Leading Beyond Marketing: The CMO+

   

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome. 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 in Palo Alto. We're excited to have five flocking awesome founding sponsors: HG Insights, Boomerang, Webless, Firebrick, and Webflow, and an amazing VIP dinner sponsor with Vidoso. Last year, we brought together over 100 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness, and this year we're doing it again. Same venue, same energy, and same ambition to challenge convention with an added half-day strategy lab exclusively for marketing leaders. Tickets are now available at CMOHuddles.com. Do yourself a favor—check out some of the speakers and experts we have. It will blow you away. You can also watch a video that I am confident will get you pumped up, and it also shows what Gen AI video can do right now. Grab your ticket before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out, and it's gonna be flocking awesomer!

You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddles Studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders of CMO Huddles. In this episode, Nikhil Chawla, Isabelle Papoulias, and Ali McCarthy share what it really means to live the CMO Plus mindset. They talk about moving past the marketing lane, taking on strategy, customer experience, and even operations, and showing up as a business leader who drives impact across the entire company. And by the way, if you're a B2B CMO, you can meet Nikhil and Isabelle at the CMO Super Huddle in Palo Alto, California on November 6th and 7th. Just check out CMOHuddles.com for more information on that. If you like what you hear in this episode, please subscribe to the 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. When I get interviewed on other podcasts—yeah, that happens—I am often asked about CMO tenure and what CMOs can do to extend their time in a role. One proven way of doing this is to be perceived as more than—my least favorite phrase—"just the marketing person." I hate that phrase, but unfortunately, there's a lot of perception about that. So at CMO Huddles, we call this approach being a CMO Plus, and we ask our members, "What's your plus?" And if you don't have a plus, we want to know what's your path to getting there. And this is a perfect lead-in to our three flocking awesome guests who will be able to answer that question and more. So with that, let's bring on Nikhil Chawla, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer at Resilience, who is joining the show for the very first time. So hello, Nikhil. How are you, and where are you this fine day?

Nikhil: Hi, Drew. Thank you. Thank you. Super excited to be here. Long-time listener. Love the community. Really happy to join you live. I'm actually in New York City as well, so not too far from you, I don't think.

Drew: Awesome. You know, we don't actually have that many guests from New York City, so, you know, we could have brought you over. We could have done this as a duet, but no problem. I love that. Okay, so you didn't start out with both titles, and you and I have talked about this at length. Can you talk about how your role evolved at Resilience?

Nikhil: Yeah, absolutely. So I started three-plus years ago now as our first CMO. So we had just done our Series C round back then, and I helped create from scratch our marketing function, our team, and our brand. And I think by brand, I don't just mean our visual identity or our positioning line, but in fact, I think what we did was create our sort of strategic point of view as a company. You know, we're trying to create this new category around how companies need to solve for cyber risks differently than they do currently. And I think, in many ways, foundational brand and marketing strategy work became an anchor for our company strategy. So it informed, you know, how we defined our first software product, how we segmented our market, and how we created value for our customers, which is what, of course, then led to, you know, a pretty clear need to establish a customer function within the company. Three parts to it: security services, customer success, and a product design team. And the goal is to engage and educate clients, of course, but it's not just in the value of the tools—it's the value of our new approach that we're kind of, you know, codifying our point of view as a brand, if you will. That's what it goes back to. So really, you know, fast forward two years. Obviously, it's been scaling and building the teams and on the operational side. I think the last six months have been really interesting—another evolution, if you will—have been really working and taking the learnings from our customers and our market, and working closely with our product and engineering teams to define the next set of software products we're about to launch shortly in August. I think the underpinning has always been that core strategy work, our point of view as a brand, you know, that we're trying to bring to life in our promise, in our engagement, in our experience. That's sort of the connective tissue. And it's really also, you know, as that evolves, it's also, in a way, how my role has continued to evolve at Resilience over the last three-plus years.

Drew: It's so interesting. So, right, you—I mean, obviously you build credibility as a strategic marketer as sort of the underpinning of your relationship with the CEO and the other leaders in the organization. So you get to this point, and you've got the sort of strategy that marketing is driving that's permeating product and so forth. So how did you actually become Chief Customer Officer? In other words, did you say, "Hey, I'm ready for this?" Or suddenly there was a need and nobody was there? What were the sort of circumstances? If someone else was in your shoes, sort of got the marketing thing up and running, now it's time—you know, was it—was there a customer person there before you?

