The Startup CMO’s First 100 Days: Advice on Developing Relationships (Part 2)
As a leader, your ability to influence and inspire those around you is the key to your success. Good CMOs build great plans. Great CMOs build great plans, and then inspire those around them to bring them to life. Learning how to manage relationships is what separates the great CMOs from the merely good ones.
Your ideas, strategy, and plan are dependent on others fully realizing them, which includes your team, your counterparts, and both internal and external stakeholders. This installment of the series is about building relationships with your peers and stakeholders. The next installment will be a deep dive into building your team.
From the CEO blessing your strategy to getting the technical and financial resources you need, there are always gatekeepers who may not share your incentives. Since you need to understand how to integrate your agenda with theirs, let’s dig into the most common and important relationships you will have.
If you’d like to review part one of this series, you can review it here: The Startup CMO’s First 100 Days: Advice on Where to Start (Part 1)
The CEO Relationship
Let’s start with the CEO. Your CEO is the single-most important relationship you will have within the organization. The extent of marketing expertise varies from CEO to CEO. Some CEOs want to simply delegate marketing to you with assurance that you have it under control. Some will want to work with you and shape it together. Either scenario is fine. Just identify it and proceed accordingly.
A great CMO-CEO dynamic does the heavy lifting on driving participation for your plan, especially when the company hasn’t had a formal marketing leader before. When the CEO is on board, you will find others are more amenable to helping you.
For example, if you need engineering resources, the CEO’s endorsement of your plan nudges the CTO to prioritize your request. If he or she senses you are not supported, you may find your requirements falling back in the product roadmap. This type of “CEO Effect” permeates all your relationships throughout the organization, leading to tremendous momentum or a subtle, but powerful, self-defeat.
The other important facet of CEO support is ensuring they will provide you with the resources you need for budget and hires. This is crucial and cannot be assumed. Your CEO may be tasking you as the person who handles all marketing, or leading a marketing team. The distinction is obviously important and you have to discuss this with him during the interview process.
You have to investigate during the interview process to see what the CEO thinks. How do they respond to your plan? Do they dig into the details with you and seem receptive to hiring? Or, are they disengaged from the details and assumes you’ll figure it out once you start? Do they look at you as the guru or more of an organizational leader? A great CMO will be able to pick up on these points.
And, above all, inquire about the resources you’ll receive after you are hired. Be blunt. Propose specific numbers during the process and see how he reacts. That will tell you all you need to know. And, if you don’t get the right vibe, be careful accepting the job. You can still succeed, but it will be much harder, and a better opportunity may come your way where you will get the support you need.
You want a CEO who provide what you need and let you sink or swim. It’s daunting, but you want to control your own destiny.
And, if you get a vibe that marketing is not a major priority within the company and resources will be hard to secure, or that there is no chemistry between you and the CEO, you should not take that job. It is doomed to fail.
Your Work Spouse (for B2B) — Head of Sales
If you work for a B2B company, then the relationship most important to a marketing leader, after the CEO, is with your head of sales. Jason Lemkin, one of the earliest investors in many leading enterprise/SaaS startups and creator of the blog SaaStr, once said the VP of Sales and VP of Marketing are the “Mom and Dad of revenue.” In a B2B company, that nomenclature rings true. They are joined at the hip, and their ability to work together impacts the success (or lack thereof) of the company. However, this can be delicate because the head of sales is usually hired before a head of marketing — so their style already has begun to permeate the company’s culture.
Hopefully, you like each other. At the very least, you respect each other. If you don’t have a strong relationship, especially when things don’t go according to plan (and they never do), it’s going to devolve into a zero-sum, “he-said, she-said” game. On the sales side, you will hear “the leads suck” and on the marketing side you will hear “they don’t know how to close our leads.” This toxic behavior will derail the entire company.
However, there are steps you can take to build a strong relationship with your head of sales and prevent this from happening.
The clearest path is to acknowledge the elephant in the room from day one. Address the sales-marketing tension and make an effort to reduce it while you are in the honeymoon phase. Find commonalities (like increasing company valuation) and highlight them. Work together through process and data. Solicit early feedback from the entire sales team on what’s working and be flexible. Demonstrate you are listening and recognize their voice by working in a regularly scheduled one-on-one between sales and marketing.
For the sales perspective, I spoke to Russell Sachs, former VP of Sales at Work Market and current Chief Revenue Officer at BetterCloud. Since Russell and I worked well together at Work Market, I asked for his point of view on the sales-marketing relationship. He believes one of the most important elements is to establish a bilateral communication process. “Making sure you are not off doing your own things, but are sharing and listening to responses.”
His advice is especially prudent for an early-stage process where “marketing and sales have to be in lockstep and you have committed buy-in on both sides. Without that, it can be a toxic relationship that hamstrings the organization.”
One exercise that led to our success was that we constructed the sales funnel goals together, which was critical. Sit in a room and work backwards from the target number of deals in order to calculate the estimated conversion percentages of each stage of the funnel. From there, you can determine how many leads you need to deliver, and how many opportunities need to result. Come to an agreement on what percentage is originated by sales and what percentage is originated by marketing. White-boarding this process collaboratively helps you build camaraderie.
