Most B2B “lead problems” are not lead problems. They are “we never got them to a meeting” problems. The ad did its job. The landing page did its job. A real person at a real company filled out “Book a demo,” “Talk to sales,” or “Get pricing.” Then the system stalled. Routing sent the lead to the wrong rep. Nobody saw it in time. There was no clear calendar. The rep who finally reached out had no idea what the buyer had asked for.

That short stretch between form fill and first meeting is where a lot of pipeline dies.

The good news is that this part of the lifecycle is fixable. You do not need a new funnel theory. You need to treat lead to first meeting as its own product, with a clear journey, firm targets, named owners, and a simple runtime plan.

Once you do that, meeting rates climb, CAC improves, and the marketing versus sales finger-pointing dies down. The path from form to calendar becomes boring in the best way: predictable, visible, and fast.

This article keeps the original structure of that simple operating plan and adds the …