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4 CMOs Share First-Hand Advice on How to Get Organizational Buy-In

The role of the CMO has transformed. With today’s increased importance on customer experience and demonstrating value, leaders must change how they market and talk about impact.

CMOs, now more than ever, need to be strategic orchestrators for their organizations. They must connect the dots among people, technology, processes and products in new and bold ways. They also have to change how they talk about marketing impact to keep the C-suite and cross-functional partners informed and communicate with the entire organization in language that resonates. And they must constantly advocate for their teams. On top of that, they need to experiment, take risks and push the boundaries amid a flurry of new technologies, channels and customer changes.

We decided to interview four CMOs for our latest issue of CORE magazine to hear first-hand how they drive success for their organization. Here, we highlight four key pieces of advice they shared.

Don’t be afraid to show where you have room for competitive growth

Denise A. Campbell, head of consumer marketing, AbbVie Immunology: “Our digital transformation initiative began with external benchmarking. It showed that we were behind our peers, and some of our web and digital assets weren’t competitive. We started to shine a light on that internally and said we really have to be better.

“There were a lot of conversations up and down the organization, socializing the idea of what it meant to get everyone on the same page with respect to vocabulary and terminology, as well as what was the value, not only to the company, but to our marketing community.

“Once we acted on the digital transformation and began to see measurable results, we gained momentum in terms of our rankings in the industry. That created a hunger to do more, and we saw a measurable impact on our business.”

Document and share wins along the way—not just at the end of campaigns

Vineet Mehra, chief growth and CX officer, Good Eggs (former global CMO and chief customer officer, Walgreens Boots Alliance): “When you set up proof experiments, it can’t be a black box where you show up six months later and say, ‘Ta-da!’ I try to manage that by breaking every project into weekly and biweekly chunks—we get to that level of granularity on my team. Through that granularity comes momentum, so by the time you get to six months on an experiment that’s going well, people don’t feel like it just showed up and question how you got there.

“Engage the business stakeholders on the journey and on the proof points along the way. In the short-term, people are like, ‘OK, I’m seeing some wins and value to the business,’ so by the end of the experiment, you’ve got a whole body of proof that’s going to be massive, measurable impact to the business because of an experiment that you can now scale.”

Give other departments an opportunity to weigh in before sharing decisions

Sara Bittorf, chief experience officer, TGI Fridays (former CMO of Bob Evans Restaurants): “Everybody thinks they’re a marketer. It would be ludicrous for me to call up the CFO and tell her that I thought that her accounts receivables is being managed incorrectly, right? But nobody has a problem telling marketers how to do marketing. I’m fortunate to work in an organization that does recognize that subject matter experts should have the final decision.

“That being said, we recognize that marketing doesn’t have a monopoly on innovation; it should be occurring in other areas and coming from other places.

“The more people you enroll in the process, the more likely they are to buy into the outcomes, even if the outcomes aren’t what they had suggested. I find that the fastest way to get somebody to knee-jerk oppose something is to introduce it to them at the very last minute and give them absolutely no choice in it and not allow any kind of feedback.”

Help everyone feel they have some control in what you’re doing

Alan Gellman, executive coach, Convivo Leadership and CMO Coaches (former CMO, Credible and Esurance): “Relationships and consensus are different things. We all work with difficult personalities; people often come from a place of fear and worry. It’s important to recognize this and ask a few questions: How can I support them, and how can they support me? What outcome am I seeking? What’s the best path to this outcome? The objective is to build consensus at the top and alleviate fear surrounding people losing their control.

“Recognize your end goal and be patient. During my time as senior vice president of digital marketing at Wells Fargo, for example, each division worked with a different agency and was essentially competing against each other in the marketplace. Rather than firing all seven agencies and choosing one—which was the end goal—we worked to build alignment and alleviate fear of people losing control: Is this working? How is it serving us? How is it hurting us? I made clear I was simply a facilitator. It was a heavy lift over a couple of years, but in the end, we streamlined to one agency.”