Dear CEO: This Is What Marketing Actually Does

   

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present today's episode, I am beyond thrilled to announce that our second in-person CMO Super Huddle is happening November 6th and 7th, 2025. In Palo Alto last year, we brought together 101 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness, and we're doing it again! Same venue, same energy, same ambition to challenge convention, with an added half-day strategy lab exclusively for marketing leaders. We're also excited to have TrustRadius and Boomerang as founding sponsors for this event. Early Bird tickets are now available at cmohuddles.com. You can even see a video there of what we did last year. Grab yours before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out, and it's going to be flocking awesomer!

You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddle Studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders of CMO Huddles. In this episode, marketing leaders Grant Johnson, Rebecca Stone, and Jan Deahl talk through what it takes to align with CEOs and build trust. They share how they're framing marketing around business outcomes, speaking the CEO's language, and shaping strategy through collaboration. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to this podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Welcome to CMO Huddle Studio, the live streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B greatness. I'm your host, Drew Neisser, live from my home studio in New York City. Let's begin with a key and perhaps startling fact: less than 20% of B2B CEOs have spent any part of their career in marketing. I'm going to repeat that—that's like less than one in five. And as such, CEOs' understanding of marketing's potential impact is profoundly limited, or potentially profoundly limited. And we're still many don't know how to help their CMOs succeed. So being the helpful sort here at CMO Huddles, we'd like to fix that knowledge gap as best we can. And it's tricky because these are CEOs. They know what they're doing, but we somehow or other have to get this educational ball rolling.

So with that, let's bring on Rebecca Stone, Senior Vice President of Revenue Marketing at Cisco, an industry expert who has previously graced our stage to delve into the topics of customer advocacy, sales enablement, and branding for large enterprises. So hello, Rebecca, wonderful to see you again.

Rebecca: Hi, Drew. It's great to see you again. How are you?

Drew: I'm good. So now, how are you and where are you?

Rebecca: I am great. I'm doing wonderful. It's a Friday for me, so how can you complain on a Friday? And where am I? I know previously we have talked about the fact that I used to be in my laundry room for a lot of these. We have moved me. I have upgraded into an office space, so I still have the White House background, but I am in a space where I can actually stretch out my arms all the way.

Drew: I love it. And you know, it's like you got a first-class upgrade. It's amazing. I did, I really didn't. But it's still—I still—it's hard for me to adjust. So I may every once in a while say, you know, "Can you move that washing machine behind you?" Absolutely. Anyway, let's talk about this. I mean, you look, you've reported to CEOs, you've worked with a lot of CEOs. What approaches have you found effective for aligning with CEOs? And we could talk about just on the broadest possible level, or we can talk about shared business and marketing goals. So help us kick us off here.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think I mean, I think I've worked for a lot of CEOs who have either come traditionally from product or from sales—like those are the two big areas that I have worked with. And both of those areas, you know, kind of know that they need marketing, but they have very specific ideas about what marketing is and don't understand the complexities. And so I would say that I have had the most success when talking to leadership that has not—and it doesn't just have to be a CEO, it could be a CFO, it could be a head of product, it could be anybody that is a leader that doesn't understand marketing—is really to talk to them about the revenue marketing side of things, which is the math problem, you know. And since both of those organizations are highly focused on math problems in different ways, it's easiest to talk to them about the math. You put the dollars in, that equates to a certain number of people, that equates to a certain amount of pipeline. And those dollars can be branding dollars to create awareness, those dollars can be dollars to create end-of-pipeline conversion, but it's about the math problem ultimately that helps them to understand. And then I think after that, once they start to understand that there is a math problem that they have to help me solve, talking to them about more of the subtleties and the art of marketing tends to go over a little bit easier.

Drew: So it's an interesting thing, and I want to—in some hands, every CMO and CEO and CFO would love to be able to sort of, as I think John Miller talks about the gumball machine, put a quarter in, get some gum out, right? And we know as marketers that it's not that simple. So is there any risk when you talk about math and you say "X dollars equals X dollars of pipeline" and you show that through line that it's "Okay, we'll only spend on that"?

Rebecca: Well, I think that that is where it comes into that next level of detail on the subtleties of what marketing is and why. I made the point of saying there is a branding component and then there is a conversion component, because branding and awareness are part of the math equation. They are a little bit of a stickier component of the math equation—the percentages aren't quite as clean maybe as the rest of the funnel—but it is a necessary part. And how I talk about that is you need to put people into the funnel at the top of the funnel. In order to do that, you need to get a certain percentage of people that you have eyeballs of into the funnel, and that eyeball-to-lead conversion, as long as you are trying as much as possible to track your media views, your rates of advertising and things like that, it can be a little bit easier to have that part of the conversation. But I'm fully with you. I understand where you're going, and I acknowledge that that is always the hardest, the stickiest part of the conversation is that "50% like you and the 50% that don't—you just don't know which 50% it is." That classic quote is always there and is always hard to communicate.

