The question comes up in every revenue planning meeting: Should we hire business development reps first or build the marketing function?
Taylor Thomson has a definitive answer. Marketing comes first. Always.
“If somebody asked me, would you start a business development team or a marketing team? I’d say marketing team,” Thomson states flatly.
This isn’t a mild preference. For Thomson, who leads finance at WITHIN and oversees both business development and revenue operations, the order matters fundamentally. Companies that build BD teams without marketing infrastructure are asking people to do an impossible job.
“You can’t have a successful business development engine without a marketing engine behind it,” he explains. “Certainly not a successful engine of BDRs whose job it is to identify and reign in quality opportunities and communicate with those people on a one-to-one level.”
The reason comes down to what Thomson calls “air cover,” the broad-reach awareness and credibility that only marketing can provide at scale.
The Scale Problem BD Can’t Solve
Business development reps work one-to-one. They call prospects. They send emails. They book meetings. Each interaction is personal, contextual, and time-intensive.
That’s exactly what makes BD valuable. It’s also what limits its reach.
“The scalability of having people go out and try to identify people on problems they might identify or pain points they might identify, it’s just not there,” Thomson explains.
A good BDR might reach 50 to 100 prospects per week. They’ll have meaningful conversations with perhaps 10 or 15. That personalization creates connection but prevents scale.
Marketing operates differently. A single piece of content can reach thousands. A conference panel puts your expertise in front of hundreds. Thought leadership builds credibility with prospects you haven’t identified yet.
“Your marketing team has so much more at its disposal to broaden that message and identify people that we think are the best type of customer,” Thomson says. “They just have the scale to go out and say, we’ve got content, we’ve got thought leadership, we’ve got conference panels, we’ve got round tables and dinners.”
Without that foundation, BD teams struggle to gain traction. They’re making cold outreach to people who’ve never heard of the company, explaining value propositions from scratch, and competing against dozens of similar pitches.
The Air Cover Metaphor
Thomson’s “air cover” metaphor comes from military strategy. Ground troops need air support before advancing. The air support softens defenses, creates pathways, and provides reconnaissance.
Marketing plays that role for business development. It softens the market by building awareness. It creates pathways through thought leadership and content. It provides reconnaissance by identifying which prospects are engaging.
“Once you have that built up, you can have your business development team identify those top prospects, identify those people that are on your website, those people that are downloading content,” Thomson explains.
The sequence matters. Marketing creates the conditions for BD success. BD then activates those conditions through personalized outreach.
Companies that reverse this order ask BD reps to be both air support and ground troops simultaneously. It doesn’t work.
“If you don’t have that already, you are asking a team to do two things,” Thomson says. “You’re asking a business development team to be both that kind of air cover approach and then be sort of snipers and find those individuals in the noise and you just can’t do it.”
The Automation Trap
When companies lack marketing infrastructure, BD teams face enormous pressure to increase volume. If you can’t reach prospects who already know your brand, the logic goes, you need to reach more prospects who don’t.
This thinking leads directly to automation. Sequence tools. Email templates. LinkedIn connection spam. The personalization that makes BD valuable gets sacrificed for scale.
Thomson has watched this pattern repeatedly. The results are predictable.
“Without that, you fall into the trap of, I’m just going to send a bunch of emails,” he explains. “It’s too much of a pain to go onto this person’s LinkedIn every time I want to send an email. If I have a sequence and I want to go find a piece of personalized information to talk to them about every time, it just takes too long.”
The metrics tell the story. Thomson’s team has achieved 50% open rates on cold emails through careful personalization. That performance comes from BD reps who have time to research prospects because marketing has already identified warm leads.
Companies without that luxury see open rates drop steadily: from 40% to 30% to 25% to 20%. Volume increases don’t compensate.
“The volume increase just doesn’t make up for the fact that you’re cheapening the value of the people that you have, which are having good conversations with your prospects,” Thomson says.
What Marketing Actually Provides
The air cover metaphor helps explain the relationship, but what specifically does marketing provide that enables BD effectiveness?
First, awareness. Prospects should recognize the company name before a BDR calls. That recognition dramatically changes the conversation dynamic. Instead of “Who are you?”, calls start with “I’ve seen your content.”
Second, credibility. Published thought leadership, conference speaking, and industry presence signal expertise. Thomson’s work at WITHIN benefits from the agency’s reputation in performance branding. BD reps can reference that authority rather than establishing it from scratch.
