Chief Marketing Officer - A glorified VP of Marketing?
Some VPs of Marketing may want to get a "Chief" title while managing only marketing, but to be effective a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) should have responsibility for the entire customer lifecycle, from the sale to ensuring that the right customers are staying with you. To accomplish this accountability organizationally, the sales, marketing and customer service teams would report into this position.
The tension that can exist between sales, marketing and customer service teams is generally created by lack of joined accountability - A marketing team is seen by the sales team as "Ivory Tower" with programs that don't generate sales, or a sales team is seen by customer service as bringing on low-quality customers just to hit its quota - to name a few of the common tensions. A CMO's job is bringing these factors in closer balance to maximize profit - bring in the right customers at the lowest cost and keeping them there.
In smaller companies there are generally 2 or 3 positions to manage the customer lifecycle, reporting into a CEO or COO - perhaps a VP of Sales & Marketing with a VP of Customer Service, or a VP for each of these departments - Note this means a CEO or COO is managing these depts in addition to IT, HR, Finance, Accounting - etc. creating a wide span of control, and commonly certain key metrics aren't controlled as tightly. When a company is just starting up there is less to balance here - you just want every customer you can get. But a common scenario is at some point recognizing that a decent number of customers are not happy, or perhaps not profitable - If this is an issue for your company, a CMO is highly recommended.
Ideally your CMO should have a strong metric focus and not just be a "brand" visionary. A balance of left brain and right brain in the same person isn't easy to find, but this makes the best CMO. In interviews, drill into how they determine which programs to launch and especially how they measure success. If at all possible, see if you can talk to the heads of customer service and sales in previous companies to get an idea of how balanced a candidate's views really are - Also dig to see how much time they've spent in front of customers directly. I find that too many CMO candidates come from a pure VP of Marketing path and don't have enough experience with managing a sales or service team or reaching out to customers. I encourage companies to move senior executives between these key positions to round them out - it will make them all better at what they do as there is huge interdependency among them.
The tension that can exist between sales, marketing and customer service teams is generally created by lack of joined accountability - A marketing team is seen by the sales team as "Ivory Tower" with programs that don't generate sales, or a sales team is seen by customer service as bringing on low-quality customers just to hit its quota - to name a few of the common tensions. A CMO's job is bringing these factors in closer balance to maximize profit - bring in the right customers at the lowest cost and keeping them there.
In smaller companies there are generally 2 or 3 positions to manage the customer lifecycle, reporting into a CEO or COO - perhaps a VP of Sales & Marketing with a VP of Customer Service, or a VP for each of these departments - Note this means a CEO or COO is managing these depts in addition to IT, HR, Finance, Accounting - etc. creating a wide span of control, and commonly certain key metrics aren't controlled as tightly. When a company is just starting up there is less to balance here - you just want every customer you can get. But a common scenario is at some point recognizing that a decent number of customers are not happy, or perhaps not profitable - If this is an issue for your company, a CMO is highly recommended.
Ideally your CMO should have a strong metric focus and not just be a "brand" visionary. A balance of left brain and right brain in the same person isn't easy to find, but this makes the best CMO. In interviews, drill into how they determine which programs to launch and especially how they measure success. If at all possible, see if you can talk to the heads of customer service and sales in previous companies to get an idea of how balanced a candidate's views really are - Also dig to see how much time they've spent in front of customers directly. I find that too many CMO candidates come from a pure VP of Marketing path and don't have enough experience with managing a sales or service team or reaching out to customers. I encourage companies to move senior executives between these key positions to round them out - it will make them all better at what they do as there is huge interdependency among them.
Excellent show, I learned alot watching and aspire to accomplish, one day, what you have done.
Thanks for the info on your blog, I come from a wireless and shipping services background and what earth class mail is doing is great. Except maybe overage pricing.
Take care
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I watched the last episode last night and you get the impression that all the key people that left the company were in sales and marketing. High tech companies tend to regard sales/marketing as expendable, a job anyone can do, you just have to talk to people, all the cretaivity is in engineering and manufacturing. The exception is high tech companies that are truly customer centric; if they are they sales/marketing will have a strong voice because they are the voice of the customer. These companies are few and far between.
Earth Class mail is interesting. From the start I could see the real market was from the postal services themselves. I think the CEO (who does not impress me at all) finally saw that. He should have seen the true market much earlier. He also seems to "over committ and underdeliver". One engineer said you can't do 6 months work in 2 weeks. I predict Earth Class mail won't get anywhere because the market is the postal office and they move very slowly in adopting new tech. Ultimately the service of Earth Class mail is a temporary service as a lot of email will be email directly and image scanning won't be needed. Most of my paper mail is not critical, not worth image scanning. I see this as the trend going forward. This means ECM is entering a market that is really shrinking. They could land some big contracts but eventually the service is obsolete and possibly in a time frame that does not justify the investment.
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You are correct, Earth Class Mail's ultimate goal is to be the platform to assist post offices worldwide in transforming themselves from a toxic physical delivery model to an earth-friendly electronic delivery model and that these sales cycles - from pilot to full-on implementation - will likely take years. At issue is whether the company can garner revenues from other sources while pursuing this gigantic goal to help fund the business while they gain traction in that area. This is a great lesson for other entrepreneurs because even though investors like to think they take the long view, a company with capital-intensive needs (ie, future funding rounds are likely) has to be able to show wins along the way in order to access that additional capital through new investors. In Earth Class Mail's case, the shorter term focus is among the highly mobile - military, expats, and companies with far-flung employees among others, where they appear to be growing with a loyal customer base as no other option really exists. A few signed letters of intent with national posts and enterprise customers proving their interest would be the ultimate trump card for them in a capital raise, and they know it.
As for my leaving Earth Class Mail, ultimately my health had to come first. What isn't shown on the Startup Junkies TV show is that injuries from the car accident caused my legs and arms to go numb and even working part-time was making full recovery difficult. In my case I couldn't have asked for a more supportive response from the Board.
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