Drew: Well, and it's so interesting because there's so many aspects that I want to go in with you on this. And obviously, Cisco is a complex company. There's a lot of different products that you could be selling and representing, and so at any given time, there could be people who are absolutely shopping for whatever it is that you're buying. And you could get those people right directly. You can say, "Wait, we got them here and we closed them here. Boom, easy." And then there's other people who may or may not be shopping for whatever it is that you're offering. And so there are just different stages of the journey that we got to deal with. Are there things that you have done in the past where you've seen the light bulb of understanding go off? Like language they use or metaphors that you've used to help your CEOs and CFO, the other people in the C-suite, kind of get it?

Rebecca: I often—so very heavy B2B, obviously, my career has only been in B2B—but I have lots of friends who have come from the B2C side, and I have found that trying to equate a B2B problem to a B2C kind of more of a consumer-type experience often helps. So if you compare what you're doing to "Hey, you know how Apple has those commercials?" or "You know that you see during the Super Bowl?" or "Apple has the sponsored music during the NFL games?" or whatever it is—like using a large brand that people just recognize from their day-to-day, more non-work lives as a B2B marketer, it's easier to try and help to equate what you're trying to do in a concept that they experience as a consumer rather than as a B2B organization. And I just think that that's because there is so much effort that goes around brand awareness in the consumer space that people start to understand, "Oh, that makes more sense." Like, "Hey, you know, DoorDash started as an app, but now they're running advertisements on CNN," you know, and things like that, where you start to help to understand that as the scope gets bigger and as the number of people that you have to touch—particularly for Cisco, you know, you can think about essentially every business in the world could be a Cisco customer—and that's a massive amount of companies that function in a way that's sort of in a B2C kind of way. Trying to explain it in that way sometimes helps to get the light bulb off.

In my current organization, in other organizations that I've worked in, I think that piece is less the challenge. I actually often have more—like when I'm thinking of my startup experience, I've often had less of a challenge with the branding because every startup CEO wants to have their name on a billboard or, you know, they want to see it on their building. So you have less challenge with the branding and actually more challenge convincing them that branding isn't the only place that you should be spending, that you need to be spending on more of the demand activities, the conversion activities lower in the pipeline. Sometimes that gets lost because there's such a heavy emphasis on growing the sales organization that you have to really be able to partner and show that there is a consumer component of it. I think it depends on the size of the company, the stage of your growth. Like there's a lot of different things that you have to take into consideration when you're talking to your CEOs about what aspects of marketing need more investment and less investment, you know? And sometimes it's the time of day and the product that you're talking about too.

Drew: Yeah, and there's so many different aspects of this. Again, I've sort of—I have lots more questions for you. I do, but I'm going to—you're now in this role of revenue marketing, and that, in theory, implies that you're not worried about brand anymore. Is that—how's that work?

Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, I think I am worried about brand in the idea that I own the digital journey, and so there's a lot of brand that is involved in digital media and in your web presence, but I don't necessarily own the creative aspects of brand. I don't own the higher level corporate message of the brand. But those things are very important, and I think more when I think about revenue marketing, I think about how I make sure that the campaigns that my team is running are tied in as closely as possible to that overall corporate message, because that synergy is going to help us get the leads that we need into the funnel. As I said, that top line brand message is important. It is the most important thing in my head to the start of the funnel. You need to have people be aware of who you are before you can get them to convert to buying from you.

Drew: Okay, so my big takeaway from this conversation is there's math here. If you can use the math and get to a place where they see the math and agree with the math, then you can start to sort of get a general understanding of marketing's impact on the business, all right. And I know that our next guest, and I'm going to introduce him now, will be completely with you on that, so it'll be good as a perfect segue. Let's bring on Grant Johnson, who is a CMO of Chief Outsiders and a returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss marketing comms, alignment B2B, marketing metrics and implementing ABM. Hello, Grant. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Grant: I'm doing great. Thanks, Drew. I'm actually in somewhat sunny San Clemente, Southern California. There's some alliteration for you.

Drew: There we go. I love it. Probably did you get some tennis in this morning?

Grant: Not before this very important participation. I will do it later, though.

Drew: All right. All right, yeah, that's all these things are important. It's important to have that good balance on there. Okay, so you heard Rebecca talking about the math. You and I have had lots of conversations about the math. I feel like we should just sort of start there in your thinking about what you heard and anything you would want to add on top of Rebecca's thoughts.

