Here are the frequently asked questions I have received recently. If there are any questions you have that are not covered below, get in touch at cmoadvisor@dannydenhard.com 

How does your advisory differ to coaching? 

I am often asked what the difference is between being a coach, the difference between being an advisor to companies and being the advisor to CMOs. 

• My coaching is skills-based sessions, they are improving skills to create muscle memory and setting goals with deadlines - I set homework to ensure you deliver on what you learn and can get in those reps to make a material difference to their careers and the companies they represent. My CMO coaching is EQ (emotional intelligence), IQ (your Marketing skills and gut feel) and PQ (political intelligence - how to get better results internally and externally) coaching  

• A company advisor should be someone who comes into the business and adds value to the top line and can identify key areas to improve performance, process and people. A company advisor stays at 10000ft view and rarely will get their hands dirty; their network is a key component. My approach is understanding the issues at hand, working through problem-solving solving and working with the department and leadership team members to address current issues and unlock future performance enhancements. I tend to stay at 1000ft, but often there are times when I will get into the weeds and be on the ground to support and drive change 

• My CMO advisory service is working with the CMO, their management team (and then some of their team members) and often with the leadership team. All designed to improve confidence, quality of output (some require quantity to improve momentum) and most importantly performance. There is a good chunk of coaching included in my CMO advisory service - personal, team and department results are key to improving the company’s revenue. I often break down projects into advisory and coaching.  

How do you distinguish between 'strategy' and 'execution' in your advisory role, and who is responsible for the actual doing?

Each engagement is different; however, one of the most important elements in my advisory role is supporting the business growth and being able to bridge strategy and execution. I don’t just create slide decks and a checklist, I hold the CMO or Marketing Leader accountable and set homework, ensuring the team understands the what, why, they select the how and the when. I will check in and be available to support where there could be skills gaps and bring in trusted partners or roll up my sleeves. 

I will always be clear where I am hands-on or hands-off, or the CMO (or equivalent) needs to step in (take more ownership), step out (step out and assign another leader) or step up (remove themselves from the process as they are the blocker). 

What does success look like? What does the first 90 days look like, and what tangible wins should we expect by month three?

I break everything down into people, performance and process (you will have seen by some of the previous answers). I run a professional audit and understand the concerns, the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities and the threats. 

There will be a clear plan after week 1 / day 3-5 and then a roadmap towards success. There will be a hiring and/or firing plan and an accelerated plan of action focused on delivery and improving momentum. 

I often roll out a think big act small by when plan (here is a free template for you) - to ensure each team member and members of the leadership team understand what is most important actions, the most 3-5 actions being taken to each workstream and when the delivery deadline is. 

Each step will have a success metric(s) and there will be a visible improvement in the Marketing leader. Often, there will be a personalised coaching and performance plan for the CMO. By month two, there will be KPIs hit and a pathway to seeing this in the most important company metric. 

How will you measure the success of this engagement? Is it revenue, leads, or something else?

Commercial goals are critically important, whether you run the business on CAC, LTV, AOV, or repeat custom, the most important metric will be connected to the CMO advisory engagement. Often, businesses have a broken funnel/loop or leaky bucket they cannot see as being too close to the work, this often leads to improved performance across the board but will require the right prioritisation and cross-functional collaboration. Some engagements require a dedicated Brand or Product workstream, and these will be connected to mid and long-term outcomes. 

We have a strong product but poor sales. Is this a Marketing problem or a Sales problem, and how will you diagnose it?

No more blame game, this has to be investigated, owned and addressed. Sales and Marketing don’t always align; however, the steps to success will be called out and addressed. In these situations, it often becomes an ownership, co-ownership or collaboration exercise and often involves removing the ego and status games to address underlying issues. 

How scalable is the current Marketing engine, and what breaks if we triple the budget tomorrow?

Marketing engines always need work; the breaking point often comes to the forefront as soon as extra strain is applied, whether a burst test or an alternative ramp test.

