Marketing Leadership AMA

I recently ran an AMA with a private CMO community, and they asked me a number of super smart questions.

It’s super actionable advice for CMO and marketing leaders on managing up and working with the C-suite.

Key topics include:

• Forcing alignment on marketing's accountability in the first 90 days

• Reframing brand investment in financial terms for the CFO

• How to proactively manage the relationships with CEOs, COOs, CPOs and your C-suite peers

• Pushing back constructively on tactical ideas from the CEO

• How to manage imposter syndrome and second-guessing your judgment

• And shifting board conversations from MQLs to strategic value.

I have anonymised the full questions (with permission) and answers below from the transcript: 

The Q&A

Managing up and the C-suite

1. Getting alignment on "drive growth" in your first 90 days

Q: I was hired to 'drive growth,' which means something different to the CEO, the CFO, and the Head of Sales. How do I force alignment on what marketing is actually accountable for in my first 90 days? 

Most CMOs who struggle in their first 90 days were set up to struggle before they started. So own your onboarding. Before day one, get the documents: the department plan and OKRs, the annual plan, board minutes or investor updates, recent QBRs and the product roadmap. Research how long each C-suite peer has been there, because a team that has worked together for years trusts each other differently from a new one.

In the first 30 days I recommend 3 moves:

1. Cut or fix the bottom 20% of spend, and move that money somewhere it works.

2. Agree a shared definition of marketing success with the CEO and CFO for this quarter, in words you both use.

3. Walk into the next board meeting with a cleaner, simpler story.

Add the Head of Sales to that second conversation. Once all three have agreed on a definition, write it down and report against it at day 90. Also name "the big problem to solve" in week one. Every CEO and board hired you to fix something, and your 90-day review has to show you're closer to fixing it. You can read my full first 90 day run down 

2. Making the case for brand spend to a CFO

Q: My CFO treats marketing purely as a cost centre and wants to cut brand spend every quarter. How do I reframe brand investment in financial terms they will actually respect? 

A: Use finance language. In the Marketing Unfiltered piece John Lyons wrote for us, he clearly separates efficiency from effectiveness. Efficiency is the most output for the least input, and nothing is more efficient than spending zero and still getting sales. Effectiveness means creating future sales as well as converting people who are buying now. About 95% of perfectly targeted sales-activation spend won't drive an immediate sale, so brand is how you reach those buyers before they're ready. 

Document your branded search baseline before you spend, and agree the time horizon with the CFO upfront. Some brand effects, such as pricing power and less discounting, take 9 to 12 months to show. 

If the problem is belief more than numbers, turn it into a game, yes gamify it. Run my Brand Game with the leadership team. Name a category and ask for the first brand that comes to mind. People name Starbucks even when they say they dislike the coffee. They remember jingles and their first iPhone, and almost nobody remembers a performance ad. That exercise moves a vague "brand spend" debate onto shared ground. 

3. Handling the CEO's competitor-inspired ideas 

Q: The CEO keeps coming to me with random tactical ideas they saw a competitor do, derailing our roadmap. How do I push back constructively without looking defensive or rigid? 

The roadmap is your defence, so build one and make it visible. Companies that only act tactically keep changing direction, and reactive companies most often lose. 

Competitors will claim they ship fast with no roadmap. Let them. The winners will be clear and focused. 

You are the leader in your business, you have to stand up and act this way, saying no is part and parcel of your job, this is the area that will test how other leaders in your org think and test you.

I'd add that past a certain level, managing up is most of your actual job. You can also bring the idea into a structured format, like an exec workshop or a short sprint, where it gets tested in the open. 

You never have to say no in a corridor. 

One way to run this is to prioritise what’s in the roadmap, score it, and apply the same score to new ideas, but require a hypothesis and expected results; this adds a smart way to score and a protective layer between ideas and changes.

In practice, put every new idea through the same intake you use for everything else. For me that's a Growth Requirement Document: what it is, which metric it moves, what it costs and what drops out to make room. Then the CEO is choosing between options, and you aren't refusing anything. 

Here is my guide to being successful cross-functionally.

4. Changing the board conversation

Q: Board meetings feel like an interrogation on MQLs and attribution rather than a strategic conversation. How do I change the narrative in the boardroom? 

