Episode #267:

Maryna Stavnycha, Former Chief Marketing Officer at SupportYourApp, explains why a predictable pipeline comes from learning systems, not fragmented funnel activity. She shows how teams can replace guesswork with repeatable loops, sharper ICP decisions, and clearer downstream metrics. She also makes the case that marketing must own business impact, not just output. Her perspective reframes marketing as the function that aligns teams, captures customer reality, and earns trust.

“Predictable pipeline is about building a system that learns first, aligns teams, and earns trust. When teams are aligned, growth becomes explainable and repeatable.” – Maryna Stavnycha

In this episode, Maryna explains how B2B leaders can move beyond fragmented funnel activity and build learning systems that improve with every cycle. She shares practical guidance on ICP definition, downstream metrics, internal alignment, and customer insight, showing how trust and repeatability turn marketing into a true growth function.

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[Transcript]

[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome, everyone, to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we have Maryna Stavnycha on. Now, Maryna, you are a Chief Marketing Officer. You’re at SupportYourApp, which I’d love to hear more about. But what is really interesting that you’re bringing onto the podcast today is what I would call a balance between a really business-minded outcome approach as a Chief Marketing Officer that really helps you get the seat at the table, right? And it’s all about outcomes, but you’ve got a very R&D kind of focus to it, right? You know, there are no random acts, right? Things are very well orchestrated and laid out.

[00:00:49] Steve MacDonald: In fact, I wrote down a couple of things. You talk a lot about how there is, in a lot of companies, a lot of activity, but not a system, right, that you test and you refine and create predictable playbooks. We all, as CMOs, need to be accountable when we are in front of the board. They want to see how you are predicting the pipeline.

[00:01:15] Steve MacDonald: So we are going to peel that back today and talk about that. But what I’d love to do is just give you a moment here, if you could expand a little bit more on your background.

[00:01:24] Maryna Stavnycha: Yeah. Hi everyone. So I’m excited for this conversation because, definitely, the topic we picked with you, Steve, the predictable pipeline, is very bold.

[00:01:36] Maryna Stavnycha: I would say, and yeah, this is the thing that I want to tell and repeat after you again. So most teams have activity, but fewer have a system that learns, aligns, and compounds. I’m almost sure this is going to be a bold and really meaningful conversation. So yeah, and I’m a former CMO at SupportYourApp, and I didn’t wake up as a CMO. It was an evolution rather than a revolution.

[00:02:05] Maryna Stavnycha: So, just from the execution level, I moved to the system level of decision making. So, over the last 10-plus years, I’ve worked at B2B Tech and services companies. I’ve built multi-channel demand generation engines across paid SEO, Trends, and GEO, but always tied to downstream metrics like pipeline and payback, not vanity numbers.

[00:02:31] Maryna Stavnycha: And also a lot of my work is building the operating systems, cadence, testing, clear scale kill decisions, and also cross-functional alignment. Because growth doesn’t come from activity, it comes from alignment as well. And only when you have alignment does growth become explainable and repeatable.

[00:02:57] Maryna Stavnycha: So not random wins. Yeah. That is about me, and yeah, we are really excited about this conversation.

[00:03:04] Steve MacDonald: Well, good. Before we start, you have a friend in the room with you that you shared with me earlier, and I’d love to get a peek at them.

[00:03:12] Maryna Stavnycha: Yeah. Yeah. This is my dog. It’s a mix between the Maltese, as we already discovered with Steve.

[00:03:18] Maryna Stavnycha: This is a mix between a Maltese and a Poodle, so the common name phrase is Maltipoo.

[00:03:24] Steve MacDonald: Oh, I love that. I’ve got five dogs. I’m a big dog lover, and I’m certifiable, in fact, as a dog owner. But here’s what I’d love to do. I want to start out. You talked about funnel thinking, which was not correct in your mind, fragmented funnel thinking. What does that mean? If you could kind of bring us up to speed on that.