Nikhil: There wasn't. There was a services team, which was doing work, but there wasn't any customer person. I think it was, in many ways, it was, you know—I think when you declare and help author and help create the strategy of what we're trying to do, and articulate the value the customer is going to take out of it, firstly, you're immediately creating the distinction on, "Hey, we need a customer team, and we need somebody to look at this holistically," right? We also did some things very intentionally, not to kind of earn the customer role or create the function, but just organically, right? We created this first-ever forum around the customer collective, where we got everybody together to talk about, "Hey, what are customers saying?" So I think organically, we created pretty clear evidence that, "Hey, we need a customer team, because we need to really engage our clients." And if someone's going to do it, you know, it would make sense for the person who is bringing the point of view of the customer. And honestly, my background in client services helped, you know. So I think it was sort of an organic ask, particularly as the need around creating a software business arose.

Drew: I have so many other questions, but I just want to comment on this notion. One of the challenges that CMOs often have is like, "How do we get customer testimonials?" Because sales owns the customer, because it's all about upsell, cross-sell, and renewal, right? And or there are AEs, and you can't get to them. So the brilliance of being able to, quote, "own the customer" is that you actually have relationships with those folks. So I can see instantly why it would make sense. It's not usual. I mean, I know many CMOs who are also customer experience-thing, which is a little bit similar, but sometimes different, right? I'm curious, in order to do this and really do it well, what was the challenge? I mean, because now you, in theory, are wearing two hats.

Nikhil: Totally. I think, you know, I think you have to really—I think what you're saying is, "How do you bring these two teams together?" in some ways. And I think to be able to do that, you have to separate out the emotional component of what drives, you know, what's going to bind and integrate the team culturally from what are the kind of tangible and functional areas, concretely, right, that the teams can work together on where there's essentially where there's a little bit more shared ownership. So I think, you know, on the cultural side, we have sort of three common principles that I look at across my group, if you will. So first being, "Be the feedback loop of the company," right? We are the voice of the customer. We're the voice of the market, which is marketing. Help us grow now. Help us think about opportunities later. So be the feedback loop, right? Number two, "Be the force of integration across the company." It's funny—at any scaling company, it's very easy to have silos be created when people are going fast. It's not just a big company problem. We have the luxury of being both helping to generate revenue as well as deliver against that revenue. So we can be that force of integration. And then thirdly, "Be the champion of our brand, our vision, our strategy," right? The storytelling in our product design, to our engagement calls, to the content we put out, the ideas we have around innovation—like, let's champion our point of view. So I think those three principles became a little bit of a very clear way for us to bind customer and marketing in the role that we play across the company. And then functionally, I think there's some shared ownership of metrics. Actually, they are different, but there are actually quite a lot of overlap as well. So when you think about areas like content and enablement, right, our marketing teams are helping create a lot of the materials that our customer teams use on a daily basis. You think about customer growth, right—expansion, ARR. You think about the innovation feedback loop through our CX, right, making sure we're continuing to iterate and improve. I think the challenge is you have to, kind of, you know, like any good challenge, right? You have to break it down. And I think for me, it was looking at it both from what binds us as a culture, which is really important for the big picture for people to buy into, as well as, of course, what tangibly, you know, we can be accountable for together, that shows that one plus one equals three, as opposed to one plus one is just two.

Drew: Well, I have a lot more questions, but we got to move on. But one of the things that's so interesting in my mind—I thought of these as two departments that you were managing separately, and what you just changed is, sort of, I'm really—you're thinking it's one team with shared challenges, which I think is so interesting and probably maybe a really important part of this, at least in this combo for you. But all right, we've got to move on. So I'll come back. We'll circle back to that. Let's bring on Isabelle Papoulias, who is the Head of Strategic Operations and Marketing at Elite Ops, and is an industry expert who's been on our stage before to delve into the topic of event strategy, the first 90 days, and building a marketing team. So hello, Isabelle. Wonderful to see you again.

Isabelle: Hello. Hello from Chicago.

Drew: All right, you're in Chicago, and how are you today?

Isabelle: I'm good. I'm great, because I'm here talking with you and all these wonderful folks, except for the tornado warnings and the heavy storming happening outside my window. All is good.

Drew: That's just noise. This is the important stuff here. So your relative—it's very interesting because your role at you really are doing two different—you're wearing two hats, strategic operations and marketing. They're very different. And so hearing the way Nikhil was talking about, I'm wondering if that just sparks some thoughts for you.

Isabelle: I would say for me, it's probably the opposite experience, precisely because operations and marketing are two different animals. There's overlap in that I do own sales operations and marketing operations, but to be clear, I touch all of business operations, right? So I touch HR, finance, training and enablement, and whatever else is going to come as we continue to grow—probably vendors and whatnot. So it does feel like I'm wearing two different hats, and I have to switch direction or change the hats depending on the conversation I'm having on a given day. But again, sales ops and marketing ops are part of the marketing function, right? So some overlap there.

Drew: And again, this wasn't an evolution. This is because you and I have talked about that, and this is how you went into this role. And so talk a little bit about how you, as with a background as a CMO, could land a role like this, because I think that would be enlightening to a lot of the CMOs in our community.

