CHAPTER 2
IT'S TIME FOR CMOS TO PLAY OFFENSE

In Chapter 1, I laid out my case for why it's time for a wholesale re-visioning of how we approach the customer experience. This bold new approach eliminates some of the sales and marketing stalwarts-specifically forms, spam, and cold calls. But more importantly, it treats customers (and future customers) as humans instead of faceless dots in a pipeline.

Meanwhile, I've been traveling the country meeting with groups of CMOs and talking to them about this idea. As I did in the last chapter, I tell these folks about the results they can expect from implementing this customer-centric approach: bigger deals, faster cycle times, increased pipeline, and lower customer acquisition costs. And I make it clear that this isn't just some pipe dream. This is a plan that we've implemented aggressively, and we've seen how effectively it works.

The reaction is always the same: palpable enthusiasm. When people hear about this new way of approaching sales and marketing, they get riled. Heads are nodding. There's a chorus of Uh-huhs and Hell Yeahs whenever I talk about how broken our system is . and lay out my plan for how to change it. When I talk about the successes I've seen at 6sense with this approach, they're champing at the bit to see it work in their own organizations.

What I'm saying is, they are ON BOARD. Like, 100 percent ready to carry the banner of this Brave New Sales and Marketing Order.

Until .

They realize they're going to be the ones who are going to implement it. And then, without fail, those Uh-huhs turn to Nuh-uhs. The Hell Yeahs become Hell Nahs.

"My board will never go for this!"

"My CEO will think I'm nuts!"

"My head of sales lives for cold calls. No freaking way she's getting behind this."

I've heard every single one of those objections from CMOs around the country. To be clear, these are smart, capable, established, and, frankly, personal-hero-type CMOs, but they don't feel like they have the political capital to say to their CEOs and boards:

"Hey. I understand these really important things about our market. And we need to make these really important shifts in our approach so we can give the market what it wants. And by giving the market what it wants, we are going to see X, Y, and Z results."

And honestly, I wish I could tell them, "Don't worry about it! Just remind them that you're the expert on your market. Your CEO (and your board, and your sales team .) will trust you!" But I can't say that. Because the truth is, CEOs actually don't trust their CMOs, by and large. In fact, a global survey by Accenture revealed that two out of three CEOs don't believe their marketing leads possess the business acumen or leadership skill their role requires.1

The Incredible Shrinking CMO

Maybe that's why more and more prominent companies like Johnson & Johnson, Hyatt, and Uber are eliminating the role of CMO altogether. Meanwhile, other companies are layering their upper management so that the CMO now reports to another C-level, like the chief revenue officer, taking the CMO out of the board room-and out of the highest-level business decisions-altogether.

These trends are bad for CMOs, obviously. The lack of perceived value turns career success into an uphill climb for marketing leaders. In fact, of all the C-suite titles, CMOs have the shortest tenure, and it's getting shorter year over year. In 2016, the average CMO tenure was 4.1 years. In 2020, that dropped to just 3.5 years. And in the tech sector, it's even shorter, with the average CMO exiting (or being shown the exit) after just 3 years, according to an analysis by organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry.2

Carein Fleit, Korn Ferry's leader of Global Marketing Officers Practice, puts this trend in perspective: "Short CMO tenure is a reflection of a lack of understanding of how powerful this role can be in terms of driving business outcomes."

I couldn't agree more. Which leads me to my next point: Suppressing the power of the CMO, burying marketing under sales, or removing the CMO from the "room where it happens" isn't only bad for CMOs themselves-it's bad for business.

The truth is that for marketing and sales to both succeed, each one needs to function with authority and focus. That's not possible when marketing is treated as a subsection of sales rather than as an essential and independent part of the business.

I have a unique perspective on this, having seen it from both sides. Before I was in marketing, I was in sales. And I've seen what it looks like when marketing is run as a part of sales. In short, it simply doesn't work. The demands of sales are completely, and necessarily, different from those of marketing. Sales needs to keep its eye on month-to-month or-with longer cycles-quarter-to-quarter goals. The focus is forever on the next deal, and when that one comes in, the deal after that. There's not enough room to step back and get the headspace to think long term about the overall market.

And again, that's smart for sales departments. But it doesn't work for marketing, which requires a broad and deep understanding of the market as well as long-view strategic insight and planning. So when sales and marketing find themselves in the same department, marketing often gets ignored or goes on autopilot.

"When you put that marketer underneath a revenue officer who's only ever owned sales, you're going to double down on the growth thing, and brand and experience are going to go by the wayside. And it might work for a while, might grow for a while. But the competition . Who's doing all three-and doing it in the C-suite? That's it. It's the long game."

Kate Bullis
Managing Partner
SEBA International

I've spoken to so many other people who have seen the same issues when sales and marketing compete for focus. 6sense CEO Jason Zintak (JZ) used to have marketing and sales bundled together-but he changed that when he realized marketing was getting the shaft.

I have another friend who is a killer sales executive and was thrilled when she gained leadership of both sales and marketing. She was so enthusiastic about the synergies she'd create by having the two departments together, under her wing. But the reality was that instead of the alignment she was expecting, she saw exactly what JZ and I have observed: That giving proper attention to the fast-moving demands of the sales department made it impossible to give marketing the support and attention it deserved.

So why are so many companies combining sales and marketing? Some would say laziness-that CEOs want to cut their number of direct reports-but I think it goes deeper than that.

Kate Bullis, managing partner at executive search firm SEBA International, explains that at the core, the CMO is responsible for three things: brand, experience, and growth. But companies that layer marketing under the blanket category of "revenue" are selling themselves-and their CMOs-short.

That long game is key, and for a lot of companies, it requires a rethinking what a CMO is.

New Rule: No More Verbing

It's easy for CMOs to find themselves immersed in activities and tasks-creating content, churning out MQLs, publishing press releases, launching products. And it makes sense, since these are all things that need to happen for marketing to be successful. But all these activities and tasks are the reason it's so hard for CMOs to prioritize their efforts in order to make their greatest impact within the organization.

A survey by the Empowered CMO Network found that CMOs believe they should be spending less time on these day-to-day activities and more time on bigger-picture endeavors.3 By spending more time managing down into their teams (where vice presidents should be taking the lead), CMOs are failing to keep tabs on the market, and making the inroads necessary within the C-suite and board to gain their trust, respect, and understanding, it's important that they're not bogged down in marketing activities.

According to Bullis, CMOs often find themselves crushed by the weight of all this verbing, due to a lack of understanding about marketing at the highest levels. "Failure often boils down to the vision, the support, and the value that a CEO places on marketing and what he or she expects it to be. Is it about pretty logos and product pushing? Advertisements and billboards? Or is it about what the brand stands for, building engagement or declaring a category? How about dominating a market? CEOs need to evolve and elevate their understanding of the value of marketing and the CMO."

Maybe it's because CMOs have an -ing title-chief market-ing officer-that people expect them to verb all day long. But the truth is that an empowered CMO isn't wrapped up in these day-to-day marketing activities, any more than the CFO spends his or her day running payroll.

So just like we don't call the CFO the chief financ-ing officer, Bullis argues (and I'm with...