enabling Sales with Buyer-Driven Insights

For both leaders, buyer behavior and backend intelligence are what power improved prioritization and outreach execution. 

This includes:

• AI-powered lead scoring
• Slack-based lead notifications
• Behavioral signals pulled from platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and PathFactory

“We actually use AI to enhance an autoresponder based on all of the data we have in HubSpot and Salesforce,” Candace said. “It crafts a message saying, ‘This is XYZ about the company. Here’s the page they converted on. Here’s a first email you might want to personalize further.’ And they pop that into their SalesLoft sequence and hit send. The speed to lead just helps them tremendously.”

This workflow gives marketing the ability to create a buyer-driven journey. Rather than forcing leads down a linear nurture path, Kristen’s team uses behavior-based content flows.

“Based on what someone’s consuming, they can jump campaigns. They’re not forced to go through a specific sequence,” she explained. “That lead is who is dictating the information they’re seeing.”

This reflects a broader shift: the buyer is in control, and the job of marketing is to respond—not dictate.

Sales Alignment Built on Trust and Visibility

None of this works without tight alignment. That means shared goals, shared dashboards, and a clear understanding of when to step back and let sales take the lead.

 “We are not going to over-market,” Kristen said. “If you’re working with a particular lead, we’ll pull back our marketing… We won’t actively pursue them. They’re not going to be bombarded.”

And once those boundaries and expectations were in place?

“That’s when we got the groundswell of trust from the majority of sales,” she added. “Listen, we still have lots of room for progress, but I think that’s really what helped turn the corner for us.”

The Takeaway: Listen, Then Lead

The brands succeeding in modern demand gen aren’t the ones making the most noise—they’re the ones listening best. They’re building strategies around buyer signals, sales alignment, and quality over quantity.

“At the end of the day,” Candace said, “If they’re consuming our marketing, if they understand our value prop, they know our brand—when you outbound to them, they’ll probably answer.”