Grant: Yeah, I think there's a pretty simple equation. I've been writing a lot on CMO Mentor, talking with lots of CMO huddles, doing simple marketing performance assessments, and it's all about pipeline for a lot of companies, especially PE-backed. Pipeline, pipeline, pipeline. That's priority 1, 2, 3, 4, if you need a fourth. But pipeline performs better if your brand has high engagement and loyalty, if your market presence, whether it's through LinkedIn, your website, your distribution channels, are all performing well. So as Rebecca said, it's all very connected, and you can't simply just create more top of funnel and force it through to close, right? So as she talked about with B2B and B2C, if people like you, they like engaging your brand, you're genuine, you're not cheap GPT-created content only. You're authentic and you're differentiated. All the rest of the interactions along the buyer's journey—by the way, there's probably 20 for most B2B companies—add up to "hey, I'm more inclined as a customer or a buying group to do business with you," and enables sales to convert more of the pipeline to close one business or retain customers when competitors are knocking at the door.

Drew: Okay, so what is it—and you've worked with a number of CEOs—talk a little bit about this education process, and in your mind, what has helped them sort of get the light bulb, them to understand and understand the math?

Grant: I think it's an ongoing conversation. You have to do it piece by piece, sort of like you're building a case. There's evidence if you keep providing and sharing and dialoguing over, you know, the contextual data that's happening in your business, leading indicators, lagging indicators. You know, we're getting more like this. This is an atom of a win we just did. It showed that marketing started it, sales continued. Marketing touched it, sales accelerated it. And we got to close, and they can start to see the totality. Probably the best expression I had from a CEO—I'm a six-time CMO—but the CEO said to me, "Grant, everything's marketing. Marketing touches everything." And so, yeah, let's work on attribution and pipeline, influence and contribution, but make sure all the rest of these things are going well. Said, "Hey, we just won another G2. We did well in the Forrester Gartner analyst review. We've doubled our followers. We're getting really good web vitals where they're staying on the site, they're converting to whether it's a form, a demo, a trial," and all these things just add up to the overall health of the business. And so if your CMO—not chief marketing officer, but you know, first, you're a business person, and you're speaking the language of business: numbers, facts, objectives, goals—I think that furthers the conversation quite a bit. But it does take time. Just like building a relationship with an individual outside of work, it doesn't happen overnight. I found that I used to run with one CEO. Guy was really fast, so that was tough for me. And I ski with another CEO, and, you know, had bagels with another one, right? So whatever. If you develop that relationship both factual and personal, I think that'll advance the CMO-CEO relationship further.

Drew: I love that tip, and it's funny, we had a lunch huddle in London, and one of the former CMOs who now runs his own organization had worked with Marc Benioff at Salesforce in the early days, and would arrange to drive to work with him even though he didn't need to, even though he didn't live nearby. It was just so that he could get that time. Really, really smart. So that's an important point. So there is that factual part of this thing, but there's another thing that—it's funny you and I have talked about a number of these conversations that I think sort of build on each other. One is this notion of really mapping out the buyer journey so that they get to the point that they can see that marketing touches everything, because that's really important. Because I think part of the problem is they say, "Oh, you're just the top of the funnel guy," or "you're just the, you know, whatever." And that's a problem, because it isn't. So that's part one is that, as you mentioned, the totality, and, you know, the flywheel of marketing, if there is such a thing, that is not one thing. That's another part of this, right? They would love it if it was just one thing. And that's the problem. It's probably, as your dashboard shows, it's really six things times five things. It's like 30 things. So right? It's a lot of different things that have to be working in concert for a dynamic marketing engine to be really working, and that's complicated.

Grant: Yeah, and that's what makes it so exciting, and yet, you know, uniquely challenging to be a head of marketing. I heard another consultant say, "The CEO wants—what's the one metric to measure marketing on?" I said, "Run for the door." Look, I've coached 20 CMOs. I know you've coached a lot of CMOs. I'd love to collaborate with other CMO huddles and help them, and they help me and so forth. That's what's great about the organization. And I have 24 metrics that have worked over 20 years for me. But you know, there's probably five or six I've raised in a blog that you could probably go with. Just six. What's most important? Where can you get alignment on how do you measure success? How can you show value and continuous and improved contribution? Get agreement on that. And you can't be shifting every quarter to a different set of metrics. But it's certainly not one. There are a few that matter, and they do work together, and that's a really important thing to get agreement on. It can't just be, "Let's get MQLs, MQLs." That's a whole other area to go into, but you've got to get the right combination of marketing tactics, programs, communications, customer interactions, that will add up to more pipeline, but more pipeline that can convert in your term. So if you're a small business, maybe being a quarter, medium, maybe, you know, a couple quarters, and large business could take 6 to 12 months, but you've got to always be working all the elements that drive demand, or harvest demand, as you've talked about, capture demand, together, and that's how, over time, you can improve productivity. Anybody can have a blowout quarter, but if you're not working all elements of the marketing equation, you're going to have some subtraction the next quarter in the wrong way.

