I run a retained executive search practice with a laser focus on recruiting the ‘make money’ type of marketing leaders, not the ‘make it pretty’ ones. So I’ve had thousands of conversations in the course of recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing for B2B SaaS companies. Here are some tips for marketing leaders who are in a career transition.
We’ll cover:
- What companies are looking for: the skills that organizations have on their CMO wish lists these days
- What you’re looking for: Do’s and don’ts for structuring your search, bringing yourself to market, and making networking work for you
- How to stand out in a talent-rich market: Tips for de-risking yourself in the eyes of a CEO
The Wishlist: What CEOs Most Want From Their CMOs
Every company will have its own wish list, of course. But you can’t go wrong showcasing your skills in the following areas:
1) Growth growth growth: Companies can be picky about which marketing leaders they hire now, and their wish lists will likely include something like “experience doing ‘the climb’ from $xMM in revenue to $yMM in revenue.” The strongest marketers I’ve talked with have good ‘from —> to’ stories of starting at some level of scrappiness and scaling from there as they drive revenue.
2) Profitability: It’s not just about driving revenue, but doing so profitably. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a company that adopts the ‘growth at all costs’ mindset these days. Instead, it’s more about growth at less cost. Discuss how you have driven GTM efficiency in these contexts.
3) A “business first, marketing second” mindset: You can show your business-first chops by, for instance, recommending budget allocations to other areas of the business — not just marketing – when it makes sense. This mindset goes both ways. I once interviewed a CMO who makes sure to refer to his marketing budget — when talking with the executive leadership team — as ‘OUR marketing budget’ rather than ‘MY marketing budget.’
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- This is also a good time to highlight your abilities to be a “Marketing Plus” candidate – marketing plus strategy, marketing plus revenue, marketing plus product, for instance. We are likely to see more of these ‘marketing plus’ roles, in the spirit of doing more with less. So, be prepared to demonstrate your competence outside of marketing. Some CEOs may simply share a challenge they are facing now and ask you how you would tackle it – even if that challenge is outside of marketing – to see your creativity and agility and range in action.
4) Strong Board partnership:In the best of times, marketers can struggle to manage the Board’s expectations. Especially now, with so much scrutiny on profitable growth, marketing leaders who share irrelevant or wrong numbers with the Board can find themselves on a swift downward path. The strongest CMOs, however, will develop allies on the Board, craft the right cadence and style for reporting, preview their content with Board members, and communicate how they are balancing both short and longer-term marketing investments and associated ROI. For more on this topic of the CMO and Board relationship in B2B SaaS, and how it can go from fraught to functional to fabulous, check out episodes of The Get podcast like this one.
5) A POV on AI that separates hype from heft. Demonstrate your curiosity and what you’ve learned in your explorations with AI. Share your perspective on how the use of AI in marketing will change your org design, deliver efficiencies, and drive innovation.
6) Skill at (re)building teams: Many CEOs, facing subpar performance, wonder, “Is it the market or the marketers?” CEOs will be looking for new marketing leaders to make swift organization decisions on who stays, who goes, and whose roles change. Have a perspective on the key roles you need on your team, and which functions should be insourced versus outsourced. Also, bring your perspective on how roles are changing with the pervasiveness of AI. Share examples of how you have hired, led, and inspired diverse teams that are distributed in time and space.
7) Customer marketing acumen: Companies that struggle to convert new customers will be more dependent on their existing customer base to hit their revenue targets, putting pressure on a CMO to optimize renewals, upsells, and referrals. What is entailed here? Creating unexpected customer delight, and tight partnership with the customer support/success organization.
8) “Bringing in the outside”: Show examples of how your efforts have built pathways of input, innovation, and influence with customers, analysts, and industry communities. But beware that you may need to navigate what I call the Changemaker/Peacemaker paradox: the desire that you will make change, but the expectation that you will do that in a way that keeps the peace.
Of course, the key is matching what you’re best at with what the company believes it needs. Note that ‘what the company believes it needs’ may be distinct from what you as a marketer believe or assume the company needs. Too often, CMO candidates will try to demonstrate a skillset that they assume the company needs, without first educating on that need and selling it.
Your Personal Go-To-Market Plan
Once you have a grasp on which skills to spotlight, you will need to put together your personal go-to-market plan and start networking.