Isabelle: Yes, and so it's interesting you use the word evolution. It was not an evolution at EliteOps because I've been there for two months, and I'm a new employee, although I was doing fractional marketing work for them for a few months and saw the operational need, and that's where we had a conversation. But it is an evolution of my career. I have always, from early on, wanted to be a generalist. I have been in marketing, different marketing roles, but I have also been in sales. I've also been in account management and customer relations roles. I have been in business operations roles as well. Previously, I have always had a heavy hand in HR as it relates to employer branding, mentoring, training, and so on. Throughout my career, I have obviously delivered on my job description—right, your job first. But I have consistently looked for opportunities around me. I've looked for problems that I knew I could help solve, and I would raise my hand. And the way I actually entered the business operations world two jobs ago was I was CMO. I'd been CMO for a long time. I had been vocal about the fact that I was an aspiring COO and I wanted someday to have cross-functional impact, not just within marketing. And what happened was I raised my hand for a CEO special project—let's call it that—that was on the operational side of the business. The CEO felt that I was doing such a great job, essentially, and that it had such a strategic impact on the company that he wanted to make it a full-time position. And that became my transition from marketing into business ops at the time. And so it is an evolution in that sense. It's just another option here. And I think the important takeaway is advocate—be clear about what your career aspirations are. Don't be shy about raising your hand and looking outside your swim lane. But of course, in order to do that, you need to win the permission to do things outside your lane because you need to deliver on your primary job.

Drew: Right. And I think that's so interesting. And again, if we go back to Nikhil, I mean, he was set up for marketing and was able to do it, but then saw this other opportunity and sort of grabbed that opportunity. But your antenna have to be up. If you see yourself as just the marketer, that's all that's going to happen. So even in the example that you gave earlier with the CEO special project, your antenna was up. You saw that as a path, and so I think that's an important part of this. You can be voluntold into these opportunities, or you can actually sort of look for them and push your way to them.

Isabelle: If that's what you want. I think it's perfectly fine to be a deep specialist just in one area. But again, I always saw myself as a generalist. And of course, that's the conversation we're having today. We're talking about beyond marketing, right? But I think it's okay if that's something you want.

Drew: Yeah. I mean, whether you see it as an opportunity for growth—that's not the way I positioned it at the top of the show. I see it also as a defensive move to make your presence more important in the company.

Isabelle: More time goes in. In theory, you know, if you have more ties into the organization, there should be more...

Drew: And your seat at the table is more meaningful to a lot of other people because you are a business person in the organization, quote, "not just the marketing person." So talk a little bit—but there's a time management challenge to this because you can have a marketing crisis, you can have an operations crisis, and you're just you. So how does that work?

Isabelle: Yes, and I should call out—the wonderful—I have two people on my team: one in operations, one in marketing. We're very, very small, right? So resource-constrained, but I shout out to them. Look, I'm all about—so first of all, yes, crises, they do happen. And let me start with that. And a big aha for me is they happen usually in HR. So learning—and I've been in HR, I have been involved in HR before, and I have been certified in various things—but HR is a highly compliant function, and so you can find yourself out of compliance all of a sudden for different reasons, or you have a new employee that's starting and something's going wrong, and so you need to drop everything you're doing to address that. And that has happened to me, very candidly. Agility is key, and sometimes you do have to drop whatever you're doing to address it. But generally speaking, I'm a big believer in hyper-prioritization, in—I know you've heard me say this before—some strategic planning methodology, whether it's OKRs or V2MOMs. I use the V2MOMs, and so I have a plan. I have a plan for operations, and I have a plan for marketing. I know what I want to achieve with the team for the entire year, but the plan is broken out by quarters because I believe that to really drive action and deliver results, you kind of need to take the mountain and break it into smaller hills, right? So I do have a plan. I look at it; we look at it as a team. So it's a constant reminder of what our priorities are. We have three in operations, two in marketing for this quarter, and it runs our ability, right? Because we check ourselves. Are we still on track with the objectives, the strategies, the tactics, and the success metrics to deliver on these objectives, down to—I will say—my personal 90-day plan, which is my learning plan coming into the organization. You know, what am I doing the first 30 days? Mostly listening, getting to know the people, learning the culture. Second 30 days, understanding how we make money, talking to customers, and so on. And I'll give you an example. I looked at my learning plan today because I'm at the two-month mark, and I was checking most of the boxes, but I was behind on one crucial thing, and so that's accountability—the fact that you have frameworks and it's clear what you should be doing, I think, helps a lot. So for me, some kind of strategic planning process is helpful in managing the workload and making sure that we don't get too distracted. Yeah, there has to be some flexibility. Things happen and it's okay.

