Growth Insights for CEOs

Should I Hire a Fractional CMO?
Executive Takeaways
- A full-time CMO can cost $1M in year one — before the first campaign ships.
- Full-time CMOs optimize for tenure. Fractional CMOs optimize for outcomes.
- Fractional CMOs bring cross-industry pattern recognition that deepens with every engagement.
- Fractional leadership wins in specific, definable contexts. The next article maps exactly when.
Recent Posts

Sales Enablement and Support
Tue, Jun 9, 2020 — Part 6 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Your sales executive likely has a keen sense of what types of sales support materials traditionally have been helpful, and therefore has an opinion about sales support needs from marketing. But times have changed, and the playbook has been torn up. Given the times, the sales team simply can’t say with conviction that they truly understand exactly what sales support tools will help convince buyers to move forward. In our last blog, we talked about partnering between sales and marketing for lead generation and lead management optimization. Let’s explore how sales and marketing can partner to close more sales from those leads.

Lead Generation and Lead Management Across Sales and Marketing
Wed, May 27, 2020 — Part 5 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Have you ever heard sales blame marketing for bad leads and marketing blame sales for not acting on the leads they give? Those are common complaints from both functions. And there are usually aspects of both sides of the coin that are accurate. In our last blog, you hopefully learned from the examples of two businesses that realigned certain responsibilities in a way that created greater cross-functional accountability for sales.

The Sales and Marketing Accountability Paradigm Shift
Tue, May 5, 2020 — Part 2 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality In a world that has struggled to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, you, too, are likely working to better understand the roles that your team members will play in the recovery.
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CEO Preparedness Guide for the Post-Pandemic Recovery: Avoiding the Ad-Budget Ax
Fri, Apr 24, 2020 — Blog 1: Avoiding the Ad-Budget Ax In these uncertain times amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, there are likely two distinct pathways for businesses to follow—adapt or perish. Because none of you reading this would ever consider just laying down your arms and not fighting for survival, I thought I’d share a couple of quotes from noteworthy types who chose the latter mindset, choosing to both adapt, and thrive, rather than just survive.

What can Professional Services CEOs do Right Now?
Thu, Mar 19, 2020 — Industry Specific Advice in a Time of Crisis from the Chief Outsiders CMOs These are challenging times. The actions you take now and in the coming weeks will have a huge impact on what happens to your company, your customers and your employees. Some of the challenges we will face during this crisis will apply to all sectors, but some will be industry specific. To help you decide where your focus should be, we assembled panels of Chief Marketing Officers from our Tribe at Chief Outsiders who have spent their careers working in your industry with companies like yours, to discuss what CEOs need to think about doing, right now. The following summary encapsulates the highlights of our panel discussion for the Professional Services industry, hosted by Art Saxby. Featuring CMOs Paul Sparrow, Mark Coronna and Don Lee. For the full benefit, view the discussion video in its entirety (35 minutes). Short of time? See the discussion highlights (6 minutes).

What can Industrial and Manufacturing CEOs do Right Now?
Thu, Mar 19, 2020 — Industry Specific Advice in a Time of Crisis from the Chief Outsiders CMOs These are challenging times. The actions you take now and in the coming weeks will have a huge impact on what happens to your company, your customers and your employees. Some of the challenges we will face during this crisis will apply to all sectors, but some will be industry specific. To help you decide where your focus should be, we assembled panels of Chief Marketing Officers from our Tribe at Chief Outsiders who have spent their careers working in your industry with companies like yours, to discuss what CEOs need to think about doing, right now. The following summary encapsulates the highlights of our panel discussion for the Industrial Manufacturing industry, hosted by Art Saxby and featuring CMOs Dawn Werry, and Dennis Bailen. For the full benefit, view the discussion video in its entirety (19 minutes). Short of time? See the discussion highlights (6 minutes).