Stop hiring marketers to fix system problems

The pattern is familiar. Output flattens, so the org hires. The new marketer is capable, arrives with a plan, and delivers more activity than their predecessor. Two quarters later the numbers look the same.

This is not a hiring failure. It is what happens when you add input to a system with a fixed loss rate. The new hire inherits the same undefined handoff between Marketing and Sales, the same CRM that cannot see product behaviour, and the same disagreement about what qualified means.

The diagnostic question

Before opening the role, ask: if this person performed twice as well as the last one, which number would change, and by what mechanism? If nobody can name the mechanism, you are hiring to avoid a structural conversation.

What to do instead

Fix the definition first. One shared, computable definition of a qualified customer usually recovers more output than a headcount addition, and it makes the eventual hire effective rather than absorbed.