Drew: Well, yeah, I mean, it's funny—you call it strategic planning; I see it as an operating system, right?

Isabelle: Yes, it's not different. V2MOMs is like OKRs, except that the V2MOMs came from Salesforce.

Drew: But you still have sort of quarterly rocks, and you have meetings and sort of—got it.

Isabelle: Pick your acronym, but it's still about objectives, strategies, tactics.

Drew: And everybody has them. And in theory, if you do it right and everybody buys into it, everybody holds each other accountable. And that really makes a difference.

Isabelle: To do it fully—ideally, you have a V2MOM at the corporate level, you know, from the CEO down, then each function builds their own to ladder up to the CEO, and that's how it works. But you can do it just for a function.

Drew: It is funny that—I mean, the truth is that this becomes a time management challenge, right? I mean, it's a leadership challenge way up here. And if you don't have an operating system to help you with the time management, you're probably gonna—one of them is gonna stress out versus the other, right? One of the children is gonna feel ignored.

Isabelle: And the other piece of time management—look, it's not perfect. I'm not saying I figured it out perfectly, and I'm not working late sometimes, or focusing on one thing instead of the other. But generally, I think it's working pretty well. I'm becoming more and more maniacal about scheduling time for deep work and really, really sticking to it. And I think we all know that's important. We've heard this advice before. With time and experience, I'm getting better at applying that principle, and you know what? Color-coding my calendar and all those things are practical.

Drew: Yeah, I love that. Do you do that in blocks every day? Or do you just say, "Okay, Friday is my deep work day"?

Isabelle: I have blocks Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the afternoon for deep work. And Mondays and Fridays are my happy meeting days, so Mondays and Fridays are back-to-back calls.

Drew: All right, amazing. Now it's time. Let's welcome Ali McCarthy, president and founder of Amplify Your Voice Studio, and a returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss product launches, SaaS marketing, and marketing as a business driver. Hello, Ali, welcome back.

Ali: Hello, Drew. Great to be back. So, joining from my office outside of Philly.

Drew: Philly. All right, I was in Philadelphia a few months back. It's such a great city. Love it. So, all right, you're a fractional CMO. You were a CMO. You operate in this intersection of marketing strategy and leadership. What's CMO-plus look like in that context for you?

Ali: So in the fractional world, CMO-plus isn't just expected—in many ways, it's essential, I think, for survival, at least. My unique angle in that and managing that is that I actually have a PhD in emotional intelligence, which simply means that I'm approaching marketing and leadership through the lens of understanding human behavior and kind of how emotional drivers impact you in the business and your decision-making, and how we interact with others. And, you know, for those that don't know, emotional intelligence is just simply the ability to recognize and understand and manage emotions, both within yourself and with others. So it really shows up everywhere, and I've found that that has really been the pathway that has allowed me to take what I do from a marketing perspective—a little bit different than Isabel, where she wanted to be a generalist and wanted to have that range and depth in her career. I really wanted to stay in marketing, just understand all the layers of human interaction and behavior. So I feel like emotional intelligence kind of found me as well as me finding it.

Drew: It also just gives you—I mean, in some ways, it's your operating system, right? It is a lens through which you see organizational challenges and through which you see marketing challenges. So talk a little bit about that on a broader basis. So, you know, Ali, I'm imagining that you get called and say, "Hey, we're stuck. Fix it."

Ali: Well, in many ways, that's very true. I mean, I'm often brought in not just to fix marketing, but also to kind of diagnose why marketing isn't working. And it usually comes down to either misaligned expectations or poor internal communications, or leadership teams that either have misaligned expectations or poor internal communications, or leadership teams that maybe don't understand their customer's emotional journey. So my plus is really being able to rapidly assess any organizational dynamics, kind of decode any resistance that might be happening between the teams or patterns within the company, and then just designing marketing strategies that create coherence. And it's all about the client, and so really, it's helping everyone kind of rally around that.

Drew: Yeah, it's so interesting. And oftentimes—and this is one of the fundamental challenges that CMOs face overall—is that when a company isn't doing well, it's rarely just a marketing problem. It's a go-to-market problem, and it may have product components, sales components, customer service components, probably has experience components, right? But it's just easy to point at the marketing person and say, "Oh, let's get a new—we'll get a—" But it's interesting in your case, because you can also look—yeah, the dynamics of the team can be a huge part, right? We just have product people over here and sales people over here, and they're not communicating, or there's these dynamics. And what's interesting also is there's probably, for you with this approach, they're probably pretty likely to listen to you.

Ali: Well, hopefully, right?

Drew: I mean, because one, this advantage of being an outsider, and I've heard this a lot, is that, you know, when you are the fractional person, that is, you know, the other, they listen. You're the definition of an expert. You're the person from out of town with a briefcase. Talk a little bit—and when you approach this, how do you make sure that you are solving that bigger problem?

