Discover why alignment between marketing and sales is the real driver of sustainable growth. Learn how shifting from activity metrics to revenue outcomes transformed Malbek's pipeline coverage from 0.4x to 3-5x.
Influential Woman · Technology B2B Software
Lizzy Painter
VP, Growth Marketing, Malbek
Geneva, FL
15Years experience
1Article published
7Awards received
Her Story
About Lizzy
I started my career writing code and ended up obsessed with pipeline. My path wasn’t traditional. I began as a web developer, fully expecting to stay in engineering, but quickly found myself drawn to demand generation and the challenge of connecting marketing to revenue.
Over the past 15+ years, I’ve built growth strategies, B2B software brands, and go-to-market programs with one core belief: marketing should be accountable to business outcomes. My career has given me a front-row seat to transformation, from acquisitions and post-acquisition integration to helping scale organizations from $10M to $100M in revenue and supporting the evolution of startups into recognized market leaders. At Malbek, I’ve had the opportunity to help lead a go-to-market transformation that helped elevate the company from an emerging startup to a recognized market leader in the CLM space while supporting profitable growth.
What I’m most proud of isn’t any single metric. It’s helping create clarity to align teams around a common goal, and build pipeline momentum that lasts.
Across every stage of my career, the common thread has been adaptability. I’ve never been afraid to step into something new, challenge the status quo, or evolve as the company and market changes. The best growth comes from staying curious and continuing to build.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lizzy
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my family. They keep me grounded, focused, and connected to what matters most. My husband is the calm to my constant stream of ideas, and my parents and brother have always been my biggest supporters. My dad is the glue that holds our family together, and the values he instilled in us—loyalty, hard work, and commitment—have shaped both my life and career. No matter what I accomplish professionally, my family is the foundation that makes it possible.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received was to simply stop apologizing. I'm naturally direct and pretty blunt. Some people love that, and some people don't, but I've learned that not everyone has to. The real lesson was to stop apologizing for who I am and start owning it. You don't need to shrink yourself to make other people comfortable. Be authentic, know your value, and have the confidence to show up as yourself.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
One piece of advice I would give to young women in technology is to stop waiting for permission and for things to be perfect. Too often, we're taught to make ourselves smaller, be less loud, wait until we're completely ready, or hesitate before raising our hands. My advice is the opposite. Take up space. Use your voice. Share your ideas. Speak up in meetings, even if you're not 100% certain. If you've put thought behind your perspective and can support your point of view, it deserves to be heard.
Advocating for yourself is one of the most important skills you can develop! No one will champion your career more than you. Don't be afraid to ask questions, pursue opportunities, or contribute to conversations that feel intimidating. Growth rarely happens inside your comfort zone.
Your perspective matters. Your ideas matter. The confidence to use your voice doesn't come before action, it comes from taking action. Take up more space.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges and opportunities in my field and in business today is the rapid evolution of AI. The way we work today is dramatically different from when I started my career and that pace of change is only accelerating.
What I find most interesting is that AI is creating a unique moment where everyone is learning together. Experience still matters, but no one has all the answers. I can learn just as much from someone entering the workforce today as they can learn from me. Being open to change, staying curious, and committing to being a student for life is more important than ever.
I firmly believe AI is reshaping the way we work. Roles will evolve, responsibilities will shift, and new opportunities will emerge. The professionals who thrive will be the ones who embrace change, continuously develop new skills, and remain adaptable.
At the same time, I work in an incredibly competitive and saturated market where standing out can be a challenge. Many contract lifecycle management (CLM) companies offer similar products and services, which creates a “sea of sameness.” As a marketer, brand and story have become such important differentiators. A strong brand is not just about visual identity or messaging. It's about clearly communicating who you are, the value you provide, and the experience you create for your customers.
As technology advances and customer expectations evolve, brands must evolve as well. The organizations that continue to grow are the ones that stay relevant, embrace innovation, and build authentic connections with their audiences. Whether it's AI or brand evolution, the common thread is adaptability. The marketers and organizations willing to learn, evolve, and embrace change will be the ones who lead the future.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I've always been incredibly loyal to my family and friends, my colleagues, and the organizations I choose to be part of. I believe there's real value in showing up consistently, building trust, and growing with people over time. Throughout my career, I've tended to stay with organizations for years because I enjoy making a lasting impact rather than chasing the next opportunity. I'm also deeply determined. Once I set my sights on something, I'm willing to put in the work to make it happen. That mindset has helped me navigate challenges, pursue opportunities, and continue growing both professionally and personally. For me, success comes from a combination of commitment, perseverance, and believing that with enough effort, you can achieve more than you thought possible.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Lizzy
Misconceptions About Growth: How Market-Leading Companies Build Measurable, Profitable, and Repeatable Revenue Engines
Why alignment between marketing and sales is the real engine behind sustainable growth.
Everyone wants growth.
Boards want it. Investors expect it. Leadership teams chase it. Entire industries have been built around the promise of more leads, more pipeline, and more revenue.
But somewhere along the way, we confused measuring activity with generating growth.