1) Not so sure on the direction you want to go? Think twice about who you are approaching, and when. It’s OK to have lots of different potential avenues. It’s OK to be a bit scattered; that is a necessary part of figuring out yourself and your path. But be careful about who you share your uncertainty with. Early on, go to friends and former colleagues for help with brainstorming. Consider a career coach. There are even therapists who specialize in career issues, who can help you grapple with the deep issues that may be holding you back.
Realize that there are some people who are engaged to be in evaluating mode, rather than in purely helping mode. Ahem, executive search people come to mind. So do investors. Think carefully about the impression you want to leave with them. Do you want to go in front of one of these people when you are still focusing? Or does it make more sense to delay until your next career direction has more focus, and you can be the round peg in the round hole that that person may be looking for?
Net: Be aware of how focused you look, in addition to how focused you are. Know the differences among executive recruiters, career coaches, and therapists.
2) Explore multiple avenues sequentially. If you’re not sure whether you want to go down Route 1 or Route 2 (for instance the consulting route versus the in-house CMO route), simply pick one of these routes for a month, and ‘go to market’ with that focus. Craft your LinkedIn profile to align to that direction, and emphasize that direction in your networking conversations. See what results emerge and also how it feels. You can always pivot your approach. This way, you will come across as more focused, and in doing so, you will help others help you.
3) Avoid the tendency to be too comprehensive – “what you leave out is just as important as what you put in.”
“In Italian cooking, what you leave out is just as important as what you put in.” This is a saying ingrained in me by my parents, both half-Italian by heritage. And so it is with CMOs who are hitting the job market. One mistake that CMO candidates make, I’ve noticed, is being overly comprehensive when talking about themselves.
For instance: “I have 25+ years of doing marketing, and I have done both B2B and B2C marketing, and I have worked in both big and small companies, and I have skills across brand and acquisition and product marketing, and I could work in either a big or a small company for my next move.” While this may be entirely accurate, saying something like this makes it hard for others to help you. They will wonder what you stand for. Just like products can’t be all things to all people, neither can CMOs.
Your goal, especially early on, is NOT to provide maximum coverage of yourself and your career. (That can happen later, if at all). Your goal is to create a trigger in someone’s mind. Your goal is for that person to listen to you, nod, and immediately say, “Oh, I know a company you should talk with. They need someone exactly like you.”
Again, there’s no need to offer the full buffet; offer just the well-chosen top quality ingredients – the ones that are relevant to the opportunity you are discussing in the moment. Resist the temptation to talk and talk about yourself. Instead, take the opportunity to talk more about your buyer than about yourself.
Here are some examples of ‘about me’ overviews that do this well. They come from conversations I’ve had with marketing executives – and are among the most memorable from the many conversations I have had.
- “The companies that gravitate my way have three things in common: they are going into a new tech area, they need partnerships to own the market, and they have to do it fast. That’s what I do and I have done it multiple times in a row.”
- “I am the CMO that joins marketing technology companies that want to get acquired or go public.”
- “I’ve brought 10 different products to market within the unified communications space, and the cumulative value of these products is $500MM. I’m looking to do this again.”
4) Make your asks of people as atomic as possible, especially if those people are likely to be overloaded with requests. Let’s say you want to meet someone who could be a great networking connection for you… an investor, a CEO, a fellow CMO, an executive search leader, or someone who is otherwise very well-connected. Imagine you are the 25th person that has approached that person this week. In many cases, that is the truth. How can you make it surprisingly easy for them to help you?
Be clear and frictionless with your asks. Shoot for something that they can fulfill in 5 seconds rather than 30 minutes. Maybe it’s not: “Can you give me feedback on my resume?” Maybe it’s not: “Can we have a virtual coffee chat for an hour for me to pick your brain?” Maybe instead it’s: “Will you look at my LinkedIn profile and tell me the first company that comes to mind that needs to know about me?” Or: “I ghost-wrote this intro for you to send to your friend who I would like to meet; could you forward this along to them please?”
Don’t be that person who imposes undue labor on others. Make it easy for people to help you by making the most atomic ask you can.
5) Make sure that your networking asks are not just about you. Often, people who are well into their careers approach networking the same way they approached informational interviewing when they were coming out of school. They forget that a good networking meeting is a two-way street. Even if you are ultimately looking for a job, offer to share your learnings from something that may help the other person.