Ali: I do agree that they look at you differently, and that's okay. I mean, sometimes it's good and bad. Sometimes you can come in and be like, "This is so obvious. Why don't you see what I see?" Other times, you're a little bit distant from some of the team dynamics—that water cooler talk—because you may not be in the office as much, so sometimes that can be a disadvantage of being the expert. But either way, I come in and I'm asking the right questions, right? I'll ask the questions about, like, "What friction are you experiencing?" And we'll dive deeper into the customer journey. And of course, that's going to spill over from operations to sales to marketing to product, but these are the right challenges. And so what it does is it's asking the right questions and presenting these challenges to the business, all in service of a better client outcome. And that's where I think the fractional and the emotional intelligence really helps me out, because then I'm able to piece it together when we are going to market and telling that story and building our plans and our campaigns and whatever we're going to use externally. Because if I'm not aware of that, and the other people in the company aren't aware of the entire customer journey, you're going to lose—like, you can't win if you're singing in your own little world, right? You have to reach across the aisle, if you will, and be intellectually curious about what other people are hearing from the clients, but also what challenges they face. And that's where I think it means you show up caring, and you want to solve the whole company's problem, not just marketing problems.

Drew: Yeah, and you just come in—you, because, you know, you've been on that scene. You've been in the case where marketing could not solve the problem alone. You know, I guess if there was one message I could get to all the CEOs—it's probably not a marketing problem. I'm just saying it might be a team dynamic problem.

Ali: But what's interesting about that, Drew, is that even though it's not a marketing problem, every CEO is like, "But why doesn't marketing care enough to want to fix it for the company?" Not that we have to fix it for the company, but would we be willing to be the champion for it getting fixed in the company? And I think that that's an interesting observation. It's like, if we say that it's not a marketing problem, there's this perception that I've observed that we don't care in marketing. And it's like, "No, I do care. I just can't solve everything." Yeah. And so I've found that I can't change that perspective from a CEO, but I can change how we address that from a marketing perspective, and that has been transformational for me. And what I've learned over these past few years doing fractional work is, I was like, "You know what? I do care." So what I'll do is I'll go to the other groups and see where we can get this into our strategic plan for the business. And that goes back to what Isabel was saying too—is that, you know, having those strategic plans, being agile enough to look at them quarterly, but again, realizing that this is a company's business plan, not just marketing.

Drew: Right? So in some ways, right, there's no—it is unacceptable for a CMO to say, "That's not my problem," because you're not going to be successful. But you, as you just said, you can't solve every problem, but you could be the catalyst, or, as Liz Wiseman says, you could be the impact player that brings the folks together to convene to solve the problem. And in your particular case, because you understand the emotional differences and that part of it, it makes it easier for you to be a catalyst. And you're comfortable in that role, so you just had to embrace it and said, "Okay, I'll do it. I can get these people to solve the bigger issue together."

Ali: That's my passion. And so I don't mind carrying that particular torch, if you will, because I want to bring—I want to do that, and so that makes—it puts the joy into the work that I do. So I don't always look at that as a glass-half-empty initiative.

Drew: And I think that's really important. And I'm just—this is me preaching from the mountaintop. But it doesn't matter that it's not a marketing problem.

Ali: It really needs to get fixed.

Drew: Yeah, and, you know, you can't be successful either. There's no such thing as great marketing if it's not delivering the results for the company, because there are other things—you lose. So I think that acceptance part is so important. All right. Well, it is now time for me to talk about CMO Huddles, which we launched in 2020. CMO Huddles is the only community of flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders, and that features a penguin in our logo. Wait, what? Yeah, right. That's what it says, right here. And we do that because a group of these curious, adaptable, and problem-solving birds is called a huddle, and leaders in CMO Huddles are all that and more, huddling together to conquer the coldest job in the C-suite. So, Ali and Isabel, you both have been in CMO Huddles for a long time, and so—and I think—I'll ask you a little bit, but I'm curious if one of you could share, maybe Isabel—I think you might be a little bit longer—how CMO Huddles has helped you.

Isabelle: Yes, of course. You know how much I love it. I think I'm one of the OGs. I mean, it's two things. One is the subject matter expertise, right? The conversations we have regularly as a group on our webinars about topics that educate us. But the second piece—the most important to me—are the personal connections I make as a result of the Huddles, right? So we come together as a group, and then I connect with people, and then it becomes a one-on-one exchange. And I know I can reach out to that person for support, and I do. Like, "Hey, I'm thinking through this deck. I'm not really sure about this. Can I run it by you?" And then those relationships are priceless. Let me say it again: they are priceless.

Drew: I love it. Thank you for that. Ali, any thoughts on that?