The board asks about MQLs because those are the numbers you give them. I split metrics into three levels:

1. Level 1, Business metrics: revenue, EBITDA, CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC and churn. These are the board's language.

2. Level 2, Department metrics: marketing-originated revenue, pipeline contribution, ROAS and share of voice.

3. Level 3, Team metrics: CTR, MQL-to-SQL conversion, rankings and engagement. These are diagnostic, and the C-suite treats them as noise. Yes, vanity metrics do come through here. 

Lead every board conversation with Level 1. Keep Level 3 for explaining why a number moved. Then cut the weak words from your deck and speaker notes: "a bit", "just", "kind of", "quite", "really", "very". Give updates in threes. Get the CFO, COO and CPO onside in weekly 1-2-1s, so their objections come up in private and not in front of the board.

I have a dedicated post on how to communicate effectively  I also recommend revisiting how to survive the first 90 days as a CMO

Leading the team

5. Turning order-takers into business owners

Q: I inherited a team of 'order-takers' who are used to just executing requests from sales and product. How do I coach them to start thinking like strategic business owners? 

Start with the same three-level metrics exercise, run as a working session with your Heads/Directors of. They put every metric they report into Level 1, 2 or 3, then map Levels 1 and 2 to OKRs (or your equivalent). 

If everything they own sits in Level 3, they're order-takers by design, and the exercise shows them that without you having to say it. Communication is critical they need to know what success looks like and how they own, co-own and where they collaborate, previous teams might have just followed orders as that's how they knew they could be successful

Then give them a way to say yes and no. A Growth Requirement Document makes every request show its size, its owner and who else needs to be involved.
Almost every team lead needs a phased plan they co-own at last, help to write formally and present to the business and this is a coachable activity to lead on and it will likely take 6 - 8 months to change the way of working. 

6. Doing the work yourself vs. delegating

Q: I’m caught between executing myself because things are moving too slowly and burning out, or delegating to a team that isn't quite ready. How do I find the right altitude? 

Being close to the work and the data is an advantage. The skill is knowing when to step up and when to step out. I use a plan with three modes:

1. Step in where you're needed more.

2. Step up where team members and colleagues can take more ownership.

3. Step out where the work needs room.

Write down which mode applies to each workstream. Some people need closer management, so set guardrails for what good looks like, and it stops feeling like micro-management. Here is my guide to handling this 

On burnout, Alan Derbyshire-Trice wrote a recent burnout piece for us arguing it often has little to do with hours. It comes from slowly losing touch with yourself while trying to be "the right kind of leader". If you're doing your team's work to cover for them, check that cost too. 

7. Under-coached or in the wrong seat

Q: How do I know when a marketing lead on my team is simply under-coached versus genuinely in the wrong seat? 

There are a few tests and questions to answer: 

• Have you scored them on the most important skills required?

• Are they investing in themselves enough to move their skill level? 

• If I challenged them to answer skills levels, how different would the results be? 

• Are they misaligned on the essential requirements within that role? 

• Can I invest the time to take them from x to at least 8? 

• If I brought in a top level marketing coach would the employee invest the time and effort into improving? 

• Can you afford to lose this person in the next 6 months? 

• Will they be replaced? 

These are all questions to go through and answer. 

Score Vs Gut: Do you trust your gut? If yes and they score low or aren’t up for the task to improve even with a coach, you will need to make a plan of action to remove or where applicable, place someone above them. 

I also find the most useful founder test comes from Brian Chesky founder mode, which I've broken down on my blog. 

Is the person six months behind their job (doing today what they should have done six months ago), on track, or six months ahead and bringing you problems before they land? Chesky also says that once someone stops scaling, the trend rarely reverses. When it does, it's usually because their role was narrowed.  

Before you decide it's the seat, rule out the usual coaching gaps: goals that don't ladder up, poor priorities, poor communication and performance anxiety. If you fix the goals and the person improves, they are under-coached. If you fix them and nothing changes, it's the seat.

Here is a deeper coaching guide to help here 

8. Rebuilding safety after layoffs and cuts

Q: Morale is low after recent budget cuts and layoffs, and everyone is terrified of taking risks. How do I rebuild psychological safety and creative momentum? 

Explain how the decisions were made and why. 

Step back and understand what they need from you specifically, is it being kinder, which is different from nicer. People remember it. 

