Great question. Difficult to answer, without knowing more about you as a human (feel free to reach out to me on LI and we can chat more specifically). That said, here is my general thinking on the subject: First, leverage your experience. You sales background is a huge asset. Use your experiences to help the Marketing team get a better understanding of customer pain points, buyer personas, and the nuances of the sales funnel. Your team will find your knowledge to be invaluable in crafting effective demand generation strategies that resonate with potential customers. That said, you will have a lot to learn about how the function of "demand generation" works. * Digital Marketing: Learn about SEO, SEM, social media marketing, and content marketing. This is often the largest discretionary spend in your entire company. Experts here command executive attention, have a huge impact on spending decisions and can make or break your top of funnel volume. * Marketing Automation Tools: Get hands-on experience with tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot. Learn how scoring works. Get a sense of how email campaigns are developed, what your marketable database looks like, and how you can help the team improve their segmentation efforts. * Data Analysis: Marketing data is adjacent to Sales data, but it's a whole new pile of stuff (100's of metrics across the different parts of the org) to learn. Get a sense of what matters most and what are nice to do metrics. Develop skills in analyzing data to understand campaign performance and ROI. * Content Creation: Work with the content team to understand the machinery. How does content marketing generate leads? What content is mapped to what stage? How is that content scored? You can be a big help here; help the team brainstorm new and relevant topics at the awareness, consideration and decision stages. Help the PMM team develop one pagers for sellers that actually matter. I'd suggest that you work to deepen your understanding of the customer journey from awareness to decision. Spend some time with the PMM team, growth team, or your lifecycle marketing person. Get a sense of how your organization creates create touch points that guide potential customers through the funnel will be essential in a demand generation role. What are the "aha" moments in your product that signal a potential long-term paying customer? How many touches in your SDR sequences or in your marketing nurture emails. One interesting, big concept to consider: How can you start to shift your focus from individual sales (1:1) to broader, more programmatic marketing strategies (1:Many). Consider how you can leverage what you know, and how you can apply it at scale, to attract, engage, and convert leads to closed won. Making this mental shift will be critical to your success in Marketing and Demand Generation. This is a big one, a mandatory IMO. Please please please please please communicate your career aspirations with your current manager or HR department. You need to find the right balance between being direct but non-threatening. You want them to know what you want and when, but not make them feel like you have checked out or are not worth continuing to advocate for and invest in. Managing this carefully will be key to making a smooth transition between roles. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Stay curious, keep learning, and be adaptable to new tools and trends in demand generation. Attend events, participate in webinars, and read read read read read everything you can get your hands on. Continuous improvement will be key to your long-term success, whatever path you choose to pursue. Of course, I'd be remiss if I did not suggest you work to connect with professionals who are already in demand generation roles. You can't go wrong seeking mentorship from experienced colleagues and industry experts. Their guidance can provide valuable insights and help you navigate the transition smoothly. Some thoughts if you are still in your Sales role: Demonstrate your capability and interest in demand generation. Spend some time with your DG partners. Offer to assist with marketing campaigns, contribute to content creation, and help with lead nurturing efforts. Showcase your company knowledge, your proactive approach and you're going to win both kudos and a better chance at landing a Marketing role. Finally, I'd recommend working to build your "T-shaped career." A generalists breadth and broad understanding of marketing concepts will help you accelerate and become successful and valuable in smaller companies. As you grow, you'll develop the long leg of that "T" - your specialization. This will become more and more important as you grow in seniority and look to take on more senior roles. Companies usually hire because they have a problem they want to address, and they are looking for folks who have specialties in addressing them. This WILL become a huge part of your later career value proposition, so start thinking about it now.

Different organizations have various criteria and promotion processes. Depending on your company culture, different leaders will review promotions and sign off on these changes. What I’ll say is these are the typical questions managers and leaders consider before someone is put up for promotion: 1. What are the current business needs? For example, if someone is promoted, what work would they do differently to fill a business gap? People managers usually only open up when the business has a need for an additional people manager. 2. What are the technical competencies someone needs to have at the next level? 3. What brief of work can you point to showcase that this person is already operating at the next level? 4. What peers and leaders can speak to the level of work this person owns? If you are looking for someone to help advocate for you in your promotional journey, it’s essential to have a transparent conversation around the expectations of the next level, and if you are meeting those, provide them clear examples and metrics about how you’ve exceeded in these specific areas. 

Great question! I get asked this all the time. It really all depends on your background, but I would urge you to familiarize yourself with marketing terminology like funnel stages, mqls, lead scoring, conversion rates, etc. I would also review your existing skills to see what would be transferable. Perhaps you are a strong writer, or tech savvy, or someone that is very organized and can project manage. These are all transferable skills. Sign up for free online courses through Hubspot or get certified in the latest automation tools. Find out who in your network has a demand gen role that you can interview. Lastly, whenever you are transitioning from one field to another, it's perfectly acceptable to apply for an entry-level position. Companies don't expect you to know everything, they will train you as long as you have a desire to learn.

Soft skills are more critical when joining a new team, especially in Demand Generation, where collaboration is key. This role requires working cross-functionally with product marketing, creative teams, operations, sales, and paid media, making the ability to lead through influence essential. Strong candidates can build alignment, negotiate effectively, and rally teams behind a shared vision. Emotional intelligence plays a major role in success. Reading the room, understanding team dynamics, and adapting communication styles help drive initiatives forward. Executive presence is equally important—engaging confidently with marketing leaders and sales stakeholders fosters credibility and ensures buy-in on strategic initiatives. While technical skills are valuable, they can be taught. Core Demand Generation competencies, such as campaign execution, analytics, and optimization, can be learned over time. However, soft skills like leadership, collaboration, and adaptability take longer to develop. A candidate with strong interpersonal skills can quickly gain the necessary technical expertise, but even the most technically skilled professional may struggle without the ability to navigate team dynamics and stakeholder relationships.

