The inevitable problem with measuring B2B marketing by leads

B2B companies today can track almost every movement a prospect makes, yet the numbers that appear most prominently on dashboards can still have little connection to the number executives and stakeholders ultimately care about: revenue. 87% of B2B marketers found it increasingly difficult to measure the long-term impact of campaigns, while nearly half were required to justify marketing spend to CFOs and CEOs every month.

This pressure is intensifying as software buyers take increasingly complicated routes to purchase. Gartner found in 2026 that B2B buyers use an average of seven information sources during a purchase, with 45% turning to generative AI during their research. At the same time, 67% preferred a completely digital, sales rep-free buying experience. A click therefore marks an increasingly small moment in a much larger commercial journey.

Yet marketing reporting can still end at the first conversion. A campaign generates leads, and the cost per lead looks acceptable, yet the harder question comes later: did those prospects enter a qualified pipeline, did they become customers, and did the advertising spend produce an economic return? Often, there’s a disconnect between what B2B marketing teams are trying to accomplish and what they measure, with lead-based metrics remaining widely used even as companies pursue account-based growth.

The problem becomes sharper in software markets, where a purchase can involve several stakeholders and repeated research before a deal closes. Gartner found that 74% of B2B buying teams experienced unhealthy conflict during the decision process, while buying groups can span five to 16 people. Attribution, under those conditions, is less a reporting exercise than an attempt to reconstruct how a commercial decision actually happened.

It is this gap that Waqas Khokhar, founder and CEO of ScalixAI, has made pivotal to his thinking. Khokhar, who spent nine years at Google before building the company, approaches paid advertising through the lens of the business outcome it is meant to influence. His argument lies in the belief that marketing should ultimately be accountable for the commercial journey it helps create.

Khokhar believes the difficulty starts with attribution itself. “The biggest issue is that companies don’t understand how individual channels influence the end goal, which is revenue,” he explains. In a product-led business, that means understanding how far a customer travels after arriving. In a sales-led model, he argues, obsessing over the cost of a booked demo can obscure whether those demos are producing commercially viable opportunities.

His experience at Google also shaped his view of how paid search should be managed. “Google Ads is ever-changing and ever-evolving, and most people don’t know how to move with the way the algorithm moves,” Khokhar argues. His analogy is a boat in a storm: fighting the current with a fixed playbook makes little sense when the environment itself keeps changing.

The more consequential shift, however, is what happens after the click. Khokhar states, “We want to know: what did I invest, and what did I get out of it?” CAC and CPA still have a role in establishing healthy economics, he argues, but pipeline and closed revenue provide the harder test.

ScalixAI’s reported client outcomes are used to illustrate that philosophy. Khokhar points to Oneleet, which generated 660 demos alongside more than $1 million in closed revenue and more than $2 million in active pipeline. Fyxer, he points out, reached more than 10,000 customers while recording 20x revenue growth within a year, while PAM AI delivered more than 3x ROI within months. These figures form the evidence behind the company’s argument that advertising needs to be evaluated inside the wider revenue system.

Khokhar puts the philosophy in more human terms. He observes that the company’s core values emerged through working with clients instead of being selected as abstract corporate principles. Referrals have since become its main sales channel, he notes, with client recommendations providing evidence that the partnership model is carrying weight commercially.

That model also shapes how ScalixAI charges. The company uses a flat retainer, a structure Khokhar frames as a reflection of where the agency believes its interests should sit: with the client’s growth rather than with the size of the media budget. Khokhar similarly argues that an agency should function as an extension of its client’s team, with regular communication and a genuine understanding of the business.

The operational challenge now is scale. Khokhar highlights that ScalixAI moved from zero to roughly 30 clients in 14 months, with selectivity playing a large role in protecting the company’s culture. He recalls terminating one relationship only days after it began because the working expectations were fundamentally misaligned. “Protecting the team’s energy is part of the job,” he argues.

His next target is growing clientele, supported by the systems and processes he began building early in the company’s growth. The larger question, though, reaches well beyond one agency. As B2B buyers move across search, social, AI, and human validation, marketers face a growing demand to prove what their activity actually produces.