What are The Two-Three Highest Impact Areas For a New CMO Post-Investment

‍‍Why CMOs never last.

The reason is starting with the wrong focus.

Most CMOs focus on the following:

(1) Scaling, i.e. leads, team, capabilities- But without the foundations ready for scaling

(2) Marketing first, i.e. their thinking is primarily on the marketing function- Lacking an alignment first view but thinking about themselves

(3) MarTech, i.e. where to scale tech, creating infrastructure for scaling or replacing existing tech- Spending time in areas that don't lead to tangible results

In reality, there are three levers of focus:

(1) Pipeline | Understanding how the current pipeline can be optimised and aligned across the whole GTM team; quickly understand critical metrics for success, i.e. $XX in marketing-sourced ARR or ABM metrics / SQL / MQL (most appropriate for your GTM).

(2) Audience  | Make a case for customers—not for marketing. The goal is clarity on the foundations of success. These, in order, are understanding the prospect/ customer ICP, challenges to evangelise, building an ideal audience profile, nailing the value proposition, and being clear on the TAM and content strategy to execute from months two to three. A plan for measuring an engaged TAM =, i.e. metric that defines audience building and engagement.

(3) Conversion | Help sales improve the current deal velocity with tactical marketing interventions. What activities will you deploy to improve conversion rates and support sales?

There is a magical *** bonus ***:

• Alignment with the CEO
• Alignment with the CRO
• Alignment with the CCO
• Alignment with the CFO
• Alignment with the CHRO
• Alignment with the CPO

You'll go much faster and further by investing time in engaging and aligning with the leadership team, go-to-market as one team, and teaching the value of marketing.

Pipeline, audience, conversion, alignment. These decisions directly impact marketing success.