The Cost of Local Optimisation

In growth-stage B2B companies, optimisation rarely happens in isolation.

Marketing improves CTR and MQL volume. Product improves activation rate. Sales improves close rate.

Each team can point to progress. Each dashboard shows movement. And yet, overall growth efficiency begins to stall.

Nothing is obviously broken. No single metric is declining. But something feels off.

How It Starts

Marketing broadens targeting to increase volume and lower CAC.

Traffic grows. MQLs rise. CTR improves.

Product receives a wider range of intent and simplifies onboarding to lift activation.

Activation improves. Completion rates look healthier.

Sales, noticing more variability in lead quality, tightens qualification to protect the close rate.

Close rate improves. Pipeline looks “cleaner.”

Each optimisation makes sense. Each decision is rational.

What Changes, Quietly

But something subtle is happening.

Broader targeting shifts the intent profile of incoming users. Simplified onboarding changes the level of commitment required early on. Stricter qualification filters out marginal but potentially valuable opportunities.

None of these changes is wrong. But together, they reshape the system.

• The type of user entering changes.
• The type of user activating changes.
• The type of user reaching sales changes.

The behaviour the system produces is no longer the behaviour it used to measure.

Why No One Sees It

Because each team is solving for its own success function.

• Marketing optimises for volume efficiency.
• Product optimises for flow efficiency.
• Sales optimises for revenue efficiency.

And each team can prove improvement.

Local metrics rise. Global coherence drifts. No single dashboard captures that drift.

The Structural Cost

Optimisation doesn’t just improve numbers. It alters the conditions under which decisions are made. When multiple optimisations happen simultaneously, the system adapts to those pressures.

• Signals shift.
• Intent profiles shift.
• Commitment thresholds shift.

The system reorganises, not around the customer journey, but around the incentives embedded within it. And because every part looks healthier in isolation, the whole becomes harder to diagnose.

The Conversion Loop Takeaway

Systems don’t fragment because teams make mistakes. They fragment because incentives pull in different directions.

Local success is easy to measure. System coherence is not.