Two of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels tell stories of individuals who clung to old orders, outdated worldviews, or illusions of dignity long after the world had moved on. In The Remains of the Day, Stevens the butler gives his life to a noble house that no longer matters and was never so noble as he thought. In An Artist of the Floating World, Masuji Ono rationalizes his contributions to a nationalist regime (and Japan’s crushing defeat in WWII) while postwar Japan reshapes itself around but without him.
A friend recently mentioned he’d recently re-read Ishiguro, and it made me think that both novels hold a mirror to B2B marketers who still clinging to lead-based practices and their MQL factories. Like Ishiguro’s characters, many marketers define their professional identity by loyalty to a fading order — an order that once seemed like progress but now looks hollow.
Darlington Hall as the Lead Factory
In Remains of the Day, Stevens’ life is consumed by the grandeur of Darlington Hall, even as its importance dwindles. Stevens measures his worth through his devotion to an institution that, in hindsight, was misguided and complicit in greater harms.
The lead factory — the MQL machine of the past two decades—has the same aura. For years, marketers were measured by the volume of leads they produced, nurtured, and handed off. It seemed legit, with sciency dashboards, funnels, conversions benchmarks, etc. But as with Darlington Hall, the foundations were flawed. The focus on leads ignored the glaringly obvious — that nearly all leads are dead ends.
And it ignored the reality of buying groups, blinding organizations to what B2B buying was really like — and what B2B revenue generation should really be like.
Now we know that buying decisions are made by groups, and that these groups are not objective evaluators of solutions and brands. We know that their buying process begins months and quarters before conversations with sellers, and that they are often teams of rivals with differing ideas about how the organization should address the given business issue.
Rationalization vs. Renewal
In An Artist of the Floating World, Ono, the aging artist who in younger years lent his creativity and credibility to the tragic nationalist cause, spends much of his postwar life justifying the choices he made during the war. “It seemed reasonable at the time,” he insists, while others reject that rationale and while ostracizing him. His tragedy is not only complicity but inertia — he explains and excuses rather than adapts.
Marketers do the same when they defend lead-based practices:
- “I’ve built three successful companies this way.”
- “I know how to make it work.”
- “At least it gave us something measurable.”
These rationalizations may preserve pride in the moment, but they do nothing to prepare marketers — or their organizations — for today’s reality or for what comes next.
The New World Outside the Gate
Both novels highlight a generational shift. Stevens takes his seaside trip too late, realizing only at the end of his career what he had sacrificed. Ono watches a younger generation remake Japan, leaving him and his worldview behind.
In B2B, a new marketing generation is already embracing signal-based, buyer-group centric approaches. They’re modeling demand at the account & opportunity level, aligning with sales on opportunities, and using AI to sense where real buying is happening.
You don’t need to be young to be part of this new generation (I am decidedly not!). But you need to decide to disrupt yourself… to move on from what might have made you successful in the past.
Don’t cling to the Darlington Halls of lead management systems and funnel stages. Step outside the gate. The buyers have already moved on.
The Tragedy of Waiting Too Long
The tragedy in Ishiguro’s work is not simply that his characters were wrong — being wrong is a non-negotiable part of being alive. The tragedy was realizing it too late to change. Stevens misses the chance for love and self-understanding. Ono misses the chance for renewal.
Marketers still have time. We don’t need to look back years from now and wonder why we measured ourselves against the wrong yardsticks or clung to tools that were already obsolete.
We can move now — from the remains of the MQL factory to a new practice centered on signals, buyers, and business impact.
Being Alert for the Next Disruption
We have a ton of new data on how AI is and isn’t changing B2B buying. I’m not going to steal my own thunder, but I will say this: For the foreseeable future, there will continue to be ample signal to identify in-market buyers. The changes AI is causing are real, but they are not what is showing up in the headlines. Stay tuned!