Third, intent signals. Marketing generates website visitors, content downloads, and event attendees. These actions indicate interest. BD teams can prioritize prospects showing intent rather than working blind.
Fourth, education. Good marketing content explains problems, frameworks, and solutions. Prospects arrive at BD conversations already educated about the category. BDRs don’t need to provide remedial explanations.
Fifth, differentiation. Marketing establishes what makes a company unique. BD reps can focus on fit and customization rather than explaining basic positioning.
None of these elements require marketing to generate “leads” in the traditional sense. The value isn’t about form fills. It’s about creating market conditions where BD conversations can succeed.
The Bandwidth Reality
Thomson points to a hard constraint: time.
“You run out of bandwidth. You can only call and email so many people a day,” he notes.
A BDR has perhaps 6 productive hours daily. That’s enough time for 20 to 30 personalized touches. If each touch requires extensive research and custom messaging, capacity is limited.
Marketing expands that bandwidth by doing work BD can’t replicate. A webinar might attract 200 attendees. A viral LinkedIn post might reach 50,000 people. An industry report might get cited in dozens of articles.
BD teams can then focus bandwidth on the highest-value activities: understanding specific prospect needs, building relationships, and moving opportunities forward. They’re not wasting time on awareness building that marketing handles better.
“The more marketing you get, the wider a berth you have to swing as a BDR team,” Thomson explains. “The less your emails sound good, the less your phone calls matter” without that foundation.
The Investment Sequence
Thomson’s argument has direct implications for how companies allocate budgets.
Many startups hire their first BDR before their first marketer. The logic seems sound: salespeople generate revenue immediately, while marketing takes time to show results.
Thomson would flip that logic. Marketing creates the foundation for revenue generation. Hiring BD first means paying people to work with one hand tied behind their backs.
“I don’t think you can have any of that without a marketing engine behind it,” he reiterates.
The right sequence: build marketing capability first, then add BD to activate it. Marketing should be several quarters ahead of BD in maturity. By the time you hire BDRs, prospects should already be familiar with the brand.
This doesn’t mean marketing works alone initially. Founders and executives can do direct sales while marketing builds. But formal BD hiring should wait for marketing infrastructure.
What This Means For Revenue Leaders
Revenue leaders facing the BD-versus-marketing question should consider several factors.
If prospects regularly say “I’ve never heard of you” on sales calls, you have a marketing problem that BD can’t solve. Adding more BDRs will generate more conversations with confused prospects.
If your BD team struggles to get meetings, the issue might not be technique or effort. They might lack the air cover that makes prospects receptive.
If email open rates are declining despite improved messaging, volume might be degrading your brand. You need marketing to rebuild credibility before BD can leverage it.
If BDRs spend most of their time explaining basic value propositions, marketing should be doing that work at scale through content.
The diagnostic is simple: are prospects arriving at BD conversations already educated and interested, or are BDRs starting from zero every time? The answer reveals whether you have adequate air cover.
The Counterargument
Some successful companies have scaled BD without extensive marketing. Usually this works in narrow circumstances.
If you’re selling into a small, defined market where decision-makers all know each other, personal networks can substitute for marketing. The “air cover” comes from referrals rather than content.
If you’re selling a genuinely unique product with no alternatives, prospects will take calls despite never having heard of you. Novelty creates its own openings.
If you’re targeting unsophisticated buyers who aren’t overwhelmed with vendor outreach, cold BD can work. But this is increasingly rare.
For most B2B companies selling complex products to busy executives, Thomson’s sequence applies. Marketing first. BD second. Air cover before ground assault.
Building The Foundation
Thomson’s approach at WITHIN reflects this philosophy. The agency invested heavily in thought leadership, conference presence, and content before scaling BD.
When BD reps now call prospects, they’re often responding to inbound interest. The marketing air cover means conversations start from curiosity rather than skepticism.
That foundation took time to build. It required patience from leadership willing to invest in marketing before seeing direct attribution to revenue.
But the result is a BD function that works with the wind at its back rather than fighting headwinds. Reps can focus on understanding prospect needs and building relationships rather than creating awareness from scratch.
The air cover problem is real. Marketing must solve it. BD teams cannot, no matter how skilled or motivated.
Companies that understand this sequence will build more efficient, effective revenue engines. Those that don’t will continue asking impossible things from their BDR teams.
