What insight do C-level leaders have on the challenges of being a contemporary CMO? And what advice can they provide to aspiring CMOs? As part of my “CMO Insight Series,” I posed these questions to Jim Melvin, CMO at SevOne, an infrastructure performance monitoring company. As the former CEO of AppNeta and Mazu Networks, he has unique perspective from both the CMO and CEO vantage points. What follows are Melvin’s thoughts.
Q: What is the biggest challenge facing today’s CMO?
The CMO role is the best position in the company, if you’re looking for a vibrant, dynamic and important role. It has it all. However, with increased expectations come significant challenges, which fall into four different areas.
1. Data-Driven Insight to the Business. CMOs need to bring a greater level of data-driven insight into understanding the dynamics of business performance, including both tactical insight, such as which sales leads are better, and strategic insight, such as which markets you should target. Data is truly transforming marketing from an art into a science. While being adept at using sophisticated analytical tools is difficult enough, the challenge is magnified because data are rarely consolidated and organized, making analysis more complicated. Yet CMOs must drive this transition.
2. Define Strategic Direction. Many CMOs also take on the role of leading development of the company’s strategic vision. This is a very complex role in that it demands understanding of the markets, technologies, core existing competencies, competition, and consumers. Although complex, CMOs are most likely to be at the intersection of all of these areas and should have the analytical and strategic skills to help set the strategic direction.
3. Partner with Sales. The role of a marketer boils down to, well, marketing. And the core role of marketing is to accelerate sales. This often requires an "old school" approach to partnering with sales leadership, and directly enabling sales productivity. Within the technology industry, the sales organization has historically played a dominant role. However, the data and technology available to marketers has shifted the power so that the relationship can be more balanced.
4. Drive Internal Alignment. This is accomplished via communications and partnership with the CEO/executive leadership team. The CMO role still requires a certain element of being the “voice of the consumer” for the company and strategy and helps connect the external market with the internal operations.
While the four elements above make the CMO role exciting, it’s obvious to see how the complexity can lead to big challenges. What compounds the challenge is that all companies and CEOs are different. As CMOs move between companies, prioritization of the above will vary. This often creates confusion for CMOs and their peers as the CMO role isn’t constant. Managing this challenge requires that the CMO is aligned across the C-suite.
Q: What is the biggest mistake you believe CMOs today are making?
In my experience, there are two big mistakes that a CMO can make. The first would be to assume that their role is simplistic in nature and centered on perhaps only one of the above four elements. By only focusing on one area, they aren’t creating the impact and value that the CEO expects. The second mistake is to fail to drive alignment with their CEO. Driving alignment is an ongoing activity, given the dynamic nature of business. So while a CMO might be aligned during the annual planning period, their job is to make sure they are still aligned at the end of the fiscal year.
Q: What is your Crystal Ball prediction? What do you think the future of marketing will be and how will it be different from today?
We’re living in a world where technology is impacting everything. As the CMO of a tech firm, I can safely say we tend to live close to the leading edge. The core of what is happening is enabling a closer relationship between the customer (or prospect) and the company. Early in my career, I had a "tenured" sales professional tell me about an old sales adage: "Customers make selections based on people first, company second, and product last.” This came as a shock, even working at a tech firm back then, but he was right. In a world of classic enterprise sales, the customer builds a relationship with the sales rep, and then the company, which enables the purchase of a product.
This is all changing. Technology is changing this old adage such that the new paradigm is that customers are engaging first with the company, followed by the product, and then the sale is enabled by a person. This is a dramatic shift rippling through many different industries. From a marketing perspective, this means that marketers are moving away from helping facilitate the sales-customer relationship toward driving the firm-customer relationship. This places the marketer at the beginning of the purchase funnel, rather than the end, and therefore increases the potential for marketers to have impact. I believe that this shift will gather momentum, making marketers increasingly important to tech and B2B firms.
Q: What are the skills that students should be acquiring today to prepare them to be future C-level marketing leaders?
1. Understand Sales … Deeply. At the core of marketing is the need to accelerate sales. How can you be successful at marketing without understanding sales? The best starting point is to "carry a bag" (or whatever that means today) for some period. Make sure you fully understand what it is like to cold-call a customer, or to show up and have to deliver a pitch, or answer a competitive question. Marketing professionals who never acquire this knowledge will hit a ceiling fast in their career.
2. Analysis. Marketing (and business in general) are becoming more analytical every day. Find a way to be great at excel and sophisticated statistical techniques and you are off to a good start.
3. Customer insight. A true respect for the sales process aligned with customer/market insight is where marketing power is born.
4. Communications. The executive tier is all about leadership and communications. Anyone who aspires to hold an executive role should find a way to become great at storytelling. This ranges from one-on-one communications, to leading group discussions, to giving presentations to the company, customer, or industry. These skills are critical to success.
Interested in more CMO Insight? Check out the following: Deepak Advani (IBM); Duncan Aldred (Buick/GMC); Bill Campbell (CMO, Chatham University); Steve Cook (former CMO, Samsung); Rishi Dave (CMO, Dun & Bradstreet); Jeff Jones (CMO, Target); Michele Kessler (CEO, thinkThin), Tim Mahoney (Global CMO, Global Chevrolet and Global Marketing Operations Leader, GM); Jim McGinnis (Intuit); Jim Melvin (former CEO and current CMO in Tech); C. David Minifie (CMO/EVP Corporate Strategy, Centene Corp); Anne Pritz (CMO, Sbarro); Ajit Sivadasan (Lenovo); Ron Stoupa (CMO, Sports Authority); Ken Thewes (CMO, Regal Entertainment Group); Brent Walker (CMO/Co-Founder, C2B Solutions); and Barry Westrum (EVP Marketing, International Dairy Queen).
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler
