Budgets are flat or shrinking. Acquisition costs keep rising. Targets keep going up. That is the new normal for B2B marketing leaders. The instinct is to “do more with less,” but that often spreads teams thin and lowers impact.
At ChannelEngine, a marketplace integration platform connecting brands and retailers to 1,300+ marketplaces like Amazon, Zalando, Walmart and Bol, Dana Connor, VP of Marketing, faced that reality head on. Her team size was reduced. Budgets stayed flat. Growth still had to happen. The result is a practical model any SaaS company between €2M and €200M ARR can apply to keep moving forward without inflating costs.
Building a system for performance with restraint
Dana’s operating system rests on a few principles: centralize what scales, localize what converts, align tightly with sales, treat AI as a teammate, sequence lead gen and demand gen deliberately, adapt to LLM-driven search, and design a team that creates growth paths without adding headcount.
1) Centralize what scales. Localize what converts.
The fastest way to waste budget is to rebuild repeatable motions country by country. The fastest way to miss revenue is to ignore local nuance.
Centralize the scalable layer.
Search optimization, marketing automation, global LinkedIn programs, nurture flows, e-books, webinars, newsletters. Build once. Roll out everywhere. Maintain centrally to protect quality and velocity.
Localize the conversion layer.
In-person activities like trade shows, hosted dinners, country-specific sponsored campaigns, and selective content translation. Local teams decide what matters most in their market.
Guardrail: only localize what you can maintain. Translations multiply upkeep. If a flow or asset changes monthly, keep it global. If it is a flagship, evergreen conversion asset, localize and version control it.
Why this works: scale without bloat at the center, relevance at the edge.
2) Run small ABM pods where sales, marketing, and partners sit together.
Account based marketing worked best when it was truly cross-functional and close to the ground.
The pod setup:
- 1 salesperson or AE
- 1 BDR
- 1 marketer
- 1 partner manager
Pods build short, targeted plays against named accounts, using local intel and competitor context that rarely shows up in global dashboards. ChannelEngine is now doubling down by adding an onboarding specialist and a customer success manager to the regional pod. That tight loop turns new wins into retained revenue faster.
Why this works: focus, faster feedback, shared ownership of pipeline and post-sale outcomes.
3) End the sales versus marketing bickering with shared planning and review.
Alignment is not a slogan. It is a calendar, a budget, and a recurring meeting.
Plan the budget together.
Targets by country, plus how the marketing budget maps to those targets. Commit jointly. No surprises.
Quarterly or half-year runbooks.
Publish a consolidated calendar of themes, content, events, and sponsored campaigns. Sales signs off before execution. If it is not on the sheet, it is not happening.
Regional plans that are actually useful.
For each country, define ICP criteria, the competitor to beat, and any emphasis in local messaging. Keep it in a simple spreadsheet so teams use it, not ignore it.
Qualified lead evaluation.
Every month, review disqualified leads, lead scores, and conversion trends. Adjust criteria. Improve forms. Tighten follow-up SLAs.
Why this works: decisions move upstream, waste goes down, and the pipeline reflects reality, not opinions.
4) Treat AI as a full team member to increase output and improve relevance.
AI is not only for copy speed. It is a strategic assistant across the funnel.
Content and production velocity.
Landing pages, emails, and first drafts move faster with AI support, then get refined by humans for accuracy and tone.
Research and enablement.
AI helps assemble competitive intel and battle cards quickly, keeping pods current in dynamic categories.
Voice of customer at scale.
Upload recordings of won-deal calls. Have AI synthesize pain points and triggers. Feed those insights back into messaging, offers, and sequences. Campaigns become more relevant because they mirror what buyers actually say.
Working model: present your plan to AI like a colleague. Ask what is missing, how to optimize, which angles to test. Use it as a sparring partner, not just a drafting tool.
Why this works: more campaigns launched with tighter fit to buyer language, without adding headcount.
5) Sequence lead gen and demand gen instead of debating them.
You do not need a new religion. You need a sequence.
Start with lead gen to capture in-market demand.
Gated content, webinars, newsletter signups, conversion-focused paid. Build the content factory rhythm first. ChannelEngine aimed for one e-book and one webinar per month to establish cadence and train the organization.
Layer demand gen to expand future consideration.
PR, podcasts, radio, and ungated content to build authority and future intent. Accept that attribution is fuzzier. Track directional signals like branded search, direct traffic quality, and assisted conversions.
Why this works: early pipeline remains healthy while you invest in brand energy that pays compounding returns.
6) Adapt your strategy to the LLM era of search.
Search behavior is shifting. More questions go directly to LLMs. Google’s AI Overviews compress clicks. The outcome is a rise in zero-click answers and lower organic CTR.
Strategic response: optimize for LLM visibility.
- Structure your content. Clear paragraphs, bulleted lists, FAQs, and listicles make answers easier to extract.
- Diversify formats. LLMs consume videos, guides, and PDFs, not just web pages. Tag, expose, and interlink those assets.
- Earn authority signals. Thought leadership, primary research, and PR that generates unlinked brand mentions help LLMs trust your brand.
- Publish original data. Commission research in your category. Primary studies are favored sources for summarization and citation.
Why this works: you meet buyers where answers are generated, not only where links are clicked.
7) Design the team so top performers grow without adding headcount.
Retention is strategy. In SaaS, career ladders can be short. Create growth paths that do not require new FTEs.
Two-stage team design:
- Phase 1. Specialists build the foundation: website refresh, positioning, and messaging.
- Phase 2. Cross-functional campaign squads execute. Ownership shifts to outcomes, not functions.
Promote through responsibility, not requisitions.
When a senior lead left, Dana split the scope across three high performers, creating promotions and growth paths while saving an FTE. Morale increased because opportunity was visible and earned.
Why this works: you keep your best people, increase bandwidth, and maintain budget discipline.
What happens when you get this right
Global motions stay efficient. Local motions convert. Pods create focused pipeline and faster time to value. Sales and marketing spend less time arguing and more time executing. AI increases both throughput and message-market fit. Your brand shows up in LLM answers and in trusted media. Your best people see a future with you.
The result is consistent growth without constant hiring or reactive spend.
Final takeaway
Scaling smarter is not about squeezing the same plan harder. It is about deciding what scales globally, what converts locally, and where humans and AI do their best work together. As Dana Connor puts it, growth comes from finding what works for your company, doing it consistently, and doubling down.
Watch Dana’s full keynote from SaaSiest Amsterdam 2025 here: https://saasiest.com/scaling-smarter-how-to-drive-growth-with-leaner-teams-and-budgets/