Drew: So again, these are conversations that we're having on the side that I'd love to have here. So part of this challenge is, every CEO, they have a vision for the company, and maybe they even have a vision for the category that they're trying to create and the customer relationships that they want to build, but ultimately there's somebody giving them money that is expecting return on that revenue. And so the word revenue comes up, and a lot of times I'll hear CMOs say, "It's all about revenue, and we got to show the link to revenue." The challenge that I have with this, and you and I've talked about this a little bit, is revenue is a lagging indicator, and marketers need leading indicators, because without those leading indicators, we don't know how to adjust our spends. So have you had a point where you've again been able to help a CEO or a CFO get to the point where they understand, "Ah, okay, here's how that lead progressed"? And, you know, I remember you had a 130-point touch journey that you once had or something at one of the companies you were at. What's that way for other CMOs to help them get beyond this pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, revenue, revenue, revenue? "Why didn't we close this this quarter, this month?"

Grant: Well, first of all, to some extent, you probably won't ever be able to do that because, I mean, let's be honest, the board is going to say, "Here's the number you signed up for." The investors are going to say, "You know, keep improving everything." And so you've got to make the number. Assuming you can make the number or get close enough that you can take a little pressure off and you can have a little bit of space to talk about... let's talk about what we're building for the long term. I've used a lot of analogies where, like, you know, we've got this engine. We got, you know, four cylinder. We're going to get to an eight, then to twelve. You know, we get this Harvey Ball, but the twelve marketing disciplines we're doing—we're a half Harvey Ball here, we're a quarter here, we're three quarters here—we'll get them all to three quarters or full, but it's going to take us quarter by quarter. So they get it. A quarter-by-quarter takes time. So you sort of get that, and then you show... what I like doing is the market performance success, but just set your baseline. It could be, you know, a year ago, ideally. But, you know, Q1 is done now. We're in Q2, we're in April. So what do we do with Q1? And if you can show with the metrics that help with market presence, that help with brand strength, and that help with pipeline health, you can show that, "Hey, these are going up a little bit. So are these." The raw numbers aren't necessarily going up. Your conversion gets better. That's key. It's not just quantity, it's conversion and likelihood to actually progress to close. And you start—you can show that correlation. And of course, you know, the subjective things like, you know, testimonials and, you know, the conversations that you can, you know, capture with Gong that you're having with customers. "Hey, I saw you did this. I saw this customer success story. I'm really excited to learn more about whether you can help my business." All these things sort of add up. At the end of the day, you know, profit and loss will be the biggest... you know, revenue and P&L will be the biggest determiners for the CEO and the CFO, and so you're going to have to be held to that same standard. But you can get—if you shape the conversation and provide data-based insights into what's happened in the business—you can build a better understanding for the totality of everything marketing contributes to a company's success and ongoing growth.

Drew: Okay, so we're living with the fact that it's revenue, just like Rebecca said. We gotta connect the dots. We're living with that. But don't forget about anecdata. There are some good stories that can be told that will show that you are, in fact, making progress. All right, well, with that, we'll come back to you, Grant, but now we're gonna welcome Jan Deahl, who is Executive Director and Head of Marketing at Drakestar, who previously joined us on the show to discuss ICPs. Hello, Jan, welcome back.

Jan: Drew, good to see you and good to be here. And great discussion so far.

Drew: So just to ground you, where are you this fine day?

Jan: Yeah, I'm in my home office, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Drew: All right. Well, we have now... we've got West Coast, and we're now equally balanced between East Coast and West Coast. I love it. So, based on what you heard, based on what Grant and Rebecca said, what were you thinking about?

Jan: One, the complexity around this, like it's not, you know, putting $1 into the gumball machine and $3 comes out. I also think about situations. Every situation is different. You have a Cisco, and then you have a company like mine, Drakestar—like two very different situations, teams, et cetera.

Drew: Yeah. So, all right, so from where you are, what does effective CEO-CMO collaboration look like when it comes to... and I guess we could just say, stop there, or when—if you want to talk about it from a driving growth standpoint, that's good too.

