Key Takeaways
- Lead generation in 2026 has moved from a volume game to a relevance game, so teams that generate fewer, better-fit leads with real commercial impact are winning.
- Rebuilding buyer trust starts with being genuinely useful before asking for anything, backed by clean data, connected channels and human judgment that AI can support but never replace.
Lead generation broke its own scoreboard in 2026 as the metric that mattered was volume: more leads, more forms, more names in the pipeline. That playbook has run out of road. Buyers are more guarded, more informed and far quicker to tune out outreach that reads like a sales pitch dressed up as help. Sopro’s 2026 Lead Generation Report puts numbers to what many of you already feel in your daily work: 61% of vendors say buyers trust them less than before, and 71% admit most outreach still feels sales-led rather than useful.
The pressure is coming from every direction at once. Personalization tops priority lists, yet only 26% of marketers feel confident about how they unify customer data. Nearly six in 10 decision-makers move across multiple channels, but just 21% actually coordinate content between them. Generative AI is now table stakes, with 85% of marketers using it, so it no longer sets anyone apart. Add longer buying cycles, bigger buying groups and rising demand for gated content, and the job isn’t chasing more leads. It’s earning relevance with the right people at the right moment.
To unpack what all this means for your team, we sat down with Steve Harlow, Head of Sales at B2B lead generation agency Sopro. Harlow cuts through the noise with a practitioner’s view of what’s working and what’s quietly wasting your budget, digging into how to turn intent data into timely follow-up instead of faster spam, what real sales and marketing alignment looks like beyond shared dashboards, and what makes a gated asset worth the form fill in 2026.
Demand Gen Report (DGR): Your report frames 2026 as the year lead generation shifted from volume to relevance. What does that shift actually look like day to day for a B2B marketing team, and how do you know when you’ve made it?
Steve Harlow: The shift from volume to relevance is pretty unglamorous in the day-to-day. It means that more time is spent getting the targeting and context right, less generic content is created just to hit a publishing target, and there is more need to stop campaigns that are generating activity but not meaningful engagement.
The measurement changes, too. You stop celebrating raw lead numbers and start asking whether the people coming in are actually the right fit, whether they’re engaging with the problem you’re solving, and whether that engagement is moving anything commercially. If your team can generate fewer leads that have a greater commercial impact, then you know you’ve made the shift.
DGR: The data shows 61% of vendors believe buyers are less trusting than before, and 71% say most outreach feels sales-led rather than helpful. How can marketers rebuild that trust before they ever ask for a meeting?
Harlow: If you want to rebuild trust with a buyer before asking for a meeting, simply be useful without immediately asking for something back. For example, this could be sharing insight that helps them make a decision, not content that conveniently leads to your product, or showing an understanding of their situation before explaining what you sell.
How Do You Rebuild Buyer Trust Before Asking for a Meeting?
DGR: Personalization keeps topping priority lists, yet only 26% of marketers feel completely satisfied with how they unify customer data. Where do teams usually go wrong, and what’s the first fix you’d recommend?
Harlow: Fix the data foundation first, then build the personalization layer on top. Teams often try to personalize before they’ve sorted the basics of securing clean data, consistent segmentation, and a clear view of who the customer actually is across systems. Get the customer data into a reliable, usable structure before worrying about adding more personalization.
DGR: Nearly 6 in 10 B2B decision-makers use multiple channels, but only 21% coordinate content across them. What separates true multi-channel campaigns from teams that are simply active in a lot of places?
Harlow: The bit people miss is that the channels need to work as a system. The audience, message, timing, and reason for contact should make sense across the journey, rather than each channel running its own little campaign; otherwise, you just get the same content repackaged five different ways.
A proper multi-channel approach has a job for each channel, with the activity connected. Someone might see the content on one channel, get a relevant follow-up somewhere else, and then receive direct outreach when there’s a sensible reason to have that conversation. Ask yourself— if you switched one channel off, would the rest of the campaign still make sense? If not, you probably don’t have a multi-channel strategy, and it’s instead just several channels running in parallel.
DGR: The report notes 87% of teams use intent signals in some form, but fewer than half tailor outreach based on them. What’s the practical playbook for turning intent data into timely, relevant follow-up?
Harlow: Intent data is useful, but the mistake is treating the signal itself as the reason to contact someone. Once you’ve identified the signal, you need to determine whether it fits the account, role, and problem you’re targeting. Then you need to decide whether to act now, if the message needs changing to make the outreach more relevant, and whether the contact actually makes sense to be added to a sequence. If the targeting and reason for reaching out are weak, a better intent signal just helps you find the wrong people more efficiently.
How Do You Turn Intent Signals Into Relevant Follow-Up?
DGR: With 85% of marketers now using generative AI and 89% applying it to prospecting, AI is no longer a differentiator. How do the best teams use it to sound more human rather than more generic?
Harlow: The best teams don’t use AI to manufacture ‘human’ sounding copy; they use it to do more of the work around the copy. That means better research, stronger account context, and faster iteration. The actual human bit is deciding what’s relevant and what isn’t. Realistically, AI can help streamline processes but it can’t replace good judgement.
DGR: Deliverability is a major barrier for 67% of marketers. Why has this become a strategic issue rather than a technical one, and what should teams prioritize to keep landing in the inbox?
Harlow: Deliverability gets talked about like it’s a technical problem, but that’s only part of it. Deliverability is tied to the whole outbound system, whether this is targeting, relevance, engagement, or the quality of the data behind the campaign. I’d prioritize the technical foundations first and then ensure the emails are actually useful to the people receiving them. Sending relevant emails to the right people is what keeps the channel healthy.
Why Is Email Deliverability a Strategy Problem, Not Just a Technical One?
DGR: Companies that generate the most leads are the ones where sales and marketing work together. What does real alignment look like in practice, beyond shared dashboards and good intentions?
Harlow: Alignment isn’t really about dashboards, it’s more about agreeing on the same definition of a good opportunity, then building the process around it. Marketing should understand what sales are actually seeing in conversations, objections, and deal quality, with sales feeding back. Targeting, messaging, and qualification should then get adjusted based on what’s happening downstream.
Ownership is vital for alignment. If a lead gets passed from marketing to sales and nobody owns what happens next, you can have perfect reporting and still have a broken system.
DGR: The report shows demand for gated content has grown almost 84% since 2020, even as buyers guard their details more closely. What makes an asset worth the form fill in 2026?
Harlow: I’d fill in a form for something that gives me information I can’t easily get elsewhere. This could be for proprietary data, useful benchmarks, a genuinely good tool, or a detailed framework that saves me hours of research. I’d be much less inclined to trade my details for a 12-page PDF that mostly repeats what’s already on the website. In general, the bar has gone up because buyers have more ways to get answers without giving up their email.
DGR: With 84% of companies involving more than one person in purchase decisions and one in five deals taking over a year to close, how should marketers rethink nurturing for longer, multi-threaded buying journeys?
Harlow: If multiple people are involved in the decision, you’re not really nurturing a lead anymore. You’re helping a buying group build confidence. That means different people will need different things at different stages, so I’d think less about a 12-month nurture sequence and more about having useful reasons to re-engage each stakeholder as the deal develops. Longer buying cycles aren’t necessarily always a problem, but going quiet because there’s nothing relevant to say is.
