SiriusDecisions Had B2B Marketers in a Chokehold in the Early 2010s — and We’re Still Feeling It Today
Remember the early 2010s in B2B marketing? You couldn't swing a swag bag without hitting a SiriusDecisions framework. These guys had their fingerprints all over everything — demand waterfalls, endless models, and more webinars than anyone could reasonably pretend to be excited about. If you were a B2B marketer back then, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But here’s the thing: While SiriusDecisions gave us structure, they also had us locked into this rigid, one-size-fits-all approach that we’re still trying to shake off. Let's talk about it.
The Demand Waterfall — It’s Not Me, It’s You
Ah, the infamous Demand Waterfall. If you didn’t know it by heart, were you even a marketer? SiriusDecisions gave us this magical framework with its perfect little stages: MQL, SQL, SAL, Closed-Won. It was revolutionary at first, giving us all a structured way to make sales and marketing actually talk to each other. Great, right? But instead of adapting it to our actual needs, most of us just started treating it like scripture. Suddenly, it wasn’t just a model — it was the model. And God forbid your customer journey didn’t neatly fit into those boxes. Flexibility? We don’t know her.
Customer journeys aren’t linear, and we’ve been squeezing square pegs into round holes ever since. Fast forward to now, and guess what? Some people are still using the Demand Waterfall like it’s the only game in town, despite the fact that buyer behaviors have changed about a million times since then. Love you, waterfall, but it’s time we see other people.
The Age of Data-Driven Everything — But at What Cost?
SiriusDecisions also kicked off the whole data-driven marketing craze. And yes, we all love data. We’re swimming in dashboards, lead scoring, attribution models. But what started as a way to make marketing more accountable turned into a numbers obsession that sucked the life out of creativity. Marketers stopped thinking about customers as, you know, actual people, and instead focused on metrics. Was it important to know how many MQLs converted to SALs? Sure. But in the process, we became subservient to the spreadsheet. We chased vanity metrics that made our reports look good but didn’t necessarily move the needle on real engagement. And now, we’re spending more time justifying why our MQLs aren’t converting than actually engaging leads. Data-driven? You bet your cute ass. But also driven to madness by the pressure to make numbers look good.
The Consulting Dependency
Let’s be real: SiriusDecisions wasn’t just selling frameworks. They were selling themselves. They built an entire consulting empire by convincing us that their models were the Holy Grail of marketing. Don’t get me wrong, they were smart. But they also made a lot of teams feel like they couldn’t move forward without a stamp of approval from a self-proclaimed SiriusDecisions expert. Instead of empowering marketing teams to experiment, we all ended up asking for permission. Like, "What does SiriusDecisions say?" became a thing. And suddenly, we weren’t taking risks. We were just waiting for someone else to tell us what to do.
So, What’s the Damage?
Look, I’m not saying SiriusDecisions didn’t do good things. They gave us structure, helped us align with sales, and made marketing way more accountable. But in the process, they also turned us into robots following models instead of marketers willing to take risks and try new things. I think we’re still feeling the effects of that today. We’re still obsessed with models, still chasing data at the expense of creativity, and still feeling like we need someone else to validate our strategies. But it’s 2024, and it's time we take back control.
We need to balance the structure SiriusDecisions gave us with a little more flexibility, creativity, and risk-taking. So, thanks for the memories (even though they weren’t so great) but we’ve got this now.