Ali: I could not do what I do without the community that you bring together, Drew. It has been tremendous—the intelligence, the friendships, the camaraderie. The good days, the bad days, the ugly days are all shared within this group. And it has been—you know, I do not have a coach anymore. I redirected my coaching dollars, and you and the community are what fill my bucket. So thank you.

Drew: I love that. Thank you. So all right, with that, Nikhil, any thoughts? I mean, you're relatively new.

Nikhil: Honestly, I think Isabelle and Ali covered it. I can't say anything more. You're a real, live example, right? I think one of the introductions, Drew, you made for me recently, in turn, introduced me to a fabulous external consultant who solved for exactly the problem that I have—you know, for this other CMO in the community—and who I'm about to hire, actually. So honestly, I think, you know, for me, it's just such a great community with the ideas, the conversation, the intros, the intel. So just excited to be here.

Drew: I love it. Well, thank you for that, and excited to hear which consultant that is. By the way, we do keep an active list of vetted consultants for all sorts of folks. Anyway, 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. You get a free trial for a month. Okay, let's get back to this CMO Plus idea. And you all circled around this thing. I mean, is this a trend? Now that you've done it, can you imagine not having a plus in your role?

Nikhil: Oh, I couldn't. So I think it's maybe good to just take a step back and think about this from the perspective of the CEO, right? There's so much going on, there's so much pressure. Everything is just harder, harder, harder. There's so many more moving parts. And I think CEOs just need a really—you know, a few key leaders who can kind of navigate these moving parts. And CMOs are built for that chaos, built for that change, right? They're built for that well-rounded perspective. Marketing is one of the few functions that goes across the spectrum. So I think the profile lends itself really naturally to doing more than just the core marketing role. So you need the right skills, mindset, etc., etc. But I know there's a lot of doom and gloom around the tenure stats, but I think—yes, personally, I think there's a really great trend that we're going to see over the next five years.

Drew: Yeah, it's interesting. I wish if we did this show with a group of CEOs, I mean, and I asked them how many direct reports they had, and if that's a problem for them, I bet that number would be over six and they'd be complaining about it. So you're right—if you can consolidate this and have a few direct reports that you trust, I don't think that a lot of CEOs see it that way, though. So I think it takes—and it could be a combination of things—but so Isabelle, now that you're getting closer to your CEO, I imagine there's no looking back.

Isabelle: I mean, I think that's fair. That's a fair statement. Yes, just to add to what Nikhil said, I'm glad, Nikhil, you went back to the role of the CMO, because I do think the CMO role is the broadest one in the company. I mean, we're touching so many areas, right? Many of us have run SDR teams. We've owned revenue ops, we have sales enablement. So we're close to customer experience. So I think it naturally lends itself to the plus. At the same time, I think the plus trend is—I don't know that I can say there's a trend in the CMO Plus, necessarily, but I do feel there's a plus trend in leadership roles, right? We seem to see a CRO role shaping out—by what I call the true CRO, not just a head of sales, but someone who truly owns all the revenue: marketing, customer success, and sales. So I would say that's becoming more of a general role. You are starting to see CEOs that traditionally have come from a CFO background. But you're starting to see CEOs that come from a go-to-market background, even a product background. So I feel like there is a trend there where CEOs are looking for leaders that, in some roles, can do more than the traditional definition of that role.

Drew: Yeah, it's interesting, because I think the CRO role, when it comes from a sales—when it's just a salesperson who suddenly has marketing that has failed and failed and failed so many times that it's kind of done a disservice to what that idea is, as you call it, the true CRO. So we're probably going to need a new title, because that one has a damaged brand.

Isabelle: It's the wrong title because it's been misinterpreted.

Drew: Yeah, right. It's just right now, it's an elevated salesperson who doesn't get marketing and just gets, you know, "hire more marketing people."

Ali: And in some ways, it's kind of wrapping up what you said, Isabelle, and it also is a recognition of our ability to be a systems thinker, and that CMO Plus—like, we are thinking of the enterprise and we interact with all the parts of the organization. So I think it's nice that at least having this conversation, Drew, raises awareness of the many hats we already wore throughout our career.

Drew: Well, but I mean, it also speaks to this—you know, the role, if you're doing all this, is big enough. I mean, if you're doing internal comms and you're doing SDRs and rev ops, it's a very important role. Yet, somehow or other, despite the fact that you're doing internal comms, and maybe even customer comms, there's still this stigma—again—of marketer as the arts and crafts person: "Oh, you're just having events and beer," right? So this is the part that's so crazy—even though you can have this very broad CMO role, unless there's something that looks like operations, or something that looks like real business, you're sort of, "Oh, well, you're just the marketing person." So it's a conundrum.