Also, I advise measuring success via a unified goal that puts less emphasis on where leads originate, and more on closing deals. When marketing is responsible for the top of the funnel, but has no bottom-of-the-funnel responsibility, priorities can become misaligned.
These days, a marketing leader can easily drum up leads. You just have to spend money. However, you cannot be sure they are good leads. And, while your numbers look good, they won’t yield results. Meanwhile, sales is digging through leads and spending less time with qualified opportunities. It’s a vicious cycle, driven by the adage that “what gets measured gets done.”
And, the truth is, it can be impossible to know at a detailed level, how much marketing has impacted sales opportunities. Sure, you can tell how many came from externally sourced channels such as asset syndication, and credit that to marketing. Or, you know how many cold-calls progressed through the funnel. But, the interaction between marketing and sales influence is fluid and rarely is a lead that converts to an opportunity that is 100% attributed to one or the other.
Even if a sales lead came from a sales action (like a cold call), it could actually be your advertising and brand that ultimately made that person pick up the phone or answer that email. Or, during the sales process, your webinar might have been attended by several members of the client’s leadership team and convinced them to try your product.
These marketing activities make a huge difference on the sales process, but they are hard to measure. And, if you receive no credit for them, you will stop doing them. But, if the goal is bottom-line revenue, you will pay more attention to what actually matters. Of course, the decision on how to measure success will come ultimately come from your CEO, so you will need to bring him on board with this strategy. It’s just another thing to look for when building that relationship.
I asked Russell what he was looking for from an incoming marketing leader and he responded, “It is really important that someone understand the current stage of the company, and can articulate the challenges ahead.”
Notice he didn’t expect an incoming marketing leader to propose solutions. Instead, he thinks, “No one expects you to know the answer on day one. In fact, if you claimed to have the answers, it would be a red flag. Sure, you can have a hypothesis that you can test, but showing you understand the situation and having a good methodology for deriving the answers builds confidence. Being willing to suggest ideas, test, and evaluate objectively is key.”
“It is also important to build a few quick wins to demonstrate how to get things done,but you have to show the company you are thinking long-term, as well.”
He elaborates further, “I’d expect you to spend time evaluating what’s in place. Dig into questions like: What is the quality of the collateral? What is being done to support sales from a macro-level? How does this organization typically market? Do they attend conferences or are they more digital? Then, come back and share your observations. Present five or six possible ideas and ask me to prioritize them. This gives you an opportunity to see how I think and share from where I think success will come.”
Finally, he adds, “Above all, communicate early and often. Talk to my team and me as much as possible. It builds credibility.”
This is great advice from Russell. I’ll leave you with the statement that captured the essence of the sales-marketing relationship best. In closing, Russell said, “Is this someone I can trust when things don’t go perfectly, because they rarely do? Can I work with this person? Is this someone I can talk to? Do I trust him or her to be honest with me? When things are not perfect, can we live with each other and fix problems, or are we going to be at each other’s throats?”
Sure does sound a like a marriage, doesn’t it?
Working with Product and Engineering
If your channel is primarily digital, then the relationships with your CTO, CPO, VP of Product, and/or VP of Engineering are especially important to nurture. Organizations have different structures, so the actual titles and roles may vary, but these are the people who will control technical resources on which your programs will rely.
You cannot do it alone, unless you can hire your own engineers (which is an interesting concept, one which I have not done yet). Even then, you will not be completely self-reliant because marketing and product are interdependent. So, you will need your requests prioritized in the product roadmap. And, you will need engineering to develop your features.
What you think may be a simple request may be more complex than you thought based on your product’s complexity. And, when push comes to shove, bugs and feature requests will almost always be prioritized over yours. You may get a slice of dev time during each sprint, but you often will find it’s been reduced because of some fire, and it’s hard to do anything about it. A product issue is more important than driving traffic because you need a good product before you can market it.
What will be important is how you handle the difficulty in landing tech resources within the organization. You need to come to the roadmap meetings with data. Quantify the impact of what you are asking for by showing either how much money you are losing from not having this marketing program in place. That will help the product team prioritize your needs effectively.
Managing Your CFO
The next relationship to manage is the one with your new company’s CFO who can be challenging, especially given your role as first marketing leader. I acknowledge I am stereotyping CFOs and there are certainly many of them who are absolute joys to work with and appreciate the value of marketing. And, if you have one of those? Awesome. My advice is intended for scenarios when the CFO does not see the value in marketing, or believes it is too early to invest in marketing.
The non-believers will deem you as a cost and you won’t change their minds until your success is undeniable. Additionally, they tend to devalue brand-building and awareness-driving activities, which can create unnecessary hurdles.
At a previous job, I had a CFO who questioned every decision marketing made, and would criticize anything that did not drive immediate revenue. Whenever we generated press coverage, he would ask me how many visits to the site it drove and how many sales resulted from it. As you probably know, press coverage is incredibly difficult to quantify and the goal is rarely direct sales.
