Startup CXO

Chapter 64Marketing Alignment

No relationship for the CRO is more important than the one you have with the CMO. Marketing can help you get from the PowerPoint stage to the PDF stage, especially if Marketing has SDRs reporting to them and if Marketing is paying close attention to what works. If you're a CRO without a very good personal and professional relationship with your CMO, you're setting yourself up for failure. Notice that I didn't say, a very good professional relationship only, but a personal relationship, too. That's important, especially as you're scaling because there will be mistakes, miscues, miscommunication, and a host of other issues that strain a professional relationship, but a personal relationship can overcome these. But developing a strong relationship with Marketing is critical in getting to the PDF stage for the sales organization.

If you're new to the CRO role, or if you're starting with a new company as a CRO, your first order of business is to develop a relationship of mutual respect and understanding with the Head of Marketing, and together develop a commitment for Sales and Marketing to work together. If you don't do that, you'll have problems scaling. For example, while I was at Return Path, we missed our quarter, missed our targets and goals, which is a yellow flag. And then Marketing stood up and said everything's green—we made our goals, we made our quarter. That's a problem! If Sales is yellow and Marketing is green, that's a huge indicator ...