What are the biggest surprises when going from a company where demand generation was established to one where you have to establish demand generation?

From my experience, the approach and expectations vary greatly in these two scenarios. The biggest surprises tend to be infrastructure so think tracking and reporting and expectations for next steps. Let me break down the two scenarios and provide additional clarity.

Oftentimes when you enter an established demand gen team, the infrastructure has been refined and improved over time. You might have incremental improvements over the existing foundation. Whereas when you are establishing a demand gen team, the first step is to take inventory of tracking, data, reporting and gaps. This needs to be established before you start running channels and experimenting.

When you are establishing a demand gen program or team, much of your time is taken up by foundational work that needs to be built upon. This may mean standing up new programs, establishing processes and getting stakeholder buy-in. The expectations for how long X takes, outcomes and impact may need to be communicated in different ways.

Overall, the biggest surprise will be your strategy. Think of having several different tools in a demand gen toolkit - these two approaches would initially use different sets of tools.