The Top 5 Reasons CMOs Get Fired

And How to Protect Yourself

Last week on the podcast CMO Confidential, I shared the “Top 5 Reasons CMOs Get Fired.” Read on for the highlights, or watch the podcast here.

The CMO role is notoriously volatile. CMOs turn over at rates much faster than any other C-suite executives, often in just 2-3 years. What are the most likely causes? After years of advising CEOs and CMOs, and listening to the victories and struggles of many C-Suite friends, I see the following:

#1 Inadequate Revenue Performance

The most common reason CMOs get fired is that performance is not where the CEO and board want it to be. Marketing is not demonstrating enough revenue contribution for the budget, and the CEO doesn’t see that turning around quickly enough. Generally, this means “not enough leads / not quality enough leads / leads not leading to enough revenue.” This is the top reason CEOs, CROs and even CFOs get fired too. But marketing often gets fired before those other executives because their contribution is not as clearly measurable - especially in B2B where there’s a lot of time and effort spent on building awareness and driving “marketing influence” vs. directly sourced and closed revenue. 

The board and CEO want to know that you have a strong grasp on the growth levers and how to affect them. The board is always asking the CEO, how can we grow faster? And recently, how can we grow faster, but efficiently? They want marketing to be able to answer, “If I gave you $XM, where would you put it, and how much new revenue could you bring in?” This is the MOST COMMON question I hear from board members. Even in this bad economy, there is funding available if marketing can show a real return incremental to current commitments. Top CMOs have a firm grasp on the numbers, and a plan their peers believe in.

Sometimes, this “performance” issue is unfairly placed on the marketer when the company lacks product-market fit, doesn’t have a differentiated enough product, or isn’t able to convert leads to sales effectively. Company strategy issues show up first in marketing because it’s where the company’s idea hits the market (and is or isn’t well-received). Sometimes, the performance expectations of the board, investors, and CEO are unrealistic. There are lots of possible scenarios for why it might be fair or unfair, but overall lack of performance is the #1 reason companies look to replace their CMO.

#2 Lack of Market, Product, and Customer Insight

The two things CEOs counter-balance in hiring a B2B CMO are their product marketing chops and their demand generation chops. Issue #1 Revenue Performance maps more closely to demand generation. Issue #2 maps to product marketing expertise. Especially in B2B tech, deep knowledge of the market forces, competitive insights, customer and prospect insights, how the product works, and why it is differentiated are critical to leading marketing and driving revenue. Especially in pre-IPO startups, CEOs often hire a strong step-up candidate with expertise in demand generation, only to later get frustrated that the CMO doesn’t understand the market, can’t come up with campaigns that are insightful and relevant, or isn’t hiring a team that knows enough about the product and market. Many of the CEOs I advise are looking for CMOs who can spar with them on the company strategy, product strategy, and MARKET strategy, not just the demand gen numbers. 

#3 - Eroding Trust with the Executive Team

Some CMOs weather the storm of lagging revenue performance or lack of market insight, but not without a close relationship of trust with the CEO, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Product Officer. If the CEO and the rest of the C-Suite think your strategies are promising or see change taking place, they might give you more leeway. But if they don’t trust you and relationships are strained, you might not be long in this job.

#4 Not Being Trusted to Scale 

Many executives are in the biggest jobs of their lives if they’ve grown within a role. As companies move through different stages of growth $15M →$50M → $150M → $300M → $1B, the marketing patterns can be very, very different. It’s hard for a marketer to grow on the job as companies move through milestones quickly. And it’s hard for smaller companies to hire someone who has already been successful on the same ride; many accomplished execs don’t want to take the risk of smaller companies but want to trade up. So, there are many amazing marketing leaders who have only made it to $X scale before they get swapped out. The CEO and board often want someone who has already managed the next two phases of growth, not someone who is learning on the job and may be struggling to have conviction and earn confidence in their plans. (Notably, this is why advisors are so valuable - they can pair with and expose strong leaders to patterns of the next stage of growth without being full-time.)

#5 - Failure to Build the Right Team

The fifth reason CMOs get fired is because they haven’t built the right leadership team. They may have some junior direct reports that make the whole team look more junior or some weak players they haven’t replaced. Maybe they are under financial pressure and don’t want to overspend on more senior hires. Maybe some of their leaders have a long history with the company. But having a weak leadership team can be a big mistake. Many of the CMOs I’ve seen fired were run thin because they didn’t have senior leaders who effectively managed their part of the business without CMO help. One CEO told me, “If this doesn’t feel like the team that’s going to drive our growth two years forward, I’ll need to fire the CMO and get one who can build that team.” Hiring and firing the right people is one of the hardest parts of being a leader. But investing in a stellar leadership team elevates you as the CMO, elevates the team, and should elevate marketing’s impact.

How should you defend against being fired? 

Being a CMO is a really hard job. It takes the science of metrics, the art of positioning, a politician's lobbying, and an ultra-marathoner's endurance. There’s way more to be done than hours allow. But what’s most important?

• Drive Reveue - Get your revenue contribution and data straight. The top-performing CMO I know has a fantastic dashboard and weekly data report integrated with sales. There are no questions on what’s being measured, why and how she’s doing against the stats. You have to build a revenue-focused organization. Activity metrics are great indicators for you to optimize, but revenue is what really counts. This is all way easier said than done, but it is the core of the job.

• Be insightful about the market and product - most successful CMOs are like CEOs in training, thinking about what drives the revenue in the future and how the product and market need to evolve. You have to actively invest over the long term in your strategic knowledge of the market, customer, and product through great product marketing hires, market surveys, and time spent with customers and sales.

• Negotiate the right KPIs / OKRs – Missed expectations are built around expectations. Deep bottoms-up analysis, targets, and tracking will give you more confidence to negotiate with the CEO and board about what is actually possible. Don’t sign up for something that’s totally unattainable. You can’t do everything all at once.

• Fire Courageously and Hire Well - Build the right team and processes to earn confidence in your ability to drive the business for the future.

THE BEST CMOS IN THE WORLD HAVE BEEN FIRED

Almost every exceptional CMO I know has been fired in their career, even if they aren’t public about it. (Here is an insightful article by the former CMO of Tableau on her journey of being fired.) Many CMOs have left ahead of being fired, seeing the writing on the wall. Sometimes, it was one of these issues above. Sometimes, they didn’t connect with the CEO. Sometimes, deeper company issues like product-market fit, pricing, or competitor issues caused low lead volume. Sometimes, the company was in triage and was trying to cut costs.

Being fired doesn’t define your career. What you do next does. The exceptional CMOs stayed in the game, joined great companies, nurtured their relationships, and brought some of their best employees on their journey.