Nikhil: I was going to say, I think, just to your point, I think a lot of it is just very simple, right? Everybody's a marketer. Everybody has an opinion on what marketing should be. But it goes back to what success looks like in marketing is just way harder to define than what success looks like in customer success. Like, my customer success, there's NRR—that's it. Like, we deliver mine or we don't deliver that. There are lots of operating metrics, but there's just a much clearer understanding of that.

Isabelle: Can I jump on that? Because I've actually been thinking about this, and I have a very, very strong opinion. I agree. As I've been thinking about sort of the challenges with marketing, you know, more recently, I think fundamentally, it comes from that—if you think of all the other functions in the org, like sales either closes the deal or doesn't close the deal. Like, the results are binary, right? They close the deal or they don't. Product either launches the product or doesn't launch a product. CS either keeps customers or loses them. The CFO either saves the money—whatever—and then marketing, it's just not simply binary. And I want to—maybe I'll turn some people off here, but I'm going to go all the way and say this—I almost want to say I'm also at the point where I want to say, if, as a company and as a CEO, you are not prepared to embrace the fact that in marketing, not everything is black or white, and you may not have linear attribution, I almost want to say, don't build marketing.

Drew: Interesting, right? Well, because the alternative is you spend all your money on Google search and click ads, right? Because that's the only thing, right? And you don't actually build marketing.

Isabelle: You don't actually build marketing, right? I'm being dramatic to make a point here, obviously a forceful statement, but it's thinking about it the wrong way.

Drew: Yes, and that's a comment for—that's a topic for another show. So we've talked a lot about how you get to the CMO Plus and add it. We've talked about some of the benefits of getting it—one that you're thought of as someone who's doing something that's actually measurable, and the results are seen. So it's easier to sit there. And we know that CMOs can think the way they need to think to do these things. There's one fundamental thing we haven't talked about in depth: it's a lot to do already, and I know that there are some CMOs listening right now who are going, "How the heck do you expect me to do this? I'm already working 80 hours a week as the CMO. How am I going to add customer support? How am I going to add..." And we could go back to the time management, but that's part of it. And so I think there's some fear. So help the group listening, and we're reading about this later, help them understand that, yeah, it's a leadership and time management problem that you should be able to figure out.

Isabelle: But it's also an aspirational problem, right? And what fills you and what do you want to be doing? And so my response to that would be, take it on and figure it out later. You will figure out the time management piece and the resources you need while you're in it. Don't try to solve the problem before you have it, and you'll show value, and you'll be able to negotiate resources and have those discussions and restructure your team or manage your time better. I think that's my point of view. If it excites you, do it and figure it out as you do it.

Drew: You know, I was thinking as you were talking. This is you can't do this without strong number twos. And I'm thinking, what's the profile of a strong number two? And it's like, hire folks that were academic all-Americans at D1 schools, because these folks had a full-time job in college and still did well. These folks have cracked the code of managing time and prioritizing things. And they're just used to doing it, and in some ways, that's what you guys have to do as well, right? You have to crack the code of time management.

Nikhil: Yeah, I think, listen, I think the, you know, I have a saying, I tell my team, vote with your time. So I couldn't agree more on the time. It's really, really hard. And I think give all CMOs, anybody listening now or later, it's a work in progress. You don't get things right. There's no silver bullet, et cetera, et cetera. I think the one thing that really helps is being clear on the job to be done and why. And I don't think most people often are right. Everything else, the priorities, the trade-offs. Everything stems from being clear there, and it's really easy to forget the point. As you go into the discussions, or, you know, go into the tactics, or whatever it is, and unless you have a job to be done, and how they kind of stack up against each other, right jobs to be done, I think you have to really have an understanding of it, of the heart of the issue, and unless you do, I think it's really hard.

Drew: So give us an example of that, specifically, as you look at your big jobs to be done. Because, I mean, I know a lot of folks, they look at their to-do list and there's 1000 things on there, which is crazy, because there can't be 1000 things to do. You personally can't do that. So what's that look like when you say jobs to be done? I mean, I know the framework. I know that jobs to be done framework, but I'm curious how you apply it.

Nikhil: Yeah, I think for me, like, I'll give you an example, right? So we have a really robust insurance business, and we have a really sort of burgeoning software business. It's really simple to continue to support our growing core business. And, you know, not be clear that actually everything we need to do now is to build our software business going forward. Right for me, like, if that's the job to be done, then everything should stem from that, the way we prioritize, the way we invest, the way we spend our time, the content we create, the brand output we're trying to do, from a customer engagement perspective, are we collecting the feedback that we need for our next set of products as an example, right? So I think just, I mean, you take that macro job to be done, if you will, and like you break it down or everything is in. Equal priority, right? And that's the flip side that I think is really hard.