Understanding and testing the over-reliance on paid media or organic is key, as is creating a combination and a revamped engine to remove the people problem, the process problem or the performance problem. We would work together in understanding what is working and what isn’t, where the problem lies and how we can address these. Marketing engines need to be built with the teams in mind, then the people, then process and the associated goals otherwise the fuel for the engine won’t be accepted.

I personally have a preference for a newsroom approach to Marketing Departments, it connects teams and cross-functional departments and puts the Department on the front foot as you are always looking to audit and looking to market a great story, a great product, a great use case and connecting to your internal data vs just looking to news jack or sticking to a content calendar, this is just one approach but works across B2C, B2B and DTC.

We struggle with our understanding of CAC relative to LTV, and how can we optimise it?

Marketing is a performance (revenue-driving) department; it is not just about awareness and driving users to landing pages, apps and bespoke/custom pages.

Marketing can be tracked effectively and requires detailed work to calculate CAC and LTV and then have LTV to CAC ratios etc. 

Removing Complexities & Collaboration Issues: Often CAC and LTV are owned by different departments, with “owned by Marketing” and “owned by Product” or waiting on Product to make the required changes to track, analyse and calculate properly. There are also situations when multiple tracking is used and that needs clearing up. 

Getting to unit economics is often part of the auditing process and a workstream we have on the roadmap, optimising will be a key area we work on. 

How does the current brand positioning align with our our goal of an exit in x years?

It is common in these CMO advisory programmes that the goal is for a business exit/sale. This is a common goal and building the muscle for this is critically important; this will be called out in the audit process. This will be paired with the company strategy and roadmap and I will offer recommended actions to take and work with the CMO and executive peers to ensure these are rolled out. 

Brands can look ready for customers, but, often ready for investment or acquisition and commonly brands believe they are ready to be acquired unfortunately their customers and product stats are clearly suggesting a different reality. These are key projects to be built out and collaborate on in the CMO advisory programme.  

Our leadership team believe our GTM is strong, we aren’t as sure, how can you help?

From experience, there are typically a few issues and ways to address these 

• GTM often divides Marketing and leadership teams - have you been able to communicate the concerns and address these with your leadership peers? If no, this is where succinct comms is critical - this is often half the battle.

• Many Marketing Departments have an over-reliance on platforms (such as Meta or Google) and aren’t aware of the negative impact it has. Many Department leads can be slightly blinded by the goals or the deadline vs being able to create the space to break down concerns and address them - By creating critical distance and assigning dedicated time, we would create a communication plan, with prioritisation of concerns and how you will address these

• There are likely dependencies on key personnel and key teams, it is important to have plan b to these key team members and address these concerns, this is with a plan and supporting team members who can pick up some slack and help to remove stresses  

• My recommended solution: I often find one problem two solutions as a key framework to explain many of these concerns and communicate with fellow leaders. Communication is key, communication and having a high-confidence stress-tested plan will remove doubt and enable you to win. We work across these bullet points to address concerns, highlight the recommended actions and help with exec kick back.

Do we have a crisis communication plan in place, and does the marketing team know how to execute it?

Many companies outside of the top public companies do not have a crisis comms plan or playbook and more regularly have to invest heavily into reputation management and PR firms after the fact. Having 24 years of experience in Marketing, Growth & Product roles across private and public companies, I have experienced a number of high-profile issues (including numerous press questions around business models and fee structures around terror attacks, Product launch failures, business site downtime, and removal of the MD) and have a playbook we will amend and co-create together.

In today's landscape, you have to be prepared for more, from employee tweets, screenshots of internal emails and slack messages, CEO and founder LinkedIn comments, viral clips from podcast appearances, to clips of combative interviews, you have to build robust and modern crisis comms. 

I also have a number of years experience in reputation management with high-profile companies and businesses, so if you are in a crisis and need to address post-crisis I have helped global and local brands in addressing these issues. 

Are we investing enough in 'brand equity' versus 'performance marketing,' and what is the right balance for our stage?