[00:03:45] Maryna Stavnycha: Yeah. This topic is very common nowadays, and I will explain it using funnel thinking. Teams usually optimize parts in isolation, so you can have segments, channels, and a lot of tests, but no strategy that connects them into a single, repeatable loop.

[00:04:00] Maryna Stavnycha: So you can scale parts, but it stays fragmented. It’s busy, but it’s not compounding. So when you shift to loops instead of funnel thinking, you stop asking, how do we push more people through stages? But you start asking what repeats and improves with each cycle, and insights from one cycle feed the next.

[00:04:40] Maryna Stavnycha: So as a result, targeting gets sharper, messaging gets clearer, qualification improves, and proof shows up at the right place. And that’s what makes growth sustainable. So funnels scale activity, but loops scale learning. And if I had to boil it down, I would say activity isn’t growth, but repeatability is. This is the phrase I already told you about in our previous meeting. Yes. So I think this is really bold.

[00:05:09] Steve MacDonald: You talk about these systems as predictable pipeline systems and really refining, moving from guesswork to fast learning. We could talk about predictability in there. We could talk about guesswork. How do we get to fast learning? Because that’s what we really need to do. We need to learn. We need to know what’s working and what’s not. And especially, you know, the word fast in there, I’m fascinated with because everything is always changing.

[00:05:28] Steve MacDonald: You know, I was just on, I recorded a three-time B2B CRO, and he goes, Steve, what I’m doing now, I wasn’t doing three months ago. Right. So our operating environment is always changing. So how do you get to this fast learning that then does predict pipeline?

[00:05:56] Maryna Stavnycha: Yeah. You might have good months, for example, but you can’t explain why, and you definitely can’t repeat it. And in this case, what makes all the difference is treating the pipeline as a learning system, not a planning system.

[00:06:12] Maryna Stavnycha: That is what that looks like in practice. So a learning system is one where each cycle answers the following questions. What did we learn? What will we change next? What decisions are we making: scale, iterate, or kill? And a planning system instead answers what we will do this month or next month. How many activities will we ship?

[00:06:32] Maryna Stavnycha: So this is the main shift from funnels to loops, and from just activities to a predictable pipeline and fast learning. So I will give you a simple structure to build that learning in your team. For example, in any company, you can do that.

[00:06:56] Maryna Stavnycha: So first, you should ask what the main bottleneck is right now. Are we attracting the wrong people? Are people dropping by the website? Maybe meetings are happening, but not turning into real opportunities. So predictability and learning start when you fix the biggest bottleneck, not when you do more stuff, more activities, more campaigns.

[00:07:21] Maryna Stavnycha: So after that, you just turn your idea that you have in the team into clear bets. Instead of letting’s run a campaign, you say, if we change this for this audience, we expect this outcome because of this reason. So you don’t launch activities. You place small, clear bets.

[00:07:51] Maryna Stavnycha: And then the one that is very important. So you need to measure early signals to tell you whether it’s working. Because payback and revenue take time, you need to watch early indicators, such as whether people are booking meetings. Are meetings turning into real opportunities? So you don’t wait months to learn. You track all the signals that predict the outcome.

[00:08:00] Maryna Stavnycha: And as the last stage you have, every week or biweekly, I don’t know the cadence you will choose for, you need to review what you learned and make a decision if you scale, if it’s working, iterate if you just see some signals but it needs improvement, or you kill it if you receive no signals. You just need to stop wasting time on that. So this is maybe a small, short structure for that fast learning.

[00:08:32] Steve MacDonald: So, two things that I’m dying to ask about. This one is the kind of system, which means you’ve got to have a piece of your budget that you’re always allocating to testing something new, right. Like this idea, you know, the word playbook is kind of a dirty word these days because the minute we think we have a playbook, it’s the minute that the playbook stops working, right?

[00:09:00] Steve MacDonald: Testing, reiterating is a part of what we just need to be doing, right? We can’t just sit back on our laurels and all that. The other thing I just want you to comment on overall: there is not a defined question in this, but all of this testing and refining has to have the right beginning, right? Because I can’t tell you how many C-suite executives I talk to that still have difficulty just defining their ICP, right?

