Time for B2B CMOs to Call Shotgun!

by Mark Vigoroso     

What drives your company?  What force represents true north when tough times arrive?  For some companies, it’s the customer.  For others, it’s the engineering organization.  And for a precious few, it’s the market.

The logic of being ”market driven” is hard to dispute. If a company stays attuned to unmet needs, competitive shifts, price sensitivity, macroeconomic trends, and other characteristics of its target markets, it will give itself the best chance to respond profitably with a viable offering and outpace competitors.  No red flags, right?

Problem is the function in the best position to interpret the market – marketing – has lost its mojo at most B2B companies. Marketing is a tactical production shop where you go to get logo’d swag, Powerpoint presentations prettied up, or parties planned.  And I hate to say it, but many marketing leaders have accepted their irrelevant lot in life, sometimes none the wiser.

Qualified marketers who desire to help steer their companies towards growth and profits must achieve what I call ”operational relevance.” They must earn the right to call ”shotgun!”

Charting the Course

To understand where marketers need to expand their influence within B2B organizations, one need only consider where in the company the following critical questions are answered:

1. In which products should we invest?
2. How and to whom should we sell these products?
3. How do we earn the right to continue selling these products?

These questions are typically answered in these three operational war rooms, respectively:

1. R&D / Product development.
2. Sales operations.
3. Customer management.

To become relevant in these three operational workflows, marketing executives must start by establishing credibility with their peers.  And credibility starts with data.

Strategic Relevance

If the CMO brings a few data points on product ”cross-sellability,” market momentum versus competitors, or emerging market characteristics to a board meeting, he/she might get heard.  Better still, he/she might become relevant in a strategic decision or two that impact product development operations.

Similarly, if the CMO brings some data points on win/loss trends or client satisfaction levels, he/she might have a voice in strategic conversations pertaining to sales and customer management operations.

But strategic relevance has no roots.  It is not anchored in the machinery of the organization where strategy is implemented or not implemented.  In the heat of the moment, the engineer, or the sales rep, or the customer support rep will turn to their respective bosses for guidance.  And if their bosses misunderstood or disagreed with the strategy that the CMO spearheaded in the board room, the pulse of that strategy will quickly fade, overtaken by the powerful inertia of the status quo.

Operational Relevance

It’s simple to ascertain whether a CMO has found an operational voice.  Ask whether the CMO participates meaningfully in any of these four workflows pertaining to product development, sales, and customer management:

1. Organizational design.
2. Capital allocation (i.e. financial and human).
3. Process engineering.
4. KPI management.

These four workflows represent the pillars of any operating entity, and the degree to which the CMO helps to shape them is directly proportional to his/her operational relevance.

Am I suggesting that the CMO must start land grabbing in an attempt to own all these areas?  Absolutely not. To translate strategic relevance into lasting operational relevance, CMOs must convince his/her executive peers that best in class product development, sales, and customer management operations contemplate cross functional perspectives.

From this understanding of cross functionality can come formal working teams with members from multiple functions – including marketing – that carry the responsibility of recommending courses of action within the four pillars mentioned above.  Over time, these cross functional working teams can fulfill two critical functions in the area of strategy implementation: 1) The Crucible, refining ideas, data, and other inputs from within and outside the company, and 2) The Rudder, recommending where and when to direct resources in order to achieve the company’s financial and strategic objectives.

And over time, as the CMO gains operational relevance by participating in these refining and recommending processes, he/she can earn the right to move from the back seat of the organization to the shotgun position.

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