Every company is working through what is the right balance for their situation, some having to build for short term only concentrating on performance marketing, others are mid to long term and investing into brand campaigns and rebuilding their brand fame. Every business has to understand their environment and what their own requirement is. Often this is a dedicated workstream especially when many CMOs consider themselves Brand first or Performance first. 

Startups often over index on just performance marketing, particularly in this market, but without a brand presence and confidence, most Products are flawed and won’t retain existing customers and fail to have brand buzz to attract enough net new customers. 

The right approach is to review, plan and deliver on the mix required. A number of CMOs struggle here and often flip flop their Departments approach leading to a lack of confidence. Quite a few inexperienced or long-serving CMOs will have their biases and the way they do it, its important for a CMO advisor to remain neutral to drive business performance. 

Are you here to audit me, replace me, or help me?

I am here to help the business, I am here to help drive performance not to replace existing leaders. As someone who is an exec (CMO, CGO and CPO) coach I thrive in helping C-Suite leaders improve their performance and their departments’ performance and processes, so there will be audits and recommendations to improve your processes and people, but not to replace you. 

Frequent issues that come up include helping CMOs with their exec presence, improving their political intelligence (what I call PQ) and improving their executive relationships with their peers. Often, it is a management issue with people around them and their boss (Founder, CEO or COO) than team management. If team management and leadership is an issue there are plenty of ways to address these with auditing and coaching. 

Every C-Suite leader needs help, often removing barriers and unlocking issues by talking through different approaches. Most C-Suite leaders mimic their former bosses and do not create distance to improve their own approach and apply a better way of doing rather than its always been this way or this is the only way I know. 

I’m stuck in the weeds/drowning in operational tasks. How can you help me restructure the team so I can get back to strategy?

• Creating the right roadmap and plans of action

• Prioritisation is critical - helps you to prioritise or remove tasks. Stepping away from ownership is hard but needed 99% of engagements

• Understanding where the issue lies - you, the team or the goals set 

• Reviewing goals and OKRs and being ruthless, (keep, kill, cure audit) does it need to continue (keep), can these be cured (optimised) and can some goals and processes be killed (removed) 

• Often, it’s time for a tactical refresh - teams can just add 20% on top of last year and not hit the goal and although there are ripples through the business, it becomes a way of working vs a better and more effective way of working. 

• It’s time to become serious about org design and your level of support. Including building out the right business cases - we will discuss hiring and firing requirements that won’t reduce headcount and add additional issues. 

Do people use the CMO advisory as a way to replace their CMO?

Not usually. Typically, when being asked to help by the CMO, the CMO manager or by HR, these are proactive steps by the business to improve performance. 

I am often brought in by founders, leadership teams, private equity and VCs to audit and ensure improved performance, based on the audit and collaboration, there can be difficult conversations that will need to happen, I would much rather coach and develop the CMO and their team but it can mean there are times where its not a right match or the company does not have the time to invest. 

How can you help me communicate better with the Board/CFO? I feel like they don't 'get' Marketing.

Marketing metrics and channels explode every year. Often these channels sound like more noise than signal and communication does not change, and when it does, it sounds like Marketing fluff (likes, views, sentiment, engagement) rather than core business targets such as ROI, revenue and margin. 

I help to co-create an internal communication guide with better reporting and analysis. I often act as the C-Suite translation and delivery service. 

What are the blind spots in my current skill set that are holding the company back?

Everyone has blind spots and skills gaps; it is whether they are hindering your and the company's performance and if you need to proactively improve these gaps. 

A high percentage of department leaders hire for their own skill gaps and that can cause issues with leadership teams, as it can addresses issues in delivery but often is overlooked and poorly explained to their colleagues and can often lead to these hires leaving 

Some require a personalised, dedicated and detailed plan (once you get to management and executive level it is on you to improve your skills and often this is overlooked), others need 3-5 actionable skill gaps with relevant steps to take to improve their skills