[00:09:23] Steve MacDonald: So all these down pipeline signals and measurements and testing and refining, if it’s all coming from an ICP that is not well defined, you’re wasting your time, right? So how do you ensure you’ve got the right ICP to begin with, and how do you get that internal collaboration and alignment?

[00:09:46] Maryna Stavnycha: Okay. Let’s say, how do you find your ICP? It’s like from a product perspective. ICP isn’t who buys; it’s who gets value fast, stays with you for the long term, and expands. And to find the ICP, you need data to analyze, segments to define, and to determine who reaches value quicker and who reaches it predictably.

[00:10:11] Maryna Stavnycha: So maybe I would say that you need to find the ICP based on tests, definitely.

[00:10:20] Steve MacDonald: It has to have its due diligence, right? You cannot gloss over the definition of the ICP and think that the rest of the R and D phase that you are going to go through, and the testing and the refinement, is going to be on track. If you are not starting out with the right ICP, or at least what, as a company, you think the right ICP is. Too many companies race forward without even really having a good definition.

[00:10:44] Steve MacDonald: Right? And then sales is constantly changing what that definition is because they are trying to hit a quota, right? And so the whole organization is then trying to reformulate, from product to marketing, and then customer success is bringing in people that are outside of the ICP. It is so disruptive across the board. So I think maybe just the idea that it is foundational to everything we do, and we have to spend time doing it.

[00:11:15] Maryna Stavnycha: And ICP definitely is not about guessing, but about discovering through behavior, through data. To identify the ICP, you should start from analysis and look for patterns that you have.

[00:11:30] Maryna Stavnycha: So, who activates fastest? Who reaches value faster and who has the least friction? Who returns definitely, and who expands. So yeah, I think this then becomes a loop when you test and iterate on that.

[00:11:50] Steve MacDonald: I love the idea, though, that you are looking at your ICP with hindsight being 20/20, right?

[00:11:56] Steve MacDonald: Because what we think is the best ICP, but if they are the ones that churn and do not stay, but there is another group that does, there is obviously something we need to pay attention to there, right? So all that existing client data we have is a huge opportunity to help define the ICP. And what you started talking about there, like churn rates, IRR, you are talking about real business outcomes.

[00:12:24] Steve MacDonald: In defining your lens of how you look at developing a pipeline through business outcomes. When you talk about business outcomes, how do you think about them, and how do you look at those outcomes to help create a more predictable pipeline?

[00:12:41] Maryna Stavnycha: So I think when marketing is not connected with business outcomes, you will see a lot of motion like campaigns, content, traffic, events. And it can even look great in marketing dashboards.

[00:12:55] Maryna Stavnycha: But when you zoom out, there is no clear line to pipeline, to quality payback, to revenue. So the shift here is when marketing is accountable for downstream outcomes and downstream metrics. Then the question changes from what we shipped to what moved the pipeline. What improved conversion? What should we scale or kill?

[00:13:18] Maryna Stavnycha: So this is where I am pretty direct. If marketing cannot explain its impact on the business, it is not a growth function; it is a service function. This means you are executing requests, executing tasks, and shipping assets, but you are not owning the system that generates revenue.

[00:13:53] Maryna Stavnycha: And to be fair, that can be totally okay at some companies, at some stages, because some companies intentionally run marketing as a support function. For sales, for example. The problem is when a company expects a predictable pipeline and efficient scale, but marketing is still set up like a service desk. And this mismatch is what creates frustration between the company CEO and CMOs, and marketing growth and other teams, and the board, for example.

[00:14:18] Steve MacDonald: What I love about that is there are so many CMOs that have imposter syndrome, right? They have a hard time earning a seat at the table, and they are looked upon as if they are as good as your last MQL. You are one of the biggest cost centers in the company, right? So if you do not align with business outcomes.