Jan: Yeah, let's stick with the driving growth theme. I mean, I think, you know, first, driving growth is a team sport, so marketing's not going to do it by themselves. Sales isn't going to do it by themselves. Product plus marketing plus sales, working in unison. I think the CEO is sort of the highest representation of that at the organization. Collaboration and alignment with the CEO is critical. And if you get it right, it's game-changing. If you get it wrong, it's disaster. I think there are a few key elements. Okay. Number one, I want the CEO to know I'm not the "pictures and colors" department. And I think Grant and Rebecca talked about some incredibly interesting growth dynamics. I would say, you know, not all marketers are like that, not all marketing teams are like that, and CEOs have vastly different experiences. So starting with that mindset: I am here to help you build the business, to drive growth, and to win in the market. Now, of course, easy to say, hard to do. I have to back that up with a strategy, a plan, execution, results, but that foundational starting point—look, we're on the same team. We're here to win together or lose together. Number two: alignment on the big picture plan. And I could talk all day about this, but I'm a big believer in starting there. And then the final thing, I think, is frequent two-way communication. So what that typically looks like for me, Drew, is kind of a quarterly update to the CEO executive committee board on our plan, how we're executing against it, what do we look like quantitatively, KPIs, qualitatively. And then every two weeks, one-to-one CEO with my board talking about strategic and tactical. I have one coming up in a couple hours. And then really, sort of the daily that arises on an ad hoc basis. You know, the final thing I would say: Look, you need to earn a seat at that table and command the attention and care. But when you do, it's kind of the most fun and productive part of the job.

Drew: So just to dig into two things, so one, every two weeks. And, you know, while I know that a lot of CMOs do meet with their CEOs, whether it's weekly or even with more frequency, that two-week thing is interesting because there's almost a thing: Well, what's improved, what's changed? You know, how are we doing on pipeline? And so how do you manage that particular one in terms of movement? Because quarter to quarter, yeah, we've got twelve weeks in there that we could actually show some improvement in things.

Jan: No, great question, Drew. And first of all, back to my previous... look, honestly, that's not what that meeting's for. What we're talking quarterly around: Here's our plan. Here's how we're executing against it. Here's where we look quantitatively, KPIs. You know, now what we are talking about... So, you know, don't ask me like, "tick up or tick down." We're talking about, okay, of the three to five initiatives that we laid out at the beginning of the year, we know these two are in very good order. This one is where we're digging in on. So from a macro standpoint, I'll probably have, in fact, in a couple hours, one, two, three big strategic things that I want to talk about. I want his input on. It happens to be him. And then, you know, then we're honestly digging into details on, like, the micro things. Like, by the way, we did this new CEO testimonial series. We did number one and number two, here's how they performed. And we're talking about sort of the big picture, and then the micro, all of the things that I and my team are executing and seeing from our partners around the world too.

Drew: So as you're talking about this thing, I was wondering if this factor is still... you know, marketing used to be... say, "Oh, you get to do the fun stuff." And sometimes CEOs kind of like to get their... think they're creative and want to dabble in that world too. As you're sharing this stuff, are you creating opportunities for the CEO to sort of say, "That's interesting. What if we did this?" and sort of stimulate their creativity? Or are you looking for real input on that point, and is that important?

Jan: Yeah, no, I love this question, and the answer is yes and no. So the "yes"—I'm a big believer on setting up a strategic, overarching marketing plan upfront. Okay, this is like the first thirty days I get into an organization. I want to understand the competitive landscape, the industry dynamics. You know, what are our competitors doing? Where are we on the maturity curve? What do we have? What do we need? You know, what do our clients and prospects look like? Where are we winning and losing? All right, then I build my strategy. Here's what I see. Here are the goals we're going to set out. Here are the major initiatives, and here's how we're going to execute, and here are the resources we need. Now, here is where I want heavy debate—challenge me. Here are the three to five things I think we're going to work on for the next year. What do you think? Do I have this right? Do I have this wrong? You know, the business, you're talking to clients. I want to build this foundation at the outset, and I want us to wrestle it to the ground together, and I want your opinion. Then, do I care about the minutia? Not so much. And I really don't have to spend all my time worrying about it, right? Like, so if my CEO says, "Hey, like, you know, the logo looked a little off," like, "Yeah, okay, we'll fix it. Fine, move on. Let's talk about what matters." Now, it also opens the door to build this together. And I do want, yes, I want your input on the macro and the micro, but we don't spend a lot of time arguing about pictures and colors because we know what's important.

Drew: Yeah, I love that. It's really knowing what you want their opinion on and being able to put it in that context is important. Because obviously, if you don't ask for their opinion, and you do that over time, you're training them. This is when you get to add value. This is when you really should stay away.

Jan: And one thing I should add, Drew, now that you're talking about it. It's so important whether it's your CEO, whether it's your sales team, to listen and to make sure they're heard and to act on it. So I might... if you come to me and say, "Why is the logo light blue?" I'm basically going to say, "You're wasting your time. You're wasting ours. Let's focus on what matters." But when my CEO comes to me and says, "Hey, did you think about this? What if we did it this way?" I'm often going to say, "Well, okay," or "I have a different view," or "Great call. Let's go out and do it," and then do it, and then report back on how it's going. So it's not always "ignore" and it's not always "sure, we'll do it because you've told us to do it."