When strong performers leave, the team needs to hear a short-to-mid-term plan, including how much extra work lands on them. In coaching, I recommend dealing with performance anxiety early: run retros and agree together what needs fixing. I recommend this exec coaching deep dive covering 12 common themes and recommended actions.  

I wrote about this on my marketing leadership newsletter  

To get creative momentum back, make risks smaller and visible. 

• Run a Keep, Kill, Cure, Copy audit lets the team decide together what stays, what goes, what gets fixed and what they borrow from elsewhere. 

• Create a departmental plan everyone adds their recommendation and involvements in, create the plan, share around and add individual names as owners, co-owners or collaborators on. 

• Then send a short thank-you note or video that names specific good work. 

Prioritising and peer relationships

9. Deciding what to let burn

Q: Everything feels urgent, pipeline is behind, the positioning is muddled, and our tech stack is a mess. How do I decide what to deliberately let burn while I fix the foundation? 

Go operational and prioritise, create a plan of action and get the right people on the most important priorities. Break down into short, mid and long term, if you are that far away from the agreed business goals, you are putting yourself on the chopping block, so the short term has to come first. Positioning can be fixed in short bursts and by a few clever campaigns vs an expensive and consuming project. 

Pipeline can be cleaned up, optimised and new resources (agency, individual etc) can be assigned to ramp up leads or sales. Try to remember pipeline is either short term or long term to convert, if you run a longer term cycle, you will need to keep putting MQLs/demand at the top otherwise you will mid term and your decision will be misunderstood. 

Tech stacks take months to switch and often you will need a number of sign-offs in the process, so have a dedicated blitz on this, if it takes more than 6 hours in a meeting room with real focus this will be a never-ending project. 

Anything with a number of opinions, not real evidence, has to be paused. 

In the modern CMO piece, I described five fronts CMOs fight on at once: board and financial pressure, AI and tech, data and measurement, talent and org design, and market dynamics. Your job is to prioritise and simplify. 

My order:

1. Name the big problem you were hired to fix and protect that work.

2. Cut the bottom 20% of spend.

3. Audit channels, budget, analytics, martech and audience in weeks 2 to 4.

4. Leave data, tooling and martech clean-up until around day 60. Cut the stack back and settle on a realistic attribution approach. Research MMM (marketing mix modelling) before committing, because it often confirms what you already knew.

5. Leave the full strategy, the agency review and changes to leadership meetings until weeks 13 to 26.

10. Fixing the relationship with the CRO/COO 

Q: Sales blames us (marketing) for lead quality, and marketing blames sales for follow-up. Beyond SLA agreements, how do you actually fix a broken relationship with the CRO? 

There are a tonne of ways marketing, sales and rev ops become disconnected and usually it’s around the goals or the set up of the goals, this is usually the place to start, CROs are numbers- and revenue-driven; you will need to look at being the bigger person and breaking down what you’re doing in short sentences and on a spreadsheet: what you’re doing, why and the impact. 

Katleen's Marketing Unfiltered piece, our #103, sets out the fix, and it starts before measurement:

1. Write down what each piece of unattributable work adds: PR, organic social and brand.

2. Agree those statements with sales and the CEO. McKinsey found CEOs and CMOs agree on the top three marketing metrics only half the time, so don't assume you agree.

3. Measure marketing on pipeline created and closed-won, the numbers it shares with sales. Lead volume says nothing about revenue.

4. Agree on definitions: marketing-sourced, sales-sourced, marketing-influenced, when an opportunity enters the pipeline and what each stage means. Sales owns every opportunity from the moment it's created.

The piece's main recommendation is to put marketing and sales side by side under the CEO with one scorecard. If you already report to the CRO, record every budget move from long-term work into immediate pipeline, then take that record to the CEO together with your manager.  

Looking after yourself

11. Imposter syndrome and who to turn to

Q: Imposter syndrome is hitting me hard right now. When you’re the most senior marketer in the room, who do you turn to when you’re second-guessing your own judgment? 

The exec table is hard and lonely. I've described it as feeling like an episode of The Traitors (mafia), you’re often looking for the traitors but you also know someone will probably kill you in plain sight, and you’d have no idea who or why. 

