What Makes a Great Demand Gen Leader

And why most get it wrong

I used to think great demand gen leaders were the ones with the biggest budgets and the flashiest campaigns. Then I watched a teammate get promoted over me despite having half my budget and a fraction of my SQLs.

Here's what I learned about what actually makes someone great at leading demand gen teams.

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👋 Hi, it’s Kaylee Edmondson and welcome to Looped In, my newsletter exploring demand gen and growth frameworks in B2B SaaS. If you’re one of the 24 people that have subscribed since last Sunday, hello! So glad you’re here—you’ve just joined 2k+ marketers who read Looped In every Sunday.

Keeping today’s article short and sweet as I’m heads down prepping the analysis from the 2025 Demand Gen Report. For all of you who contributed, thank you so much! Exciting learnings I’m trying to bundle up and share with you all by next week.

🚨 New job alert: If you’re in the market for a new DG gig - I’ve got the perfect one. Full transparency, I’ve been advising the UserEvidence team for a little over a year now and have absolutely loved every minute of it. Mark’s built an insanely talented marketing team, plus they take insane trips to Jackson Hole. What more could you want? Check it out.

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The Problem Nobody Talks About

Most demand gen leaders get stuck in what I call the "metrics hamster wheel." They're so busy optimizing CAC, reporting on MQLs, and justifying spend that they forget the most important part of their job: developing people who can think strategically about revenue.

I've seen brilliant individual contributors get promoted to leadership roles and immediately start drowning. Not because they don't know demand gen - they're experts. But because they don't know how to help their team see beyond the next campaign.

Here's My "Great Demand Gen Leader" Framework

After watching both terrible and exceptional demand gen leaders, it boils down to 5 characteristics that separate the good from the great:

1. They Translate Business Problems Into Demand Problems

Average leaders ask: "How do we hit our MQL/SQL target?"

Great leaders ask: "What's preventing our ideal customers from recognizing they have a problem worth solving?"

I learned this the hard way once when our team spent 6 months optimizing email open rates while sales complained that our leads didn't understand the value of our solution. We were solving the wrong problem entirely.

The tactical bit: Great leaders spend time with customers who didn't buy to understand the gap between marketing's message and buyer reality.

2. They Make Attribution Everyone's Problem (Not Just Marketing's)

Here's the thing about attribution that nobody wants to say out loud: most of it is educated guessing.

Great demand gen leaders don't hide from this. Instead, they make revenue attribution a cross-functional conversation. They sit in sales calls, they review deal post-mortems, and they ask uncomfortable questions like "What did the customer say convinced them to go with a competitor?"

What this looks like: Monthly "revenue reality checks" where marketing and sales review 5 closed deals together to understand what actually influenced the buyer journey vs. what the data suggests.

3. They Develop "Revenue Intuition" in Their Team

I once worked with a demand gen leader who could look at campaign performance and immediately spot what was wrong. Not because she was psychic (though that would be amazing), but because she'd taught her team to think about campaigns in terms of buyer behavior, not just metrics.

She'd ask questions like:

• "If you were a prospect, what would make you care about this?"

• "What objection is this campaign trying to overcome?"

• "How does this move someone closer to buying?"

The result: Her team could adapt campaigns in real-time because they understood the why behind the what from the eyes of the buyers.

4. They Fight for Reasonable Timelines

This might be the most underrated characteristic. Great demand gen leaders protect their team from the "we need leads tomorrow" pressure that destroys long-term strategy.

They educate stakeholders on real marketing timelines. They push back on unrealistic expectations. They help the business understand that sustainable growth takes time to build. This is truly so difficult. You have to have the will to lead these uncomfortable conversations with confidence.

Example: Instead of promising 50% more leads next quarter, they say "Here's what we can realistically deliver in 90 days, and here's the foundation we're building for 6-month growth."

5. They Make Failure Safe (But Learning Required)

Every great demand gen leader I know has a story about a campaign that bombed spectacularly. But here's what separates them: they made the failure a learning opportunity for their entire team.

They don't just analyze what went wrong. They systematically document what they learned and how it changes their approach going forward.

The framework: After every major campaign (win or loss), they run a 30-minute team discussion on:

• What worked better than expected?

• What assumption was wrong?

• What would we do differently?

• How does this change our approach to similar campaigns?

I even once had a brilliant CS leader that held open-forum calls each week that anyone could join where the CS team candidly talked through their failures each week. She coined it: F*ck Up Fridays. Needless to say, it was a really well-attended optional call.

What This Actually Looks Like Day-to-Day

Great demand gen leaders spend less time in spreadsheets and more time in conversations. They're in sales calls, customer interviews, and cross-functional planning sessions.

They ask better questions:

• "What's our customer's biggest fear about making this decision?"

• "Where do our best customers go for advice before they talk to us?"

• "What would have to be true for this campaign to change behavior?"

And here's the part that surprised me most: they're comfortable not having all the answers. They position themselves as strategic facilitators, not demand gen gurus. No one needs another guru - we’re all learning something new every day here.

Real Talk

Building a team that thinks strategically about revenue is harder than hitting SQL targets. It requires patience, curiosity, and a willingness to have uncomfortable conversations about what's actually working.

But when you get it right? Your team becomes a revenue engine that adapts, learns, and grows sustainably. Instead of just executing campaigns, they're solving business problems.

What I wish someone had told me earlier: The best demand gen leaders aren't the ones with the most sophisticated attribution models. They're the ones who help their team understand customers so deeply that the right campaigns become obvious.

See ya next week!
Kaylee