Drew: Okay, it is amazing. Lots of good things. I want to follow up with the three of you, but now it is time for me to talk about what actually brought us together, which is CMO Huddles. Launched in 2020, CMO Huddles is the only community of focused B2B marketing leaders that has a logo featuring penguins. Wait, what? Right? Well, a group of these curious, adaptable, and problem-solving birds is called a huddle. I think there's an "aha" moment for first-time listeners, and the leaders in CMO Huddles are all that and more, huddling together to conquer the toughest job in the C-Suite. So Grant, Rebecca, Jan, you are all incredibly busy marketing leaders. I'm wondering if you could share a specific example of how CMO Huddles has helped you.

Grant: I've been a huddler for four years, as Drew knows, and when I developed a marketing performance assessment—these metrics were in my brain, but Drew and a dozen other huddlers who had also created hundreds of millions and billions of pipeline and had a lot of lessons learned—I just said, "Hey, check this out." We got on the phone. They really helped perfect it, you know, make it broadly usable to any B2B, any SaaS business. And there have been many other examples. That's probably the most recent one. There are a number of the huddlers who were willing to take time to help me, and it's always a quid pro quo. If you ever need anything, I say to them, just let me know. It's a great community.

Drew: Thank you, Grant. Let's see, Jan.

Jan: Yeah, so I mean a few ways. I love the peer network, and I'm surrounded by excellent marketers like Grant, Rebecca, and others. I can work with you guys on the day-to-day challenges, and I don't have to be the CMO alone. And then, you know, you have great career and interesting content on a wide range of topics, which are always helpful as I kind of evolve my marketing programs.

Drew: I love it. All right, well, and Rebecca, you've been with us from day one.

Rebecca: I have, I have, and I would say I will continue to be with the group because, for the same reasons, I don't have a whole lot different to add. But even when I'm too busy to be in the huddles, the Slack channel is a huge lifeline for me when I'm validating technology or looking for people who are recommended to hire for roles that I might have open, or just exactly what Jan said. Every one of us is having very similar challenges, no matter the industry, the size of company, or where we're located, and it's nice to be able to just identify with other people who are in the same situations that you are and get advice. So everything about the CMO Huddles is just my favorite. I love it. Thanks, Drew, for starting it.

Drew: It makes me very happy. I'm blushing a little bit. If you're a B2B marketing leader who wants to build a stronger peer network, gain recognition as a thought leader, and get your very own stress penguin, please join us at cmohuddles.com. And don't forget about our Super Huddle—the CMO Super Huddle on November 6th and 7th. It is going to be flocking awesome. Actually, I'm going to say flocking awesomer. We had our first one last year, and it was—yes. So here we go.

All right, three of you, we're back on this topic, and I'm curious. There's a phrase that I probably hate more than any—and I rant about this and various things—but this one is "just the marketer." Oh, you're just the marketer. And we spent the first half hour of this call talking about not being just a marketer and elevating that. I'm curious, besides some of the things that we've talked about, what have you been able to do in your careers that helps your CEO see marketing as a strategic growth driver, not just the function?

Rebecca: I think that there are two ways that I would think about answering that question. I think one goes back to the math problem and being able to demonstrate that you can actually contribute to the bottom line of the business—that has to be a key component of how you demonstrate that to the rest of your leadership. But I think the second piece is sometimes bringing the voice of the customer back into the organization in a way that is very, very different than product or sales. Sales has a very specific perspective about trying to sell a product to a customer. Product has a very specific perspective about trying to build a product for a customer. You can kind of serve as an almost neutral voice in that of what is the customer actually—the challenges that they're seeing, the problems that they're trying to solve—in a way that can be a very different perspective than those other two, and what I like to say is the other two legs of the stool. And so I think being the consistent voice of that customer back into the organization is a great way to build trust with everyone else about what you are actually trying to deliver on.

Drew: So interesting. I'm so glad you mentioned that. One of the things that I really encourage CMOs who don't have, say, customer advisory boards, is be the person who initiates that and be part of it, because that gets you a direct pipeline to it. We've also talked about in Huddles—we've talked about having a leadership program where each of the leaders in the executive suite have an executive sponsor program, basically where you have customers. So those two things sort of align a lot. And obviously, we get back to the math. Grant, do you have anything else to add on top of the math and the voice of the customer part?

