The (d)Evolved CMO
A new report jointly produced between Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles paints a bleak picture of the (d)evolved CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). You can download the report here, but only after agreeing to become a “lead.”
While two thirds of CMOs want to get a higher involvement with business strategy development and increased P&L responsibility, the reality is that far too many of them are in fact disconnected from where the real action is.
Some of the findings are mind-boggling:
- Only 45% of CMOs have responsibility for product, service or solution development. Only 37.5% are responsible for pricing.
- Only 27.5% are in charge of sales training.
- Only 25% are responsible for in-store buying experiences.
- Only 12.5% are accountable for the activities associated with customer service and support.
How can you be the Chief Market Listener and not be in charge of what customers say after they buy your product? If you are the Chief Market Officer, how can you not be in charge of deciding what gets sold in the marketplace and how much it will cost the buyer to acquire it? And if you are the Chief Customer Officer, how can you not be in charge for the in-store customer experience? The sales training issue is either a cause or effect for the ongoing rift between most sales and marketing department…
But wait, it gets worse…here is some data about their top objectives:
- Only 27.5% have “increase customer life-cycle value” as one of their top objectives.
- “Innovate” is an objective for only 40% of the survey takers
- Only 27.5% have “increase customer retention” as an objective
And just when you thought you got the extend of the sorry state of CMOs, you find this:
- Only 12% consider “personal knowledge of your customers” as one of their top 5 competencies to their personal success.
- Only 17% consider technology savviness to be one of those top 5 skills
Thankfully (sarcasm intended), more than 65% see people management as one of those top skills. But wait a minute…isn’t it leadership characteristics that get you into the C-suite? Management skills are so Industrial Revolution/last century skills…
Other interesting tidbits from the report include:
- On a scale from 1-3, with 3 being the most important, CMOs found marketing measurement (2.55) to be way more important than customer community development ((1.89) and social computing/web 2.0 tools (1.73). That goes hand-in-hand with the fact that 92% have advertising as one of their main responsibilities.
- There is room for new industry marketing organizations, conferences and publications. Those three resources come in dead last in a list of 16 resources that CMOs ranked most valuable to their professional career development.
The recommendations from the authors to improve the situation?
- Spend more time on career development
- Seize the opportunity to lead the organization towards customer-centricity
- Build credibility through the marketing team and leadership contributions.
How about not accepting the CMO job if it does not mean you are really the Chief Market Officer, or the Chief Customer Listener, or the Chief Voice of the Customer Officer, or the Chief Customer Lifecycle Value Owner?
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December 18th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Most people think marketing is purely advertising and sales. Sadly this study demonstrates they might be right. Marketing people are not doing marketing, or at least they are concentrating on promotion, and not doing any listening to the customer. I think most marketing director titles should actually be advertising director. I know a lot of my jobs in marketing have been more about advertising and less about marketing. Whose fault is that? The marketer or the President of the company that hires the marketing director?
Before WWII most marketing people were called directors of advertising. Maybe we should return to those days. To me this is the biggest issue in the industry and profession. Yet we don’t really address it. The question is how do we address it?
Marketer’s refuse to accept the title of marketing if they are not actually marketing.
An education campaign on the part of all marketing related organizations to teach the industry what the concept is all about.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Marketing, as a function, is at risk and the CMOs are only the tip of the iceberg. According to executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart, the average tenure for CMOs is just 22.9 months. (The average tenure for CEOs, for the sake of comparison, is 53.8 months.)
The issue? Accountability. The Marketing Science Institute found that the lack of data proving “internal marketing program metrics to external financial metrics”is a fundamental problem for marketing executives and their teams.
To ensure both longevity and success, CMOs and their marketing team must embrace creativity and demonstrate a desire to be held accountable for ROI metrics related to their activities.
They must be proactive in creating performance metrics that measure the influence of activities and behaviors on customer actions in an era where nobody trusts the effect of traditional advertising on its ability to reach, convince or even measure the impact on customers.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I think Harald is wrong on this one. To me being a professional marketer is all about measuring ROI. Most of my colleagues in the industry and associations appear to accept this. I fully agree with the idea of measuring the success of programs. The real issue I think is not about measuring the success of a marketing program, lots of marketers do that very well, but having something to promote that the customer wants to buy. It’s about market research all listening to the customer, that’s the missing element from many marketer’s job description. Marketers are partly to blame for this but also the people who develop company business strategy who fail to realize that marketing is more than acquisition and retention.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:55 am
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October 30th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I think CMO’s should now take steps ahead in talkin to its CFO’s, as what is required now is a more combined & calculated effort to increase revenue generation to benefit the organisation as there is increase in the troubled economy, the over spending and the lack of effective marketing investments.
Marketing is often first in line for cuts as corporate leaders attempt to identify immediate cost reductions that may take longer to achieve in other areas. But despite a 75 percent decrease in marketers’ marketing budgets this year, as well as 65 percent who said they were expected to drive more sales with the same or lower budget, marketing accountability programs have taken on a greater significance. In order to increase the effectiveness and the efficiency, both sides of the equation i.e., the ROI and the cost of using the lever should be factored into investment decisions.
I read this interesting article on the following blog:
http://blog.cequitysolutions.com/Customer-Management-blog/bid/8971/Talking-to-your-CFO-makes-Marketing-smarter