CMOs at the forefront of driving growth today are taking concrete actions, focusing on what they have and can control. They come armed with insight and initiate challenging commercial conversations with the CEO and their sales counterparts. They are not waiting for more data or process improvements. Rather, these adept CMOs are efficiently prioritizing investments, iterating rapidly to learn what works now, and driving internal consensus on GTM playbook updates. This results in success with little waste.
Key takeaways from the report:
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CMOs aren’t as in sync with the CEO’s growth agenda as they think. Only an elite set of marketing leaders are proactively taking steps to prioritize commercial productivity. The majority remain challenged to pivot and prove marketing’s value as budgets tighten.
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Bullish attitudes regarding the strength of demand may force many CMOs into a reactive posture. Savvy CMOs remain tightly aligned with the CEOs’ value creation strategy. Marketers need to prioritize a narrower set of initiatives and focus on commercial discipline, to drive revenue growth and maintain CEO trust.
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CEOs view marketing as an expendable black box, especially during challenging times. Lack of clear visibility into how marketing drives revenue casts doubt on the CMO’s ability to support the CEO’s commercial productivity agenda. CEOs’ and CFOs’ limited GTM knowledge further complicates CMOs’ ability to defend budgets not clearly aligned to focused revenue growth.
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Decisive CMOs lead the revenue team in taking calculated risks. Consistent data management routines enable rapid investigation into changing buyer behavior. Visibility to early indicators of shifting demand allows for efficient GTM playbook changes before it’s too late.
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Tenacious CMOs boldly initiate challenging commercial conversations. Instead of taking a backseat to the CRO, confident CMOs lead the discussion on critical decisions and GTM strategy pivots needed to maintain revenue growth.
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SBI’s CMO productivity guidance provides a simple framework to help marketing leaders focus. Prioritize a narrow set of activities that keep revenue impact as the key measure of success. Maintain commercial productivity as the north star to be the trusted advisor the CEO needs now.