Grant: Yeah, I tell you, and I've done this from experience, you've got to be, as you've called it, "CMO Plus," and you get to figure out what is that plus. Can you drive product innovation, customer expansion? And I've done this three times, so it's something I must be okay at. Recognize that the CEO will say, "How do we outpace the industry?" And I took a look at our market position and reimagined—you can call this a category disruptor, category creator. Doesn't really matter what term—and come up with the positioning, the messaging, the brand differentiation to elevate these companies that I've been at. And in each case, the companies more than doubled from, let's say, 100 million to 200 million. And it wasn't simply due to more efficient sales or larger pipeline. It had to do with the overall position in the marketplace and punching above our weight. So I think if you can drive one of those initiatives, they can see you—hey, I'm thinking about the business strategically. I'm not just thinking about marketing getting awards and accolades. I'm thinking about outpacing growth and getting the recognition in the industry or press, if you're public or private, around that. And I found, since I've done it three times, it's an area that I'm comfortable with. And the one I recommend—there's many other ways you can be CMO Plus, but you got to be more than that gumball machine, and it's going to take a while. Just find an initiative you can lead and deliver results with.

Drew: Yeah, it's so interesting. I was talking to a CMO today who also had customer experience, and it just—it does strengthen your thing. The other thing that you made me think of is, and we haven't talked about this enough on the show, I think it was Beth Comstock who said, like, sales is in the quarter, marketing should be 18 months ahead. And that's hard. And this is where it's a little contradictory again, because you've got—yes, you got to drive revenue, which means quarterly, but you really got to be thinking about 18 months, 24 months, and that's going to mean being ahead from a positioning standpoint, a vision standpoint, maybe a category—expanding the vision, right? It's a bigger strategic role when you describe it that way, and it feels like—and correct me if I'm wrong—it feels like you have to earn that right to get there.

Grant: You have to step up, raise your hand, and be persistent. Nobody says, "Hey, Grant, I want you to take on this growth initiative." I haven't seen that happen. But when the discussion happens with the executive leadership team, the offsite, the quarterly business review, just take some risk and make it happen.

Rebecca: Drew, just to jump in a little bit. I think when I say a math problem, my math problem is an 18- to 24-month math problem. It is not an in-quarter math problem. And I think that nuance is really important to call out. Sales is focused on the current quarter, and you can help with the math to drive pipeline. But you also need to be able to demonstrate in your math problem that your customers take 18 to 20—at least for large enterprise customers like we sell to—it's an 18- to 24-month sales cycle. The smallest customers that we do, which are SMB, are still a six- to nine-month sales cycle right now. And so being able to demonstrate that you need to get those customers in somewhere between nine and 24 months before they're even talking to sales is a very important way to help drive that conversation about the extended relationship that you need to build with your customer, and how you do that over time.

Drew: Yeah, it's so interesting, and it's so hard because the business and the investors are so quarterly-based in their real life. There's that earnings thing coming out. If you're public, in the case of Cisco, or private, in your case, with investors, that's where the tension is, and that's why we are having conversations like this. So Jan, as you're thinking about this, your category is not one that necessarily has a lot of great marketing in it, or has not been marketing-led.

Jan: I'm glad you brought that up. That's just where I was going. And I love CMO Huddles because I'm surrounded by elite marketers like Grant and Rebecca. To your point, you have to earn that reputation, earn that seat at the table. A lot of marketing organizations—they are, you know, order takers or service functions. Like, honestly, I've spent decades, and a lot of times I've seen somebody walking down the hall like "sales asked me to do this, so I'm doing it." So you really have to distinguish yourself. And for me personally, I do believe it goes back to building businesses is hard. I'm in the dog fight with you. That's my mission and mantra. Of course, I have to back that up. I mean, what we're building at my current firm—it's a journey. Like we talked about, every situation is different. We built a plan. We got executive committee and CEO buy-in, made some strategic shifts, and we're building meaningful growth in leads. We can argue whether the MQL is dead. Our LinkedIn following is up tremendously, and like Grant was talking about, the CMO-plus is actually starting to come for me because I'm saying, "Look, I'm raising my hand and saying let's build a business development effort. Let me weigh in here on some of the firm strategy." And my CEO is receptive to that because he sees that we're delivering on what we promised.

Drew: Okay, speaking of what we promised, at the beginning of the show I said we would help marketers out there educate CEOs. And I feel like there's some questions that you all would love to be able to give to every CEO of a B2B company that they could ask their marketer that would show that they kind of get it. And so if we gave them three or four questions, or maybe more, what questions would those questions be? And I know we didn't prep on this one, but it just occurs to me that we've got to—education isn't just telling them how marketing works. It's about equipping them with the right questions. And so I'm just curious if you three, on the spot here, can come up with some of those questions that you wish more CEOs asked of their marketers.

