In an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Maria Sotra, Co-Founder and CMO of Mick-Mar Inc., shares how businesses can transform marketing from a support function into a true driver of revenue growth. With more than 18 years of experience scaling technology companies, Maria discusses why successful B2B growth requires stronger alignment between positioning, demand generation, sales enablement, and customer understanding.
Maria Sotra is a B2B technology marketing leader with more than 18 years of experience scaling companies from early momentum to enterprise leadership. She has led marketing at some of the world’s leading telematics and fleet technology companies, working alongside CEOs, sales, and product leaders to build market-defining brands and go-to-market engines. She spent over a decade at Geotab as its first marketer, building the marketing function from scratch and growing it alongside sales into a globally recognized brand. She went on to reinvent Fleet Complete’s brand, leading a full transformation of its identity, messaging, and market positioning that helped set the company up for its acquisition by Powerfleet. Her recognition includes Top 40 Under 40 Marketer, Marketing Executive of the Year, and IT Marketer of the Year, North America.
Today she owns Mick-Mar and serves as fractional CMO to several high-growth organizations, working directly with founders, CEOs, and sales leaders. Her focus is the connection between marketing and revenue: the positioning, messaging, content, and sales enablement programs that accelerate pipeline, improve conversion, and support predictable growth across both direct and channel-led sales motions. She works across fleet, mobility and smart infrastructure; healthcare and care services; energy and sustainability; and enterprise SaaS and security.
Maria holds a Master of Communications Management (MCM) from McMaster University and completed Driving Digital Strategy at Harvard Business School.
How does your sales-first approach connect thought leadership, lead generation, and deal conversion?
Most companies treat those as three separate activities, fund only one of them, and then wonder why pipeline stalls. The way I think about it, marketing has to earn the sale, not just the lead. Thought leadership builds credibility long before a buyer is ready to talk to anyone. Demand generation captures them when they are ready and sales enablement gives the sales team the messaging, content, and proof points they need to actually close. When the three are connected, each one makes the others work harder.
Sales-first means I start from the deal and work backwards. Before I plan a campaign, I want to know which deals are stalling, what questions buyers keep asking, and what the sales team wishes they had in their hands. That tells you exactly what content to create and what story the market needs to hear.
I’ve seen this hold true across every organization I’ve worked with, whether they were building their first marketing function or scaling an established one. When marketing is measured on revenue instead of lead volume, every piece of content has a job in the buyer journey, and the handoff between marketing and sales stops being a handoff at all. It becomes one continuous motion.
When should a growing business hire a fractional CMO instead of an agency or full-time marketer?
Most owners think they have two choices. They can hire a full-time executive, which means a significant salary, benefits, plus the team to support them, or they can hire an agency, which stays external, delivers projects, and never really owns the outcome. There is a third option, and most of them don’t know it exists.
The challenge with many agencies is that the senior person who wins your business is rarely the person doing the work afterwards. Execution lands with a junior team, and the strategy never quite makes it into the market the way it was pitched. A full-time CMO solves that, but many growing companies need senior marketing leadership well before they can justify that hire.
A fractional CMO fills that gap in a way that’s scalable and budget friendly. I sit alongside the CEO, the sales leader, and other marketing team members where applicable to build out the plan and stay accountable for executing it. The right moment is usually when a company has real sales momentum and marketing activity happening somewhere nearby, but no one senior enough to connect the two. If you’re spending on marketing and can’t trace it to pipeline, that’s the signal.
What should founders prioritize when building their first marketing function?
Positioning and message come first, and most founders get this backwards. They start with tactics, whether that’s ads, social media, or a website refresh, before they’ve decided what the company should be known for and how to say it in the buyer’s language. Every dollar spent on channels before the message is right is a dollar spent amplifying something unclear.
Once the positioning is solid, build the assets your sales motion actually depends on: a website that explains your value in plain terms, a sales deck that tells one coherent story, and real proof, whether that’s case studies, data, or customer voices. Those assets close deals every single day, long before a demand program shows results. Then pick one or two channels and do them consistently rather than trying to be everywhere at once. Consistency compounds.
On hiring, I’d add one caution from experience. I’ve built marketing functions from zero more than once, and what I’ve seen in many companies is a junior hire brought in without senior direction. That produces activity, not pipeline. Get the strategy and the systems in place first, then add people to scale what’s already working.
How should B2B companies adapt their content for AI-driven buyer research?
The biggest shift is that buyers now do serious vendor research through AI tools long before a salesperson is involved. Your next customer’s first impression of you may be an AI-generated summary, built from everything that exists about your company online. The AI is doing the influencing, and your dashboard never records it, which means your reporting describes a smaller piece of the buyer journey than most teams realize.
The adaptation is what I’d call becoming a glass box. AI can only represent you as clearly as you’ve represented yourself, so companies that are vague or guarded lose, because the AI fills those gaps with whatever competitors and third parties have published. Answer the real questions buyers ask directly on your own properties: who you’re for, who you’re not for, how you compare, what implementation looks like, what pricing depends on. That used to be information you saved for a sales call. Now it needs to exist where AI can find it.
Also, thought leadership matters more in this environment, not less. A distinct point of view and clear frameworks are what make you quotable and retrievable. Generic content was always weak. Now it’s invisible.
What can leaders do this week to improve sales and marketing alignment?
Start by listening to sales calls. It’s the fastest audit that exists and it costs nothing. Within a handful of calls you’ll hear the questions buyers keep asking, the objections that stall deals, and the places where the message the market hears doesn’t match the message marketing is publishing.
Second, put your sales and marketing leaders in one room in front of one pipeline view and walk the deals stage by stage. Ask where deals slow down and what’s missing at that stage. Usually the answer isn’t more leads at the top; it’s a proof point, a comparison, or a piece of content that moves a stuck deal in the middle. While you’re at it, ask your sales team which marketing materials they actually use. In most companies it’s a small fraction of what gets produced, and that gap tells you exactly where marketing effort is being wasted.
If you do only one thing, agree on a shared number. When marketing is measured on lead volume and sales is measured on revenue, the two teams optimize against each other. Measure marketing on pipeline contribution and the alignment conversation largely takes care of itself.
What is your top recommendation for building predictable, long-term B2B growth?
Connect marketing and sales under one revenue goal, and then be consistent long enough for it to compound. Predictable growth almost never comes from a single campaign that hits. It comes from a system: a clear position in the market, authority built steadily over time, demand programs that feed a sales team equipped to close, and honest measurement against pipeline.
Mick-Mar Inc. has grown entirely through referral and reputation, and what that has taught me is that companies don’t really need more marketing activity. They need someone who connects marketing to revenue. Build that connection into how your company operates, and growth stops feeling like luck.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Our platform is dedicated to fostering dialogue and sharing insights that inspire and empower small and medium-sized businesses across Canada.
