CMO/Head of Marketing: The First 100-Days (part 2/2)
This article is the second part of a two-part series on how to succeed in the first 100 days of a new leadership position. Part one provided an overview of several critical steps for transitioning into a new group or organization. Part two (this article) offers a framework for approaching the first 100 days as an incoming CMO or marketing leader.
All incoming executives are under the gun to show results. But, before you start drafting ambitious plans, there's nothing worse than building a plan that still fails because it didn't meet the goals and objectives of the business.
The first 100 days represent the springboard from which you will develop and execute your long-term vision. During this period, there is a lot to do. You must learn the business and industry. Weave yourself into the company DNA. Build relationships, hire a team, and develop and launch your strategy—all while showing quick wins.
Even before you start, request access to the planning presentations, budget, board reports, and anything else that can help you frame a clear picture of the thinking for the marketing plan, objectives, and activities that you are about to inherit. Do not rush to pin down goals; instead, let your thoughts mature. You will want to set metrics that align with the organization's top goals and demonstrate the value of marketing.
Here is a framework to help you plan and navigate your entrance as the new CMO or head of marketing.
Ask, what's the history of category design at the company?
Establishing a category will be critical to your new company's success and you will need to understand the history of category design.
Did they try it but fail? Why did they fail? Was the former marketing head a brand/corporate marketer who didn't understand category design? Is there an essential member of the management team who is resistant to the idea? Is the board not supportive? Are there financial constraints that could make obtaining the needed resources difficult?
Take time to compare what you learned during the interview process with what you observe in your first few days. Remember, the company did not want to air its dirty laundry before you discovered it yourself. Every piece of the history lesson relating to category design will be helpful to ensure success.
For a refresh on Category Design, here's a presentation.
You need a team that is aligned and willing to pull for you.
In the critical first 100 days, you must spend time with your marketing team and the other executives to discover what drives success. It's essential that you know the people who will be working with you and for you.
You will want to uncover the following: How are they motivated? Where do they want to go inside the company and in their career? What are their dreams?
The executive who shows genuine care and attention for those who came before them will benefit by having critical allies during the onboarding phase. Now is not the time to come in with a big ego mandating wholesale changes to people, processes, and structures. It is time to be humble and listen. Your job as CMO is to create an environment where smart people are empowered to tackle parts of a bigger plan and succeed.
Many executives have gotten tripped up in new situations, not because they failed to build the proper ties with the people who worked for them; rather, they didn't establish relationships with those in positions of influence.
Perform a company messaging and narrative audit.
Examine carefully the message and narratives that are being used by talking to the marketing, sales, and product teams. You want to understand the story.
Ask what unique insights do we have? How are we communicating those insights? What is the core problem we are solving? Who have we built our messages for?
If the company has embarked on category design, this process will help you uncover whether it has been adequately named and verify whether it's a real category or just a catchy feature description.
Though the message's orientation may be changed based on the needs of the channel, the meaning must still be congruent. Be sure to examine every communications and marketing channel, web, digital, social, video, OOH, print, radio, TV, events, and content marketing.
Don't underestimate how far homogenizing messages can go with improving brand engagement and sentiment. If your customers are confused as a result of seeing different and conflicting messages, then it stands to reason that they'll not be responsive to your brand or offers in the market. The value of congruent messaging applies equally to B2C and B2B marketing.
Not all leads are defined equally, starting with MQLs and SQLs.
As the incoming head of marketing, you must have a mutually agreed definition of what comprises an MQL and SQL. Agreeing as quickly as possible on the definition of MQL (marketing qualified leads) and SQL (sales qualified leads) will save the sales and marketing organization much friction. You need to clarify this because, without it, there can be no arbiter or standard of reference when the sales team complains about a lack of performance from marketing.
With an agreed-upon definition of what comprises the MQL and SQL criteria, the next question is the split of lead generation compared with ABM activities to make sense of the business strategy? Each market and company is unique, and this decision must be made with agreement from the CEO and the head of sales.
Complete a CRM, sales process, and marketing stack audit.
The CRM in many organizations mirrors the sales process. This is why spending time to understand what data is resident in it and how it can be used to provide an essential view of the sales organization's mechanics is a necessary activity.
Auditing the CRM data and sales process may be well within the scope of the person heading marketing as many marketing teams own the CRM. For other organizations, the CRM falls under the domain of sales operations. Regardless, it is crucial to understand the sales process and whether reps are talking to the right people. You need to know what is working, what isn't working? Are prospects generally following the process, or do they require prodding at each stage? Is the CRM data clean? And, is the CRM utilized?
If you find CRM data that is incomplete or lacking a method of tracking progress through the funnel, this means metrics will be based on flimsy data or fabricated. In addition to auditing and assessing the CRM data health and congruency of the sales process, you will want to perform a thorough assessment of the marketing stack.
Be sure to examine all the tools in use by the marketing team during this process. Look for under-utilization or over-utilization of tools, to determine gaps and inefficiencies. Many marketing teams have amassed tools that are rarely if ever used. There is a cost-saving with canceling unused tools. Still, some marketing teams have organized their process around tools that are so advanced that the operational procedure needs to be refreshed every time they are required.
Learn the default personality of the sales team.
Sales teams comprise individuals with unique personalities, but did you know that the sales team itself also has a personality? It is vital to understand how the sales team functions when in front of a customer. This step is not about auditing performance.
As an example, it's valuable to understand whether the group is intellectual in their sales approach. Do they lean heavily on facts and logic during the course of the sales motion? Where you have an intellectually focused sales head, you will find a strong bias for using intellectual sales arguments. This will carry throughout the organization, even to those members who aren't naturally inclined to use an intellectual approach.