Over the course of my career, I've had a front-row seat to growth in almost every form: acquisitions, integrations, startups scaling from nothing, established organizations trying to reinvent themselves, companies that grew fast, and companies that grew well. The difference between those last two is significant.
What those experiences taught me is this: growth isn't a tactic. It's a system. And systems break when the people running them aren't aligned around the same outcomes.
The Misalignment Tax
One of the fastest ways to quietly kill a growth engine is to make marketing and sales responsible for different things.
Marketing gets measured on leads. Sales gets measured on revenue. Both teams can hit their numbers, and the business can still miss its targets.
I've sat in those rooms. Marketing is celebrating campaign performance, email open rates, and webinar attendance. Sales is frustrated by pipeline quality and deal velocity. Leadership is asking why pipeline isn't converting into bookings. Everyone has a dashboard proving they're winning, yet growth remains elusive.
That's the moment the real problem becomes clear.
It was never execution.
It was alignment.
One Journey. One System.
At Forrester's B2B Summit earlier this year, one concept stayed with me above everything else: the idea of the "House Divided."
For years, B2B organizations have treated brand, demand, and sales as separate motions. Brand owns awareness. Demand owns lead generation. Sales owns quota. Each team optimizes for its own lane.
The buyer experiences none of those silos.
They experience one journey. Increasingly, they're forming opinions and making decisions long before they ever raise their hand.
I've never believed brand and demand should operate independently. Brand creates trust. It makes people feel something before they're ready to buy. Demand converts that trust into opportunity. Sales turns momentum into revenue. Customer success transforms customers into advocates who fuel the next cycle.
These aren't separate functions.
They're one growth system.
What We Actually Did at Malbek
Malbek is a market-leading contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform that helps enterprises transform how they create, negotiate, manage, and gain intelligence from contracts.
When I joined Malbek, we weren't a market leader. We had a strong product, a clear vision, and a genuine opportunity to earn our place in a crowded and competitive market.
We also had 0.4x pipeline coverage.
Let that sink in. For every dollar of revenue target, we had forty cents of pipeline. That's not just a gap—it's an entirely different conversation.
The easy path would have been to chase every lead, every channel, and every growth tactic promising fast results. More volume. More noise. More activity masquerading as progress.
We didn't do that.
Instead, we asked a harder question: Who do we actually win with?
We became rigorous about our ideal customer profile (ICP). Not just demographics or firmographics presented on a slide, but real pattern recognition around the industries where we excel, the buyers who understand our value fastest, and the accounts where we had the right to win. We stopped trying to be relevant to everyone and started becoming undeniable to the right people. Then we doubled down.
Next, we rebuilt our account-based experience (ABX) motion with 6sense, and what happened became one of the most significant operational transformations in our company's history.
We also made a deliberate bet on AI—not as a layer of technology bolted onto existing processes, but as a primary workforce multiplier. We call it FT(AI)E: Full-Time AI Employees.
The philosophy is simple: Process. Technology. People.
Redesign the process first. Deploy the right technology to power it. Then allow your human team to focus on the work that actually requires human judgment.
Think about it through the lens of MNE: Minimized Necessary Evils—the repetitive, low-value tasks that drain capacity without driving outcomes. AI handles those tasks. People drive the strategy, relationships, and judgment calls.
The results weren't incremental.
We increased BDR capacity by 14 times. We scaled campaigns. We expanded from 500 actively worked accounts to more than 2,000. We achieved a 22x ROI through AI-powered email alone.
We also invested heavily in the brand. What had once been a whimsical, purple identity that didn't resonate with the enterprise buyers we were targeting evolved into something entirely different: elevated, credible, and distinctly Malbek. Today, others in the space are working hard to remain relevant and are mimicking elements of what we've been building.
But the biggest win of all?
Marketing and sales aligned around the same outcomes.
Not MQLs.
Not vanity metrics.
Pipeline coverage. Revenue. Bookings. Retention.
Today, we consistently operate at 3-5x pipeline coverage. We're growing 60% year over year. We're profitable at Series A. We maintain a 120% retention rate and have customers who enthusiastically advocate for us.
We've established market leadership in CLM.
That's what alignment looks like when it compounds.
The Hot Take Marketers Don't Always Love
Marketing should be accountable for revenue outcomes.
Not because marketing owns every deal, but because marketing influences those outcomes. Influence without accountability is just activity.
A thousand leads that never convert don't help the business. A webinar with strong attendance but no pipeline impact doesn't help the business. A campaign generating clicks but failing to influence revenue doesn't help the business.
The best growth marketers aren't just marketers.
They're operators.
They understand customer acquisition costs (CAC), conversion rates, retention, expansion, and the economics behind the growth model. They think beyond campaigns.
They think about the business.
What the Market Is Actually Asking For
Growth at all costs had its moment.
That moment has passed.
What today's market demands is different—and, frankly, harder:
- Measurable growth.
- Profitable growth.
- Repeatable growth.
Because if growth isn't measurable, profitable, and repeatable, it isn't growth.
It's noise.
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