Pave the desire paths

Every park has them. A neat paved path runs around the edge of the lawn, and cutting straight across the grass is a muddy track worn by thousands of people who had somewhere to be.

Planners call them desire paths.

So what have muddy shortcuts got to do with your BDR team?

You can fight a desire path with fences and signs, or you can pave it. Some universities have reportedly waited to see where people actually walked before laying their paths.

Most go-to-market teams do the opposite. We design the path around how we report - lead, MQL, sales accepted, opportunity - and then wonder why buyers keep cutting across the grass.

The BDR team that didn’t fit

At Rescale I learned this the slow way.

On paper the BDR team was doing its job. The opportunities they created were good. But when we researched how our deals really progressed, much of the work in an enterprise opportunity came right at the start. Lots of stakeholders. Lots of inertia, because we were selling into a new category. The load that put on our account executives in those early weeks was enormous.

The opportunities weren’t the problem. The AEs simply couldn’t manage all that early work.

So rather than push for more opportunities, I redesigned the BDR role around how our customers actually bought. BDRs kept working deals alongside the AE after the opportunity was created, through sales stage 2, right up to technical validation. And to support that, after talking it through with a range of other marketing and BDR leaders, I changed their comp plan. Most of it moved from opportunities created to meaningful interactions, with a smaller part tied to the pod’s revenue attainment.

That wasn’t an easy sell. Meaningful interactions felt “fluffy” next to a hard opportunity count, even though it was exactly what the research pointed to. So I had to prove it with a pilot first.

Pipeline conversion went up more than 400%.

So I’ve broken this into three parts: find where the work really is, put capacity there, and pay for the path you want people to take.

1. Find where the work really is

Our funnels are drawn as if buyers move neatly from one stage to the next. They don’t.

Forrester found that an average of 13 people are involved in a B2B buying decision, and that 86% of purchases stall at some point along the way. Gartner found buyers spend just 17% of their buying time meeting suppliers - so if they’re talking to three of you, you each get about 5%.

That means the work isn’t evenly spread, and it rarely sits where your stage names suggest. In a new category it piles up early, getting a committee to agree there’s a problem at all. In a mature one it might pile up late, in procurement and security reviews.

You won’t find it in your CRM stage report. You find it by talking to customers, sitting in on deals and asking where they got stuck. Then you redraw the path around what you learn.

2. Put capacity where the work is

Capacity sounds like a headcount question. For me it’s really a timing question.

In a sales-led business, a lead needs following up in time, with the right context, and when the buyer is actually ready. Miss any of the three and the demand you paid for leaks away. When Harvard Business Review audited 2,241 US companies, firms that made contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify a lead as those that waited even an hour longer - and 23% never replied at all.

That cost keeps rising. 6sense’s research found buyers make first contact about 61% of the way through their journey, and the vendor they favoured before that first conversation wins around 80% of the time. You get fewer chances, later, and each one counts for more.

So plan capacity around the moments that matter, not just the volume. Who picks up a high-intent enquiry in minutes? Who carries the context from the first conversation into the second? And who has the time to do the heavy early work when a deal needs it? At Rescale the answer to that last one was the BDRs - once we let them.

3. Pay for the path you want

Here’s the uncomfortable bit. People walk the path the comp plan paves.

If BDRs are paid on opportunities created, they’ll create opportunities and move on, however much the deal needs them next. It’s a textbook case of what the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern put neatly in 1997, building on the economist Charles Goodhart: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

For me, changing the metric to meaningful interactions was the clearest way to tell the team that the job was now to help the deal through its hardest early stretch. Keeping a smaller part on the pod’s revenue attainment meant nobody lost sight of what it was all for.

I wouldn’t have got that right on my own. Talking to a range of other marketing and BDR leaders first meant the new plan was built on their experience, not just my theory.

What good looks like

A few golden rules I use to check whether the go-to-market motion fits how customers buy:

• The journey is researched, not assumed. You’ve talked to recent buyers about where the work and the stalls really were.
• Stages match the buyer. Your stage definitions describe what the customer is doing, not just what sales is doing.
• Capacity sits where the work is. The busiest stretch of the deal has enough people on it.
• Speed and context are planned. High-intent enquiries reach the right person in minutes, with the history attached.
• Comp rewards the behaviour you need. If the motion changes, the comp plan changes with it - piloted first, with part still tied to revenue.
• Peers are consulted. Big motion changes get tested against people who’ve tried them elsewhere.

For me, yes and no

There’s a fair challenge to all this. “Meaningful interactions” is fuzzier than “opportunities created”. It’s harder to count, easier to argue about, and if you’re not careful it can be gamed.

I agree - it’s exactly the objection I faced. A metric that’s easy to count is attractive for a reason.

But an easy metric that drives the wrong behaviour is worse than a harder one that drives the right one. So don’t argue it in a meeting. Pilot it. Define the harder metric tightly - what counts as meaningful, and who decides - keep part of the plan tied to revenue, and watch it alongside what happens downstream. If interactions go up and conversion doesn’t follow, the pilot will tell you quickly. If they both go up, you’ve got your case.

Where to start on Monday

1. Ask three recent customers where the work was. Not where they were in your funnel - where they got stuck and who helped.
2. Lay your effort over their answers. Compare where your team’s time goes with where the buyer’s work actually sits.
3. Read your comp plan as a path. For each role, write down the behaviour it actually rewards. If that isn’t the behaviour the deal needs, you’ve found your desire path.

Where does the work pile up in your deals? I’d love to hear how other teams have redrawn the path.

Next: the demand capture ceiling, and what happens when you get very good at harvesting the 5% of buyers who are ready now.