Sunday, May 10, 2009

Pete Krainik Shares Latest CMO CLUB Weekly Poll Results: Who has the Most Credibility with your CEO?... - We Have Work to Do

Last week’s poll is now complete with the following results to the question, who has the most credibility with your CEO?

31% of you responded with the CFO, while over 24% said Head of Sales. Only 13.8% said you do (the CMO). I asked a number of CMOs in the club to respond to these results. A few observations:

1) There is a significant correlation between credibility and number of hours per week your CEO spends with a report. Many of you said your CEO speaks with your CFO daily, more often then any other executive.
2) The CFO many times speaks the same language as the CEO in regard to revenue, cost structures, P/L, etc. In addition many CEOs are spending more and more time with day to day business issues and results vs. more strategic initiatives.
3) No surprises on the credibility perception with the Head of Sales. However, I wonder if one year ago, before the downturn, if Sales had a higher credibility rating from CEOs?

If we as CMOs want to improve our credibility with our CEOs, we must take a larger role in driving the growth agenda for the company, add more value to demand generation and arming our sales team with the tools to close deals and ensure we drive the right balance of strategic and ROI based programs and results. I suggest you check out Patty Azzarello’s recent blog posts on this topic for some great insights into building credibility with your CEO.

This is a great question to ask again in the future to see our progress. Any other thoughts or recommendations based on these results?

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