Drew: Well, then this comes back to the strategic plan that you were talking about and owning that. Because if you are at the top of that with a strategy, and we really haven't, you know part of the definition of a strategy is knowing what you're not doing, right? So that's helpful. So what do you think as folks are thinking about this? Are there skills? Are there mindsets that are really critical for CMOs as they step into these broader or hybrid roles?

Ali: I do believe you have to have radical transparency on trade-offs when you're making some of these decisions and you're bringing all these competing priorities to the team, and which ones we're actually going to execute based on the time resources and staffing that we have and budget. I think in some ways, it's okay to have that reality check. It's okay to understand that you can't get it all done. But it's okay to have a list that is robust and full, because it shows that you care enough to be thinking about what's next and forward. Sometimes we get in this we want it. We want it in a perfect the perfect size, right? The perfect project plan, with the perfect budget, with the perfect team and all the resources and there, that's just paper, right? That's not the lived experience we ever have. And so I think it's just, you know, hey, we can get ready to launch the product, and you know, like you said, Nikhil, and be ready to prepare for the future one. But you know, understanding and being clear that, you know, whatever you do, there's trade-offs involved, and it's okay to have those honest conversations about it. But it's also okay to say, you know, our list is never going to be done. You know, I say a marketer probably has, you know, 100 things on their daily to-do list at any given moment. And it's okay because we never, we're never at the point where we're trying to check off to the very last box. It's like, it's an evolution every day, and we love that work. Otherwise we wouldn't do it.

Drew: It's so true. I was thinking about, you know, I'm an idea person. When I ran an agency, I had ideas every day. And it wasn't until we had EOS as an operating system that there was a place for them to go. It's great idea. Drew put it on the list. We'll review it next quarter, as opposed to that's not a great characteristic of a CEO. You can be that person who has those things, but you also have to have a way of managing it. So anyway, thank you for that.

Nikhil: Just to build on Ali, right? I think senior marketers tend to be very expansive. They're typically expansive thinkers by nature, right? That's kind of the nature of the job, creativity, everything you just mentioned, a lot of the other functions and disciplines are actually inherently the opposite, right? A lot more reductive in nature. It's you have to be really clear on the do not do list, what do you say no to? What drives productivity, not just activity? Like, like, you know, for me, from customer and product hats, like, it's actually the no that's been way harder than in marketing. And I think that's honestly a lot of it for you know, if you want to step into the broader role, if you are into a broader role, you have to change your mindset. From that perspective, I think a little bit.

Drew: Oh, that's so interesting. All right. Well, we're at the point where it's final words of wisdom time. So the question is, what advice would you give to a CMO who's been asked to take on more whether it's customer success or ops or something in else entirely? And I think we'll start with Isabelle.

Isabelle: Yes, I'd say on knowledge side, and sort of mindset knowledge is understand how the company makes money, follow the money in all its permutations, especially if it's a partner-led channel in motion, all the different variations of how that ecosystem, within the ecosystem, the money is changing hands. On more of the behavior side of things, I would say, be comfortable being uncomfortable. If you're going to enter plus, into plus and start going outside of your swim lane, it will be uncomfortable. And I'm assuming that you know what you're doing. I know I'm doing it because discomfort is my comfort zone, right? For me, that's natural. Well, probably my biggest piece of advice is prepared to be uncomfortable.

Drew: Well, it's, you know, one that's, you're challenging yourself, so of course, you're going to be uncomfortable, because if you're not challenging yourself, you've already done it, you've solved that thing. But it also sort of speaks to what Ali's point of just recognizing it's an imperfect world, and we're, you know, and perfection is the enemy of good enough, and so we've got to live with a little discomfort, both as the leader in the stuff that you're trying to get done. Okay, Ali, final words of wisdom.

Ali: So I would say really look at this as you're not taking on extra work. You are displaying how you're growing your executive capabilities, and so go fearlessly. You know it's okay to learn as you grow and learn as you go. Have it be something that makes you joyful, because then it's not extra work. It's actually something that brings you joy and makes you a better person and makes you grow. So I would say fall in love with it, because it won't be that much extra work. It'll be a passion project.

Drew: I love it. All right. Nikhil, bring us home. Final words of wisdom.

Nikhil: You know, firstly, I loved what Isabelle and Ali said both. Listen, I think you hear this increasingly, but it's probably even more relevant here, which is, think like a general manager for the business, not just a functional leader, I think as any good GM would do, right? Find that connective tissue between your functions. Keep reinforcing that, keep demonstrating that on a daily basis, and embrace it to what Ali was just saying, because it's incredible to be a part of helping navigate those moving parts.

Drew: I love it all right. Great stuff. Thank you, Nikhil. Isabelle, Ali, you're amazing sports. Thank you audience for staying with us. 

 

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!