Derisking Judgment Calls: Often it is about stress testing your judgment, how you run tests or work through hypotheses to understand how you got to the decision and how you and the team are working it. Many marketing tactics will vary in success, that is something we often overlook, even paid across Google and Meta aren’t as successful as they were, so having a confidence score (and clearly defining what that means to colleagues) will help you plan and replan. If you are numbers-driven, scoring systems will help you greatly. 

Build A System: I have created a free daily coaching system called daily dose. It breaks down what the marketing campaign/project or business changes, why it matters and how to apply the lesson yourself. This was a way to keep looking for inspiration, while offering a quick coaching lesson and keep an active eye on great campaigns and projects, while testing my own judgment. 

Framework Approach: I always recommend an ARR (after action review) and BAR (before action review). These are exercises I borrowed from the military,  AAR’s help you to break down campaigns and projects, say what worked, what didn’t and what you can optimise before the next campaign. BAR can help you run through the set up, review previous events and say what's in and what's out to boost your judgment. 

Peer Route/Network: You have a few options to go down the peer route,
(i) trust your peers from the senior leadership team,
(ii) trust your industry peers and stress test your ideas through reaching out within an industry group or
(iii) looking for a mentor or marketing leader coach. 

I have had mixed results with mentors who would replay their own experiences and say what they did versus what makes most sense in your lived experience. Mentors won’t set hard goals which is ok, but often that means you won’t feel change and won’t be able to say your judgment is getting better or it has improved. 

I would always advocate for a coach and it’s down to how you choose them and how much they can help you with creating a scoring system and skills improvement plan. 

As a former CMO and CGO, I know and remember the pressure, but someone who has held exactly your role may just tell you their own story, not create a personalised plan that you need. I like to say I have the battle scars so I can protect you from getting them. 

I offer coaching to senior leaders, from Heads of, through Marketing Directors, VP Marketing and up to coaching CMOs. 

If you start your look for a coach, look for a coach with broad experiences, I recommend CMO plus experience, so is that someone who was a Growth leader, a cross functional previous department leader like a Product department or as a GM. 

Check they cover IQ (skills) EQ (emotional intelligence) and PQ (political intelligence) as well as craft.

Build your bench too: weekly 1-2-1s with the CFO, COO and CPO, and a peer group outside the company. Many senior marketers lose confidence after one poor quarter. A strategy build and review with someone outside the building is often what brings it back - have 100% confidence you trust them and they’re gut. 

12. Warning signs that the CMO job is a trap

Q: The average CMO tenure is notoriously short. What are the biggest early warning signs that I’m walking into a trap and how do I course-correct before it’s too late? 

These are the signs I watch for:  

1. Poor onboarding. CMOs tend to be let go sooner than their C-suite peers when onboarding is poor, and HR usually leaves it to the leadership team and the headhunter.

2. Get the lay of the land quickly don’t wait for others to tell you or send you a doc, book in meetings, get a pulse away from interviews, ask office managers, ops leads, and connect with leadership peers for coffees go informal to begin with, ask what projects they have on, where they are feeling pressure, where you connect in and if you were to find a magic solution where would it be. If everyones if the same fix that, if theres 10s of solutions needed there is likely a leadership team issue around prioritisation. Get to know your colleagues and what motivates them

3. No agreed definition of success with the CEO and CFO. You have to drive this, you will own your own success as much as others help or hinder you. 

4. Too much in the first quarter. One CMO in our Marketing Unfiltered series joined a blockchain business with no blockchain experience. They faced a protocol launch, a repositioning, a brand refresh and three more go-to-market launches in three months, and unfortunately left after six months.

5. The last CMO or marketing leader left without hand over or documentation this often shows they left in a hurry or they were pushed out and didn’t create a handover for the team. 

6. Find your number 2 and 3 - this won’t be recommended by many others but finding or building your org/hierarchy will help bring everything closer to you and you can guide them while they’re guiding you. If there is just heads of teams and they have no other gravitas with the department you will see how the business works

7. A reporting line through the COO or CRO? That means more skip-level time with the CEO and CFO.

8. The long-term vs. short-term trade-off made below the CEO, by a leader measured on the sales target.

9. Let the business history give you a map look back over the past year. Ask which decisions about next year's pipeline were made, and who was in the room when they were traded for this period's target. To catch the others, call the previous CMO before you start. Their experience won't be yours, but you'll hear how the C-suite really works.