The Right Level of Evolution: Why the Demand Unit Is B2B’s Missing Middle

In How Life Works, the biologist Philip Ball writes:

“The ‘unit’ of molecular evolution is not the base pair of DNA or the amino acid of a protein, or even the gene itself, but something in between — the module of a domain.”

That line stopped me cold when I read it.

I grew up thinking evolution was about the survival of a species -- that somehow animals act to preserve their species. That concept was largely dismissed by the time I was out of college.

Later, the concept of "the selfish gene" thrived*. According to it, the mechanisms of evolution really operate solely on the level of the gene, not the individual animal (or plant) and certainly not on a species.

In the selfish gene view, genes need only be good at that one thing... getting themselves copied and into a next generation. Genes don't 'care' about how that happens -- and certainly not whether doing so is good for a species.

Supporting this view is the fact that much, if not most, of our genome, is made up of lengths of DNA that apparently do nothing but get themselves copied over and over again, serving no purpose at all in our bodies.

Still, now we understand that evolution operates at an intermediate level -- on domains or regions of genetic code that include more than just DNA.  

Ball's description of that describes, almost perfectly, the central mistake of how B2B organizations have structured their go-to-market models for the past two decades.

The Wrong Units of Selection

In biology, it took decades to understand that evolution doesn’t act directly on atoms, molecules, or whole organisms. It acts on modules -- blocks of code that can adapt, combine, and replicate in new contexts.

In B2B, we’ve made a similar conceptual error in B2B. We’ve built our systems around two extremes:

• Leads — the molecular level. Isolated signals, stripped of context. Easy to measure, impossible to evolve meaningfully.
• Accounts — the organismal level. Too big, too heterogeneous. The evolutionary pressures that matter don’t operate uniformly across them.

Both are the wrong “unit of selection.” Neither is where meaningful action -- buying behavior, preference formation, value recognition—actually happens.

The Missing Middle: The Demand Unit

The Demand Unit is B2B’s evolutionary module: the natural level where adaptation and selection occur.

My buddy Terry Flaherty and I came up with this name back in 2016-2017. From our work with SiriusDecisions clients, we knew that the lead could not be the right unit of demand -- that's literally what we were trying to suss out. And to Terry's credit, he insisted it couldn't be the account, because most B2B companies can sell multiple things to any given account. 

So, we asked ourselves, what is the right unit of demand in B2B? This is what we came up with:

It’s the set of people within an organization who share a specific business problem, plus the resources and authority or influence to act. They’re not the entire organism (the company), nor are they lone molecules (leads). They’re the functional domain—the place where need, intent, and coordination align.

Practically, they cohere on an opportunity object in CRM.

Just as biological domains recombine to form new proteins and functions, demand units can exist in plans and models, but in practice they form, dissolve, and recombine around evolving business needs. Often, the same person participates in multiple units across different solutions. Sometimes a unit mutates as the organization reorganizes or the problem evolves. What matters is not the static structure of the company but the functional configuration of demand.

Why This Matters

Most marketing and sales systems still assume that “the account” or “the contact” is the core unit of analysis. But these constructs are artifacts of our data systems, not reflections of buyer reality. When we model, measure, and act at the wrong level, our predictions misfire and our engagement fails. Sound familiar?

AI can now help us perceive and act at the right scale -- seeing demand units as living modules of behavior and need.

That’s where the future of precision marketing lies: identifying, prioritizing, and enabling these dynamic groups as they evolve.

The Evolutionary Lesson

Biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

We would say, "“Nothing in B2B makes sense except in the light of the right Demand Units.”

*Selfish genes have nothing to do with making people selfish. It's the gene that is 'acting' in its own interest, and that may be contrary to the interest of any given individual.