These days, when CEOs and investors hire marketing leaders, they can have very specific wish lists. Such as:
- Experience scaling from point A to point B
- Facility with a mix of sales-led and product-led growth motions
- Background that spikes in demand generation
- Experience marketing horizontal solutions to business audiences, versus technical audiences
But there’s one area where the people who are hiring marketing leaders are less confident
That’s whether the best fit will be someone who would be in the marketing leadership role for their first time versus someone who has done the role once before versus someone who is a multi-time CMO. There are pros and cons of each of these archetypes, of course.
Newer marketing leaders are likely closer to ‘doing the work’ and can get tactical, which is helpful when the marketing function is nascent and the team needs lots of hands-on coaching. More experienced marketing leaders have developed their playbooks, and have the pattern recognition to anticipate and sidestep pitfalls, reacting more efficiently to challenges.
In the latest episode of The Get podcast, we explore the question of What Veteran CMOs Know That First-Timers Don’t.
My guest is Norman Guadagno, a multi-time CMO who has led marketing at Mimecast, Acoustic, and Carbonite, and who has also been a CEO.
You’ll hear about:
- The ‘arc of caution’ in career progression that marketing leaders can exhibit: from being very open-minded early on in their careers, to being able to recognize risky situations once they have more marketing leadership experience, to being even more risk-averse once they have lots more experience identifying the ‘warts’ in a role, to right-sizing their risk as they contribute across multiple Boards or take a non-marketing role
- How the role of a marketing leader can significantly vary depending on the company’s stage of growth… the right marketing leader at one stage may not be the right one at a different stage
- How to balance delivering on demand capture in year 1 with longer-term brand building, and what it looks like to set good expectations for longer-term impacts with the rest of the leadership team
- Managing timeframes: first-time CMOs may be overly optimistic about how long it takes to implement change, while seasoned CMOs understand realistic timeframes for results
This episode provides valuable insights for both CMOs and CEOs seeking to make informed hiring decisions.
One of my favorite quotes: “50% of the CMO role has nothing to do with marketing.”