The default response to a failing marketing function
When revenue stalls and leads dry up, the founder’s gaze usually lands on the same desk: the Head of Marketing’s.
It’s an understandable impulse. Marketing spend is visible. Results feel attributable. And replacing a senior hire creates the reassuring sensation of doing something.
But in fifteen years of building and restructuring commercial teams, I’ve found this instinct is wrong more often than it is right.
What a real audit reveals
A structured commercial audit examines three things before it looks at any individual’s performance:
- The brief — Was marketing ever given a clear, measurable commercial objective, or just a budget and a vague instruction to “generate leads”?
- The infrastructure — Does the CRM reflect the actual sales process? Is there an agreed definition of what constitutes a qualified lead?
- The SLA — Is there a written, signed agreement between Sales and Marketing on handoff criteria, follow-up SLAs, and shared pipeline targets?
In my experience, fewer than one in five SMEs have all three in place.
When none of them exist, you don’t have a marketing problem. You have a systems problem — and replacing a person only delays your reckoning with it.
The cost of misdiagnosis
A mis-hire costs, conservatively, 2–3× the annual salary of the person replaced — once you account for recruitment fees, onboarding time, and the opportunity cost of a function running at 40% capacity for six to twelve months.
More damaging still is the signal it sends to the team that remains. High performers read the room. When they see accountability applied to individuals rather than systems, they start updating their CVs.
The right first step
Before you make any personnel decision, commission an audit. Not a marketing audit in the sense of reviewing brand assets and campaign creative — a commercial audit that maps the entire revenue engine: how demand is created, how it is qualified, and how it is converted.
The findings will either confirm that a personnel change is warranted — or they will surface the structural issue that has been quietly limiting every team member who has sat in that seat.
Trusted Marketing conducts structured commercial audits for founders and CEOs of SMEs. The engagement typically spans two to three weeks and produces a prioritised action plan. Book a discovery call to discuss your situation.