Conversely, you may find the sales team is very relationship-driven or leaning on emotions for how they approach customers. With a sales team that is relationship-focused, producing detailed, lengthy whitepapers will likely not be useful as "voice of the customer" videos.
The most common sales team styles are:
- Intellectual.
- Relational.
- Emotional.
Intellectual sellers are easy to spot because they will lean towards data and facts. To best serve this group, provide data-rich and information-heavy marketing materials.
You will find relational sellers, on the other hand, always out to lunch, dinner, or on the golf course. Video and testimonial driven marketing can work well to support a sales team that leans heavily on relationship selling approaches. This group will also be more inclined to ask for MDF or sponsorship funds for events, as they feel "having a presence" is essential to building and maintaining their relationships.
The emotionally-driven sales team will likely be in industries centered around people where emotion may be a core part of the business. The entertainment business has an active emotional component, which means exploiting EQ (emotional quotient) over IQ (intellectual intelligence) is more important.
Content review, the five W's.
Using the five W's (Who, What, When, Where, Why) is an excellent framework to use for conducting a content review.
Knowing "Who" you are marketing to (the audience) will be vital as you put together your plan. There has been much focus on personas in the marketing world. However, the trouble with a persona is that it can either too narrowly define the audience, or as the market shifts, leave the marketer focusing on the wrong people. Auditing whom we are marketing to should be done regularly.
The "What" represents topics or substance of the content created, while the "When" tells us timing for when the content should be released. Certain marketing motions are timed to specific events in the year, or sales cycles while others are evergreen and ongoing with no prescribed release schedule. The intention is to make sure the content created is about the appropriate topics and subjects, and appropriately timed.
"Where" and "Why" will give you a sense of the strategy behind the content. "Where" is specific to the actual place where the material is released. Is it going to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, the company blog, partner blogs, industry websites?
The answer to "Why" content is published to a specific destination informs the purpose or strategy behind the content produced. The best practice is to get answers to the five W's and think strategically about how the content you are creating today aligns with the company's strategic objectives.
Align marketing with sales for maximum enablement.
The old days of sales and marketing walled off as independent silos with marketing a service org to sales are gone. The most unobstructed path to progress will be to address the sales-marketing tension and reduce it while you are in the honeymoon phase. Find commonalities and work together to demonstrate that you are listening by working in a regularly scheduled 1:1 between the head of sales and yourself as head of marketing.
Today, sales and marketing are increasingly integrated, where marketing needs to know more about the language of sales, and the sales team needs to understand more about marketing. For a fully synced up sales and marketing organization, it will be essential to align on goals, roles, and systems.
The trend in marketing is toward agile, which suggests that long-term marketing projects should be reformatted to fit incremental fast execution steps so that the company's contribution can be made quickly. This trend fits better with salespeople who must meet quotas and want to know that the marketing team is invested in their success.
A marketing leader can quickly drum up leads by spending money. And, while your lead numbers will look good, they won't yield tangible business results unless they are of the quality needed. Meanwhile, sales are left frustrated by spending less time with qualified opportunities.
As the head of marketing, it is crucial to develop a good relationship with the head of sales. In so doing, bring that person into the strategy to break down the fighting over functional roles. Sales and marketing teams can view their roles in the revenue generation process differently. Some sales leaders and their sellers wonder why they must generate leads, when, in fact, marketing assumes sales cannot close the leads they produce.
In some industries, or where a sales or marketing head has unusually strong customer connections, it may be appropriate for a particular marketing or even sales role to be flipped around. The key here is to build trust and talk with your counterpart on the sales side.
Sales enablement begins and ends with account-based marketing (ABM). These powerful marketing automation tools enable one-to-one conversations with prospects. Many marketing teams are now being measured less on the ROI of their marketing spend, and more on actual revenue attributed to their activities. In this environment, succeeding in ABM is required.
As the marketing leader, it's your job to ensure the methodology, process, and tools used are in alignment and collaboration with sales. Of all the aspects of marketing, ABM is the one that will require the closest coordination with sales.
Building the plan.
The Chief Executive is the single-most-important relationship you will have within the organization. Marketing expertise varies from CEO to CEO with some CEOs seeking to delegate marketing, will others will want to collaborate, and help to shape the function.
Your ideas, strategy, and plan depend on others fully realizing them, including your team, your counterparts, and the internal and external stakeholders. You will define the strategic imperatives that will bubble up based on the common themes that arise through your conversations and research. Be sure to document these themes as they evolve since they will become your strategy's guideposts. As you continue meeting with colleagues, you'll start building your plan (presented as a work-in-progress) to validate what you think are the significant actions.
Fight the need to move fast. Having discussed quick wins, don't get caught trying to do too much too soon. Drawing fast conclusions and making broad recommendations is a common mistake. The freshness you bring to the role is essential, but you must recognize that you likely have not entirely absorbed the nuances.
As for quick wins, these are not sweeping changes. A good plan will include a verifiable component, a strategic aspect, and it will be actionable. There is nothing more exciting than starting a new position and taking on a new challenge. I trust this article series (read part one here) was useful. I love to speak with CEO's who are looking to understand marketing better. Message me with your request, and I will respond.
Missed part one? >>> READ IT HERE <<<
ABOUT MARK DONNIGAN:
I am a revenue-focused B2B CMO who is a business builder. I work with technical founders to build marketing playbooks that have the best chance of achieving business success. As a value creator, I operate with a growth mindset and serve as a player-coach building innovative and disruptive companies in the areas of software/SaaS, technology, CE hardware, and consumer entertainment services. Working cross-functionally, I've led marketing, sales, and business development teams that have generated more than $500 million in revenue and shareholder value. If you are building the future, I'd love to hear about it. Let's talk. Learn more at GrowthStage.Marketing