6) Realize that your resume is not the top of the proverbial funnel; your LinkedIn profile is. There is a historical trend towards optimizing your resume. But that’s all it is – historical. When you are introduced to someone in a networking or hiring context, they are much more likely to check out your profile on LinkedIn than to open a resume attachment. They want to absorb your career path in a format that is familiar to them. They also want to see who they know in common with you.
So, devote as much attention on your LinkedIn profile as you do to your resume. If you think your LinkedIn profile needs a facelift, check out other marketing leaders’ profiles and be inspired by them.
How To De-Risk Yourself To A CEO
OK, your search is continuing and you are in the running for actual CMO opportunities. Huzzah. Here are some things to keep in mind:
1) If your job tenures are short, explain why. Realize that CEOs will look just as much at the white space between your roles as they look at the content of your roles. The top reaction CEOs have to CMO candidates when perusing their backgrounds is: “Hmm… why was this person only at this company for 1 year?” Or: “I don’t know; there are a lot of two-year stints. Will they stay long enough to make an impact?”
In the absence of a narrative from you, CEOs will fill in the blanks. Far better to get ahead of the message, especially for the situations where there was a relatively innocuous reason for you leaving (for instance, you got recruited out, the company amassed everyone around a headquarters in a different city, there was an acquisition, etc.) If you were laid off, it helps to explain the context. Being the only one laid off is quite different than being part of a 50% RIF.
2) Inhabit the company’s world; don’t just tell stories from yours. You have a choice when you are asked about your experience. You can either spend 100% of your airtime telling stories from your experience and HOPE that the person you are meeting with connects the dots. Or, you can connect the dots for them. To do that, strike a balance between talking about yourself and talking about them. Ask about THEIR challenges, and paint a picture of a different world for them. That is much more valuable than you spending all your airtime ensuring they have a comprehensive understanding of all of your career zigs and zags. This problem-solving approach also reduces the cognitive burden on the person interviewing you.
3) Show, don’t just tell. Come to an interview prepared with work samples. This way, you ‘break the frame’ of the interview from talking about your work to showing your work. Done right, it can feel like both you and the interviewer are sitting on the same side of the table.
One of the most memorable interviews I did was with a CMO candidate who proactively shared with me his marketing dashboard. He talked through his metrics, what was working, what could be working better, etc. I have interviewed thousands of marketers, and I remember exactly one person doing this without prompting.
What can you show? There are lots of options.
- A before and after slide on messaging
- Slides from a recent Board meeting (with key numbers fuzzed out)
- Assets from a campaign that performed well – or even that bombed, with some voiceover on what you learned
Or, you could take it upon yourself to do an ‘audition’ project for the role, even if you aren’t asked. That’s harder, of course, but it is the ultimate in ‘inhabiting their world.’ And it demonstrates your interest. After all, often the person that gets the job is the one that wants it the most.
4) Anticipate that the interview process can quickly take a hairpin turn from ‘tell me about your marketing skills’ to ‘do you speak investor?’ CEOs and investors don’t tend to care about the number of people that clicked on an ad; they care about pipeline, revenue, profitability, ROI for marketing investments, and overall GTM efficiency.
5) Develop a vocabulary to vet the cultural match. Participate actively in figuring out whether you and the company are a good match culturally. This is too important to make a gut call. Instead, find the language to surface what you need to know. Some questions for you to pose during your interviews:
- What were you surprised by culturally, when you joined?
- What is something cultural that would happen here that doesn’t happen elsewhere in your experience?
- When someone has had cultural friction, why was that specifically?
- What do people here believe in so much, even to the exclusion of other things?
- How specifically does the ELT collaborate?
- How do you fight?
6) Be aware of why CMOs fail, and use that knowledge to reduce risk. CMOs don’t fail for lack of talent. They don’t fail for lack of effort. They fail, when they do, when critical factors are misaligned.
For a CMO to succeed, the following must work together in harmony:
- CEO expectations of marketing: A shared understanding of success and priorities
- CMO responsibilities: Clear, well-defined scope that matches business needs
- Budget and resources: Sufficient investment of people and dollars to execute effectively
- Authority: Decision-making power to drive meaningful change
- Incentives: Compensation and KPIs that align with revenue leadership and overall company goals
- Time horizon for results: Realistic and shared expectations for when impact will be seen, and the balance of short-term wins with longer-term sustainable growth
This topic of reducing risk in CMO recruiting is a meaty one! I covered it in much more depth with my guests in Season 6 of my podcast, The Get. Check it out here.