This is where your CEO needs to intercept and validate the brand-building strategy. Otherwise, you will fall into a vicious cycle of limiting spend only to channels that have immediate ROI (like SEM or lead-gen services). And, that is often the kiss-of-death for startup marketing because it is not scalable. Most business models simply do not have a big enough margin to support buying instant traffic; the CPA is too high on that traffic. To survive, you need to build a brand and drive traffic organically. And, the only way you can do that is through long-term investment. Avoiding this pitfall requires faith in the plan and, while it’s likely your CFO won’t, your CEO can help you overcome that.
All that said, putting ourselves in the CFO’s shoes for a minute is a useful exercise. When you do, you may find that the questions being asked are rational from his viewpoint. CFOs are trained to optimize resources and, in startup-land, building a brand is a high-risk investment. The rewards are not clear, in many cases; certainly not as clear as hiring a few more engineers or expanding a sales team.
The root cause of their allocation preference may be a signal of deeper issues in the organization. The prevailing wisdom is you hire a marketing leader when you have product-market fit and are ready to accelerate the business. If they are anxious, it’s probably because that product-market fit is absent, and marketing is being viewed as a savior, not an accelerator. Dig into this during the interview process. If you get this feeling, then run. Marketing cannot fix a broken product or organization.
Managing the Board
Another important relationship to nurture is with the board, which can be tricky. On one hand, you need to present a unified front with your CEO. He is the leader of your company, and the board doesn’t keep up with the day-to-day. If they are a good board, they understand this and provide guidance and don’t undermine him. But, you are also responsible for your own image. You want the board to have confidence in you.
Effectively managing your relationship with the board requires two important strategies: be meticulous in your presentation style and content, and, secondly, find an advocate on the board.
To present to the board, your part will probably be 2–5 slides over 10–15 minutes. That will take about 10–15 slides worth of preparation that you should have ready in the appendix. Don’t put anything fluffy in there.
You want to focus on numbers, facts, key observations, and what’s coming next. You can show PR/awareness wins, but don’t rely on them. The board mostly cares about how the numbers look.
In your first board meeting, make sure you are prepared to show them how you will create a successful strategy. The framework I presented earlier is my outline for the first board meeting. It helps them understand you have a method. I also offer my early thoughts (without committing too much). And, I show them what “quick wins” I plan on achieving. This should still be done in less than five slides; just the highlights with a link to your full plan.
Finding that advocate on the Board is also important. There is likely someone who either has marketing chops, or is taking a special interest in marketing. Build a relationship with that person. This can also be tricky because it is not intended to undermine your CEO. He should know if you are talking to the board and if this doesn’t sit well with him, abandon the idea. But, if you do have support, this can really help shape your value to the board and your personal brand (something we can help with at our consumer brand, TopResume). Try to vet your ideas with that person ahead of the board meeting so that, once again, someone feels ownership and will support you.
Organizing Executive Offsites
A great way to build strong relationships with your peers, as well as establish a strategic mindset in the company, is to organize an executive offsite. Startup culture is hectic and there is always something going on that you never really have people focused on the big picture when they are in the office. After every offsite, I have planned, the team walked away in great spirits and thankful we took the time to look at the big picture.
This type of planning might not be your place — it really depends on your company. But, if you are in a startup, it’s likely that the executive team is still small enough that you can convince your CEO to bless this event. The likelihood is that he will find this a useful exercise and agree they probably don’t “do enough things like this.”
Pick a pleasant location and schedule a day — or two, if you can swing it. Where you go is up to you. At one company, we went to Mohegan Sun (a casino resort outside of New York City) for two days. We rented a suite with a desk and a whiteboard and all stayed together on the same floor. At night, we had a great dinner and played poker together. I won the nightly tournament (#humblebrag) which gave us all a great story to return to the office. You cannot have bonding moments like that if you never leave the office.
If coordinating an overnight trip is impossible, you can compromise with renting a room from breather.com for the day. They are pleasant spaces with all the amenities.
Beyond team bonding, the offsite helps you move your strategy forward and solicits your peers’ buy-in. The old adage is that people are more supportive when they feel like they had a voice in the process — and that’s absolutely true for marketing strategy. The offsite is a great venue to accomplish this goal, while digging into the areas you most need outside support (segmentation, product strategy, operations, etc).
The key themes will be different from company to company. I’ve led executive offsites where the key question surrounded the potential TAM of different market segments. I’ve led offsites where the topic was brand strategy. This is unique to your company and its opportunity in the market.
You’ll want to present an agenda in advance so everyone can be prepared, and have about four or five conversation starters (typically the research you have been working on), ready to walk the team through the process.
Hopefully, this gives you an overview of the key strategic relationships you will encounter as a CMO and how to approach them. Your experiences will no doubt vary, but based on my own experiences, these are the lessons I have learned that I hope will serve you well in your new position. In the next installment we will talk about building your team. Be sure to follow me here on Medium for a notification on when it goes live next week. And once again, if you want to review part one, you can find it here.
Go to Advice on Building and Managing a Team (Part 3)
Diego Lomanto is the Chief Marketing Officer at Talent Inc., the leading career advice and resume-writing service for job seekers. He is also the co-founder of TournamentPokerEdge.com, the world’s most popular tournament poker training site.