Grant: I think it's around making sure that the rigor upon which marketing is being examined and performance is being judged is equal across the board. I'll just talk about a couple of the areas in the go-to-market motion. You know, sometimes sales makes a number. It's great. There's not a question of how they made the number. And customer success—you know, if you don't have too much deflection—but I've often had discussions where we talk about what are the metrics that we're measuring customer success on, not just renewals and time they're using the product, but the engagement in our community, coming to the customer advisory boards. And same with sales—are they getting compensated for net new, which is hard to do, and expansion, whether it's additional usage or an upsell or cross-sell to new product or solution? And you know, "I made the number." I'm not saying sales leaders ever rest because they know they've got the next quarter. But if you start asking the metrics that impact the business over time, then it's equal, and then it takes a little bit of the heat off. I said, "Well look, I've had these dashboards. I got a couple of yellows and a red, and somebody else has six yellows and five reds. So okay, so we all got to get better. We're all in it together." So I think it's just the same things. You're expanding the conversation holistically about business instead of "let me just put the microscope on marketing and start defending your life."

Drew: Yeah, and I mean, I feel like whenever you have a budget cut, well, marketing is the first one to go based on what? Just because it seems like it's the easiest one, but not because it's necessarily the thing that will have the—it's easiest to cut, but not necessarily the easiest benefit to yield for you. So you're right. And so there isn't consistent scrutiny from a metric standpoint across the various places. So that's a great question. So how can we collectively have consistent measures across the organization? Rebecca, some questions you'd love more CEOs to ask of their CMOs?

Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, I think I just thought of one, just based on this conversation, which is "How can I help the organization be less skeptical of marketing?" is probably a great one that I would love to have CEOs ask. I think the second is actually not a question, but time. Because often—I think it was Grant who said—the more time he spends building the relationship with the CEO, the better it is, because you just have the time to explain things that feel very complex. There's often this acceptance of product and engineering being complex, and nobody really needs to know what's going on in that black box over there if you're not formally product. Or because you came from product and engineering, you deeply understand it, so you don't need to do a deep dive. If you don't come from marketing, there's often this lack of respect of how difficult the craft of marketing is. And so I think the time to just commit to understanding the craft of marketing and appreciating the craft of marketing is something that I would ask for.

Drew: I love it, and it's funny because I finally, in an editorial last week, I just said, "Okay, I'm going to say it: all marketing drives revenue, period." But it is a question of time and target, right? So as long as we have more time—yeah, those are the dimensions, because sometimes marketing has an impact on employees, sometimes it has an impact on customers. Time frame driven. All of it equals revenue eventually. Okay, Jan, did you have a question you wanted to make sure that CEOs ask their CMOs?

Jan: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I love piggybacking off of what Grant and Rebecca said. I mean, I think, you know, I would love if the CEO said to me, "What can the organization do better?" And actually, where my CMO-plus is starting to emerge is they're not going to ask me, so I'm going to raise my hand. I'm like, you know, this happened recently—like, "Hey, what should marketing look like next quarter, next year?" I'm like, "Honestly, marketing is doing pretty well for the resources we have. Let's talk about sales. Let's talk about the pipeline. Let's talk about the metrics there. Let's talk about building a business development effort, you know, firm strategy. Let's talk about where we are from a technology standpoint." So, you know, I would love it if we elevate the conversation. And, you know, like Grant said, it's right—are we holding sales and marketing and product and the organization all to account? Because we have to do this together. If product is broken, or in my case, our offering or service, then I'm not going to market it and sales isn't going to sell it. So let's take a step back and say, as a collective, as a leadership team, where should we be focused?

Drew: I love it. All right. Well, we're running out of time, so it's now time for final words of wisdom. What advice would you give CMOs who want to strengthen the relationship with the CEO? And we've had a lot of conversations, so it's okay to repeat. We'll start with final words of advice from Rebecca.

Rebecca: My final words of advice are really to take the time to speak about the business and speak about the marketing contribution to the business to your CEO in a way that they understand, which always comes down to revenue and dollars.

Drew: All right, we're going to come back to math. Grant, final words of wisdom.

Grant: Get to know your CEO on a personal basis, and insist on regular interactions, whether it's twice a week or once a week. You need that time to foster and build an effective relationship.

Drew: Yeah, I feel it, and I've talked to a number of CMOs—when they do have that relationship, the CEO is texting them sometimes at bad hours, but texting them for, "Hey, I'm working on this strategic vision. Can I share it with you?" That's when you know all your investment in the time is there. Okay, Jan, bring us home.

Jan: Look, we're not the pictures and colors department. We're here to build the business with you, to win with you. Have that passion, have that starting point, and then, of course, back it up with results.

Drew: I love it. All right. Well, we got—oh, there's a lot in here, folks. I think you're going to want to probably read the transcript. There's some really good detail. Anyway, thank you, Grant, Rebecca, Jan—you're all amazing sports.

 

To hear more conversations like this one and submit your questions while we're live, join us on the next CMO Huddle Studio. We stream to my LinkedIn profile—that's Drew Neisser—every other week.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!