There are many must-have hard skills for those growing within their demand generation career. 1. Data Analysis: Demand Generation relies heavily on data-driven decision-making. You should be proficient in analyzing marketing data like conversion rates, channel-specific north stars and more in order to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities for optimization. 2. Digital Marketing: A strong understanding of various digital marketing channels and programs within them is essential. This includes knowledge of paid social, display, paid video, paid search and more. Understand what the business impact is for each ex: don't set expectations that paid video will be revenue generating and make sure you understand/communicate the value and impact that a key awareness channel like this drives. 3. TechStack: Familiarity with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics is important for tracking customer interactions, managing customer data, and aligning marketing and sales efforts. An understanding of marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot is crucial for automating repetitive tasks, managing leads effectively, and nurturing prospects through the sales funnel. It's also vital for understanding your lead scoring, routing etc. I think this is the area that sets demand generation mangers that grow in Corporate America apart from those that don't. 4. Content Marketing: Content plays a significant role in Demand Generation. You should have skills in content creation, distribution, and promotion, as well as an understanding of content strategy and how it fits into the overall demand generation framework. 5. A/B Testing and Experimentation: Being able to design and execute A/B tests and other experiments to optimize marketing campaigns and conversion funnels is crucial for continuous improvement and maximizing ROI. 6. Budget Management: As a leader, you'll be responsible for managing marketing budgets and it will continue to grow as you do in your career. Strong financial acumen, being able to justify every dollar allocated and tell the business impact it will make is vital.

I answered this more comprehensively in another question, but to summarize: 1. Vanity Metrics: Anything that can be gamed or doesn't directly reflect impact with your target audience (e.g., raw traffic, followers, engagement metrics, etc.) 2. "Leads" Without Context: There are lots of low-value, scam-y ways you can incentivize someone to fill out a form on the internet. For that reason, "lead" volumes without context (qualification criteria) tell you very little about whether demand gen efforts are working.

* Quarterly OKRs: * Objective: Increase mid-market pipeline by 25%. * KR1: Launch 2 ABM campaigns targeting top 100 accounts. * KR2: Generate $1M in SQLs. * KR3: Improve MQL to SQL conversion from 20% to 25%. * Annual OKRs: * Objective: Achieve $10M in sourced pipeline. * KR1: Launch a lead nurture series to improve lead-to-MQL conversion by 15%. * KR2: Drive a 30% increase in demo requests.

You get a really good sense early on when something is working. Honestly, the best teams sometimes know as they’re building it that they’ve landed on something great. I’m terrible at that; predicting success before launch isn’t my strong suit. If I make a call while we’re building, you might actually be better off betting against me. But once it’s in motion, I know how to read the tea leaves and pick up on signals quickly. That ability to decode early indicators is what increases velocity. It’s not about waiting for a fully matured dataset; it’s about recognizing pattern recognition moments when engagement trends, qualitative feedback, and conversion behaviors start pointing in the right direction. I think experience and data obsession both play a role in this. But it’s also a skill anyone can develop. If you know what signals to look for, whether it's increased deal velocity, compounding engagement, or Sales leaning in harder than usual, you can start scaling smartly and fast instead of waiting for a perfect data set to validate what’s already obvious.

Framing KPIs in terms of control and impact: if you control it or influence it, you can own it. In Demand Gen, we can control lead quality, MQLs routed to sales, and even the initial stages, such as Sales Accepted Leads, meetings, and early-stage opportunities. However, once we move past meetings and into opportunity creation, we enter a gray area. At that point, we’re less in control of what sales is doing during meetings or POCs, making it harder to be accountable for bottom-of-funnel outcomes. Similarly, in a self-serve model, it’s challenging to be fully accountable for results that are dependent on the product experience and UX. We can drive engagement with emails and in-app messages to guide users toward a successful trial, but ultimately, accountability for product and UX changes lies outside of our control.

Given the complexity of the B2B buying cycle, this is not an easy question to answer. Each lead source has a role to play in the buyer's journey and it is important to track the lead source with the right lens. Below is a five-step process that has worked well for me. 1. Define a baseline, track and monitor channel metrics, funnel metrics, and ROI of your paid media channels. * Paid Search and Paid Social * Channel metrics: * Ad CTR * Landing page conversion rate * CPL * Funnel metrics: * MQLs * MQL conversion rate * SQLs * SQL conversion rate * Pipeline sourced and influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio or ARR to spend ratio * Direct Mail * Channel metrics: Items delivered, engagement * Funnel metrics: Pipeline influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio * Trade shows and industry events * Channel metrics Registrations, attendance, and meetings booked * Funnel metrics: MQLs, SQLs, pipeline sourced and influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio * User conferences * Channel metrics Registrations, attendance, and meetings booked * Funnel metrics: MQLs, pipeline sourced and influenced * Channel ROI: Pipe to spend ratio 2. Continuously experiment and optimize every channel to improve efficiency 3. Keep the business objective in mind. Some channels, such as paid social, work well in driving top-of-funnel MQLs, whereas other channels, such as paid search, lean more towards bottom-funnel demo/pricing MQLs that are more ready to buy. Webinars and email nurture help with converting MQLs to SQLs 4. Rank the sources based on business objectives and ROI and adjust as needed 5. Keep an eye out for new sources and experiment to see if they work out!