[00:14:44] Steve MacDonald: You are relegating yourself to be a service organization instead of a driver, right? Like we just had the conversation about the ICP. Who owns the ICP? Who defines the ICP? Who has more of a relationship with the ICP, right? Who should understand the ICP and explain that it is the voice of the customer, right?

[00:15:09] Steve MacDonald: Who should be bringing the voice of the customer into every department, right? There is such a tremendous role that marketing plays in impacting outcomes. That means you have a vital seat at the table. It is not just, can I get it? It is a revered seat at the table.

[00:15:27] Maryna Stavnycha: Absolutely agree with you, but I will add here that, as I always say, marketing is the whole company.

[00:15:31] Maryna Stavnycha: The richest insights are usually sitting with sales, with support as well, and with customer success. Because they hear the objections. They know about failed deals, escalation calls, but still.

[00:15:53] Maryna Stavnycha: When those insights do not flow into marketing and growth, marketing teams start guessing. That breaks what you like, I know, trust. Because it breaks trust internally, and we see it externally. It lands in mismatched messages, in wrong promises, and in poor-fit leads.

[00:16:00] Maryna Stavnycha: For me, I think that marketing is about the whole company. So I think everybody should be involved in this and should have an interest in that. Because this is a shared reality with the team, the company, and your customers.

[00:16:28] Steve MacDonald: So here is what I love about that perspective. I have never heard it put quite that way: that marketing is the entire company. Because you are right. Sales is having conversations with prospects every day. Customer success is having conversations with customers, and loyalty, and stimulating repurchase.

[00:16:46] Steve MacDonald: So if we do not have all of those conversations informing the conversations that marketing is having too, I mean, most CMOs, when they start out, what is the first thing we do? We call customers in a non-sales environment.

[00:17:00] Steve MacDonald: Right? And we just learn. Customer advisory boards, NPS surveys. We all have bits and pieces of the voice of the customer. Who brings all those together, right? Because those voices are happening. Those conversations are happening all over. Whose job is it to bring them all together and make sense out of it?

[00:17:23] Maryna Stavnycha: Yeah, definitely marketing. Definitely, the Marketing team is the onedoing that. Yeah, who is responsible for that? Here, I totally agree that marketing is, let’s say, one point of truth for everyone, but it should still be a system.

[00:17:41] Maryna Stavnycha: We are marketing. I like to say that you will never fully be in your customer’s shoes. So the only way to get there in their shoes is to build a system inside the company that brings their world into your company. To be that trusted peer, vendor, or partner, you need more than feedback.
[00:18:04] Maryna Stavnycha: You need a shared reality with your customers. And what does it mean? It is to know about the constraints, what they are afraid of, and what success looks like for them. And this is definitely shared with all the departments in the team, especially as I have already mentioned.

[00:18:26] Maryna Stavnycha: Like marketing growth, customer success, support team, sales teams, and delivery. Who is responsible for delivery? So this is a shared responsibility and shared reality for the whole company, for the company and the customer.

[00:18:43] Steve MacDonald: I just love the way that you think, right? You are like, you know, hey, we are never going to walk a mile in their shoes.

[00:18:50] Steve MacDonald: So, how do we operationalize bringing that into the company? How do we make sure? Because what ends up happening is that there was an incredible study McKinsey did in 2023 that said less than 15 percent of companies actually execute on a voice of the customer strategy. In other words, we are making up our minds ourselves.

[00:19:13] Steve MacDonald: We think we know a lot. And the thing is, we take fragmented views of the customer. A sales department, right? When somebody talks to sales, there is a shield up between the conversation, right. And so the buyer is playing their cards close to their chest. They are not unveiling their deepest, darkest secrets, right?

[00:19:37] Steve MacDonald: There is tremendous learning there. That is one silo of learning. Customer success, one of their biggest KPIs, is cross-sell and upsell. There is a very large sales KPI that they are judged on, right? So marketing needs to take these silos into account across all our conversations, the proactive voice of the customer, operationalizing that, and bringing it all together.

[00:20:06] Steve MacDonald: I have to tell you, when I talk to other CMOs, they say that this is the number one way that they earn a seat at the table because they are the only ones that are addressing the entirety of the voice of the customer, the highest voice of authority in the business, because nobody else is taking that mantle. It is not their mantra, right?

[00:20:27] Maryna Stavnycha: I have a trick. How to get sales or support to share insights. I like to make it lightweight and useful. Do not ask the sales team to provide you with a report. Ask for the top patterns they are seeing, and then show them you turn those patterns, those insights, those ideas into battle leads.

[00:20:54] Maryna Stavnycha: Easier sales conversions. Because sometimes it is just because they do not see that. They just provided you with a report. What did you do with that? You just say, oh, we created some campaigns. No, that is not what they want to see.

[00:21:00] Maryna Stavnycha: So you need to provide them with feedback. So we took your insights and created this, and we received this. So this will be a proven case for them that this works.

[00:21:18] Steve MacDonald: I love that because individual conversations and reports are just more siloed, fragmented data patterns. I love the way that you ask for that. What are the patterns that you are seeing, right?

[00:21:38] Steve MacDonald: Because that crosses conversations. That boils up the most important parts with just a simple, easy question. What are the patterns of what you are seeing, right? That is really good. That is really good.

[00:21:43] Maryna Stavnycha: This can be like a small call, even if you do not want to bother them with emails or something like that. So you can just. This is about the cadence. This is about the operating system. So you just set up a weekly 20-minute call and like the top three customer insights from sales, support, and success managers.

[00:22:01] Maryna Stavnycha: You then tag them into clusters. For example, you have objections, decision criteria, why now, and common fillers. And then you turn one insight into one action. So you can update messaging. You can make enablement based on those insights that do not change anything, and are just notions.

[00:22:25] Steve MacDonald: It is a way to boil it down. You are taking the lead, getting the right information, bringing it in, and looking at everything you have. This has to increase, which is one of the biggest friction points in most companies: the alignment between sales and marketing.

[00:22:49] Steve MacDonald: But what you are doing is ensuring that marketing is focusing on the right things and in a collaborative way. So I just wanted to accentuate that point. You know, there is so much that we have talked about here. I just want to make sure that you have an opportunity to answer this one question.

[00:23:00] Steve MacDonald: If there was one takeaway that you wanted to have C-suite executives, CEOs, CROs, CMOs, CDOs, you name it, that are tuning into this episode, if there was one thing that you wanted them to take away, what would that be?

[00:23:17] Maryna Stavnycha: I think we got a bunch of punch one-liners here from our conversation. But if I had to leave people with just one, it would be predictable pipeline is not about doing more. It is about building a system that learns first, aligns teams, and earns trust.

[00:23:37] Steve MacDonald: That is beautiful. I have to tell you that is going to be my takeaway, right? The alignment, the building, the trust, getting to the right questions, getting and being on top of that, the voice of the customer for the organization.

[00:23:51] Steve MacDonald: I cannot accentuate how important that is. Our mission here on the podcast is to bring different experiences, perspectives, and insights from all over the world, from across the C-suite. And if we do that and we share, it is like the rising tide that lifts all boats.

[00:24:09] Steve MacDonald: And I just want to say that you were an amazing part of that ride and tide today. And thank you very much for coming on.

[00:24:16] Maryna Stavnycha: Thank you. Thank you, Steve. I really enjoyed this. What I like about your show is that it is not a marketing theater. It is real C-suite conversations about how companies build trust, align teams, and scale responsibly.

[00:24:31] Maryna Stavnycha: Yep. Thank you. Thank you. And if anyone, I do not know, wants to continue the discussion that we have, especially around building the loops and the operating cadences behind Predictable Pipeline, I am happy to connect.

[00:24:45] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. We are going to make sure that your LinkedIn profile and everything is part of how we promote this online.

[00:24:52] Steve MacDonald: So you have done a great job here today. Thank you.

[00:24:55] Maryna Stavnycha: Thank you. Thank you, Steve.