Hire a demand gen marketer for your B2B SaaS company

By Kim Talarczyk, founder of Demand Recruiting

For founders who can close, and who do not have enough conversations to close.

Hire a demand gen marketer when the constraint is pipeline, not a brand, a website, or a content calendar. You want someone who has built a channel that created qualified meetings or trials, and who can tell you which part they owned. If you are still deciding whether you need marketing at all, start with how to hire your first marketer.

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When the problem is pipeline

A demand gen hire is a specialist, not someone who also fixes positioning, content, or marketing ops. If any of those are still unsettled, sort them out on how to hire your first marketer first. Stay here if the gap is conversations with buyers.

I look for a simple split. You can describe who buys, and you can explain why recent deals closed. What you do not have is enough of those conversations. The pipeline is still mostly your network, or a channel you do not have time to run. Sales can take a meeting and move it forward. The calendar is not the thing that is stuck.

You also have to be willing to judge this person on qualified meetings, trials, or pipeline. Traffic and a list of names nobody calls are activity. They are not the job.

When a generalist or a fractional marketer is the better first step

Do not hire a demand gen specialist to figure out whether you have a market.

I would not open this search if nothing has produced pipeline yet and you cannot point to one channel worth scaling. I would not open it if you cannot describe what this person would do in the first few months. And I would not open it if you are hoping they will tell you who the customer is.

In that spot the work is still "find a channel," not "scale one." A hands-on generalist, or a fractional marketer, is usually the better first step, and I have partners who do exactly that kind of work. See my partners page for an introduction. For the fuller picture of when it's too early for a first marketer, see the first marketer page.

What a demand gen hire should own

They own the path from a stranger to a qualified conversation, and the record of which path worked.

What they own	What good looks like	What they should not be handed
One or two channels that create conversations	They can say what they tried, what they stopped, and what they would scale	A mandate to do all of marketing, with no priority
A definition of a qualified meeting or trial	Sales agrees with it before the search starts	A lead number that sales does not recognize
The handoff into sales	A meeting or trial arrives with context, and someone owns the next step	Closing the deal, unless you have said that is a different role
Source tracking	You can see which channel created the conversation	Designing the whole CRM and forecast. That is a RevOps hire when it is the real problem

Paid ads can be one of those channels. But a person who can only spend a budget, with no view of what became pipeline, is the wrong hire. So is a person who only ran a channel someone else built and never had to choose where the next effort went.

If you are comparing a demand gen seat with a growth leader title, check out growth marketer vs head of growth.

The work I would put in front of them

I would not hand a new demand gen hire a blank "own growth" line and wait. The early months should be narrow.

Sit with sales long enough to see how a deal actually moves, not only how the deck describes it.
Pick one channel to push and one to stop, based on what is already creating conversations.
Put a source on every meeting or trial, so you can see what created it.
Write down, with sales, which conversations they will take and which they will send back.

I would not ask for a full website, a brand, and a content program in the same stretch. If buyers do not understand what you sell, or nobody can find a clear page that explains it, that is a different problem. Sort it on the first marketer page before you write a demand gen req.

What to ask them to prove

I use the same four checks I use on every GTM search. Have they been accountable for revenue, not only activity? Do they understand how you sell? Can they plan and still do the work? Are they comfortable with tracking and the tools? The longer version is on how a search with me works.

For this seat I want one story, told in order.

One channel they built or clearly rebuilt, at a company that did not already hand them a full team.
What it cost in time and money, in their words, not against a made-up benchmark.
What it produced that sales would count, such as meetings or trials, not a pile of names.
Which parts they did themselves, and which parts they inherited.
What was already working when they arrived. If the pipeline was there before them, the story is about keeping it going, not building it.

A bigger-company background is not a no. I ask what they built without a large ops team behind them, and what broke when they had to do the unglamorous parts. A title and a logo are weak proof. So is a media plan that never had to connect to a meeting a seller would take.

Demand gen and the first seller

I would not hire this person to feed a calendar you cannot cover.

If deals are waiting on you, and you can explain why they close, the next hire is usually a seller. Read how to hire your first AE before you add a marketer. If you can close what comes in and not enough comes in, demand gen can come before a second seller, or beside the first one. That is a judgment about the constraint, not a fixed order. I lay out the sequence I usually see in the first 5 GTM hires.

Sales should meet the finalists. They are the ones who will live with the definition of a good meeting. If they are not in the process, you will hire someone whose pipeline sales does not want.

Where this search goes wrong

The req says "own marketing." It attracts everyone and convinces no one, because nobody can tell what they would do on Monday.
You judge the hire on traffic, followers, or a lead count sales will not call.
You want one person to create the pipeline, close it, rewrite the site, and rebuild the CRM.
You have not chosen a channel, and you have also not admitted that the first job is to find one. That is the generalist or fractional case above, not this search.
The budget and the scope do not match. A senior judgment on a junior scope, or the reverse, is something strong candidates notice quickly. I do not put numbers on this page. If the scope and the offer are out of line, we should fix the scope before I source anyone.

How I run a demand gen search

You work with me, Kim Talarczyk, on every search. There is no hand-off to a junior recruiter or an account team.

We write the constraint first. Pipeline, not a vague marketing job. We agree what a qualified meeting or trial is, with the person who will take those meetings.
We name what is in scope and what is not, so the req is not "do everything."
I look for people who have built that kind of pipeline at a company your size, including people who are not posting resumes.
I screen the proof story. What they owned, what it took, and what sales would have counted.
I run the process with you, help with the offer, and check in while they start.

You can compare the three ways to work together, and the guarantee, on the services page.

Who you'll work with

I've worked inside B2B SaaS companies through growth phases, stalls, and the run-up to an exit, so I understand what founders and GTM leaders are carrying when they need their next hire.

More about me

Strong marketers will check you before they say yes. What great GTM candidates look for is the list I want founders to be able to answer.