Growth Leaders Cocktail Hour & Modern CMO Panel

Panelist

  • Todd Wilms, Fractional
  • Lauren Vaccarello, Talend
  • Matt McAllister, Mobile Tech RX
  • Carilu Dietrich, Classy

Key take aways of being a CMO

  • Counter-intuitively – the higher you are in the hierarchy the more silo-ed you become
    • average tenure 18 months
  • Alignment is the most important thing
    • your primary team is the executive team
    • Always figure out what the CEO is reading
    • Start thinking about needs of board, investors and C-Suit
  • strategic mindset:
    • start thinking in terms of framework
      • step away from the minute details
      • it is the job of the VP of marketing to fill in the details within the framework
    • look across various functions for solutions
    • move beyond your own functional area when required
    • as opposed to marketing which is
      • minding the day to day activities
      • moving the levers to drive conversion rates
  • Growth mindset
    • be ready to go where the business needs you
    • Be hypothesis driven
  • market focus
    • actively monitor the markets
      • define a new category
      • size of market
      • competitors
      • disruptors
    • read earnings report of company and competitors
    • read more Wall Street Journal
    • Understand the P&L so as to understand how money is flowing through the company
  • Important allies
    • Someone on the sales team
    • Someone on the finance team
      • they know where money comes from and where money is spent
  • Brand values
    • clarify the narrative for your team to do their job
    • quite similar to core values
    • the personality that will dictate how interaction occurs at all touch points
  • Creating the customer communications play book
  • Analytics
    • on users
    • secondary data from researchers
    • to gain influence to own the P&L
  • Perpetual learner
    • The new paradigm
    • AI disruption: Department of defense using AI to parse through PHD thesis to figure out new technology to defend against
    • start utilizing the services of coaches for private help as the stakes are high
  • Marketing
    • demand generation
    • digital marketing
  • On hiring
    • ask about topics not related to their area of interest
    • see if they crumble under pressue
    • how did they turn a crisis into an opportunity.

Related readings

  • The hard thing about hard things, Ben Horrowitz
  • Beyond Product, Todd Wilms

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