The New Board Agenda to Achieve Growth

Richard O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer at B2B Marketing, shares why traditional growth structures are breaking down across modern B2B organizations. He explains why CEOs and boards must rethink how sales, marketing, brand, and customer understanding work together to drive sustainable growth. He also explains why disruptive thinking is necessary to reinvent the way organizations approach growth.

Richard O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer at B2B Marketing, brings a perspective shaped by decades of leadership across both sales and marketing organizations. Having led commercial teams and now running a B2B marketing company, he sees a major shift taking place in how organizations approach growth. Traditional structures, siloed goals, and outdated assumptions about buyer behavior are becoming less effective in today’s environment.

This conversation focuses on why CEOs and boards must rethink growth leadership, how shared commercial objectives improve execution, and why customer trust and proximity are becoming central to long-term growth.

“We should actively be looking at disruptive approaches to the way we think about growth.” – Richard O’Connor

To learn more, watch the video or read the article below.

To catch the full interview with Richard on “The New Board Agenda to Achieve Growth” CLICK HERE.

Article: "The New Board Agenda to Achieve Growth”

This article is based on an interview with Richard O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer at B2B Marketing

Shared Commercial Objectives Create Stronger Growth Teams

Richard believes many companies still treat sales and marketing alignment as a departmental issue instead of recognizing it as a structural leadership challenge. He explains that “the root cause is that having sales and marketing as separate functions is never going to work.” This highlights how disconnected objectives and incentives continue to create friction across organizations.

He also explains that organizations often unintentionally push growth teams further apart by measuring success differently. “All the time, you’ve got marketing incentivized and targeted and with objectives that are some form of MQL. I think that’s where the problem is.” Instead, Richard believes organizations should align teams around shared commercial outcomes tied directly to growth.

Richard shares how his own organization now operates with shared metrics across product, sales, and marketing. “It is pipeline growth, closed won business, and pipeline velocity.” By aligning every team around the same North Star, organizations create stronger collaboration, better accountability, and clearer execution across the business.

Brand Trust Drives Modern B2B Growth

Richard believes brand has become one of the most misunderstood but important drivers of modern B2B growth. He explains that buyers increasingly make decisions based on familiarity and trust long before entering formal buying cycles. “Do they recognize the brand? Do they trust that brand?” These questions often matter more than technical features during early consideration stages.

He also explains why brand investment is becoming increasingly important in unpredictable buying environments. “Brand is long-term demand.” Many organizations still operate within short-term annual budget cycles, making it difficult to fully appreciate the long-term impact of trust-building activities.

Richard also emphasizes that growth often results from years of investment in brand and relationships before deals formally enter the pipeline. Buyers may spend months researching, consuming content, and building trust before officially engaging with vendors. Organizations that consistently invest in long-term brand trust improve their ability to appear on the buyer’s shortlist before competitors are considered.

Customer Proximity and AI Reveal Hidden Growth Insights

Richard also believes organizations have drifted too far away from direct customer understanding. He explains that many teams now rely heavily on personas, ICPs, and abstract customer models instead of maintaining real customer proximity. “Nothing replaces talking to real customers.”

He challenges marketers to spend more time directly engaging customers outside traditional sales processes. “When was the last time you went and spoke to a customer for a non-sales conversation just to understand how they tick, what their needs are?” Richard believes organizations lose strategic clarity when their understanding of customers becomes too abstract.

At the same time, Richard sees AI creating major opportunities for discovering customer insights. He explains that AI is especially powerful for “capturing and spotting patterns that are invisible to the naked eye.” By combining customer conversations, intent signals, community discussions, and behavioral data, organizations can uncover hidden patterns of insight at scale.

Conclusion

Richard O’Connor believes organizations are entering a period where traditional growth assumptions are rapidly breaking down. Shared commercial goals, stronger customer proximity, long-term brand trust, and AI-driven insight are becoming increasingly important for sustainable growth leadership.

His perspective reinforces that boards and CEOs must rethink how growth teams are structured and how organizations approach customer relationships. As Richard explains, “I think now is an opportunity for us to disrupt the way we think about the way we’re structuring growth teams.” Organizations willing to challenge conventional thinking and embrace new approaches to growth will be better positioned for the future.

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Steven MacDonald

Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.

Steven MacDonald

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.