The Pipeline Gap: Why Skills and Processes Matter More in 2026
When organisations plan their marketing and sales budgets, the focus is often on channels: campaigns, ads, events, and content that will generate leads. While these are critical investments, there’s a less visible, but equally important, part of the pipeline engine that often gets overlooked: the people and processes that turn engagement into revenue.
At TCB, we see it every day. A well-executed campaign can generate interest, but without the right skills, processes, and culture behind it, those leads may never convert. Your budget isn’t just about channels; it’s about the people and systems that make them work.
Why budget isn’t just about channels
Traditional marketing and sales budgets tend to prioritise visible outputs: webinars, paid ads, content production, and trade shows. Our 2025 marketing spend survey highlighted where marketers said their budgets were going: 83% cited content and SEO, while 17% focused on outbound calls and emails.
While these channels are important, there are less obvious areas that can have a significant impact on pipeline performance: investments in the people and processes that make campaigns work. These sometimes-overlooked areas usually determine whether leads generated through campaigns actually convert. Consider:
Skills and training: are your sales and marketing teams equipped to engage, nurture, and qualify leads effectively?
Processes and alignment: do marketing and sales operations share insight on buyer behaviour, and are handovers smooth?
Enablement technology: are the right tools in place to make people more efficient and effective?
Without these in place, even the most sophisticated campaigns risk underperforming. Budgeting for people and process ensures that generated interest is captured, nurtured, and converted efficiently.
In 2026, you’ll need more than content
The industrial buyer journey has shifted dramatically. For years, manufacturers assumed deals were won during demos, plant tours, or late-stage pricing conversations. Today, buyers (engineers, plant managers, and procurement teams) research and self-educate long before ever speaking to sales, quietly eliminating vendors along the way.
According to Ed Cinefro’s article on the “silent stage” of the industrial buyer journey, this is the period where buyers research anonymously long before they ever speak to sales. Buyers spend the majority of their research time online: reviewing spec sheets, application notes, case studies, operational guides, and sustainability documentation. By the time the buyer engages with sales, shortlists are often already formed.
This makes it clear that content alone isn’t enough. In 2026, organisations must invest in:
Structured lead qualification processes: to ensure early interest is captured, nurtured and prioritised efficiently.
Sales and marketing alignment initiatives: ensuring everyone understands the journey and their role in it.
Employee advocacy and social selling programs: buyers trust people more than brands, so when your people share and talk about your content, it’s more likely to reach the right buyers.
These investments ensure that your organisation can influence buyers during the critical “silent stage” of the journey, rather than waiting until it’s too late.
Budget line items you might not currently treat as “marketing spend”
Some high-leverage areas often overlooked include:
Sales training on content and ABM: helping sales staff to use materials strategically, not just distribute them.
Marketing enablement on account insights: use the insights you already have about key accounts (what they’re browsing, downloading, researching, or asking about) to shape your marketing activity.
Internal process technology: CRM, automation, and reporting tools that make collaboration and handovers between marketing and sales smoother.
Lead qualification framework: a clear method for assessing and prioritising early-stage interest so genuine opportunities aren’t missed.
These are not just “nice-to-have” elements of your marketing and sales strategy. They can directly impact revenue by turning leads into opportunities faster, delivering better ROI.
Real-world impact: enabling people drives faster conversion
The key to success is balance. Investing only in channels without enabling the people who activate them often leaves the pipeline underperforming.
One industrial client, Servomex, partnered with TCB to introduce a structured lead qualification process for their gated content downloads. As a result, they achieved:
20% of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) converted to sales-qualified leads (SQLs): ensuring sales focused on genuine opportunities.
A steady stream of high-quality leads: improved visibility into early-stage buyer interest.
More efficient sales follow-up: sales could prioritise engagement and shorten the pipeline.
This demonstrates a simple truth: budgets succeed when the people and processes behind them are enabled - not just the tactics.
Final thought
As you plan your 2026 budget, remember that the hidden drivers of growth are often the most impactful. Investing in people, skills, and processes, not just channels, ensures that every lead is followed up, every buyer feels seen, and every campaign delivers its full potential.
At TCB, we help organisations bridge this gap, aligning marketing and sales, building enablement programs, and ensuring that the human element behind the pipeline is as strong as the campaigns themselves. Because at the end of the day, it’s your people who turn interest into business. To find out more, get in touch with TCB today.