When hiring a Fractional CMO makes sense (and when it doesn’t) with Sam Butterworth.
00:00 Craig: You're going to take on board a fractional CMO and or a marketing agency, you have to be able to be able to afford it without resenting that cost. You know, if it's a pain to the business, then you're always going to resent it. In this episode of Truth, Lies and B2B Growth, I'm joined by Sam Butterworth, an experienced fractional CMO.
romi00:19 Craig: We talk through the hard truths about hiring or working as a fractional marketeer. Okay, so welcome to the latest episode of Truth, Lies and B2B Growth. We're joined by Sam Butterworth. In a second, I'm going to give Sam the opportunity to introduce himself. But really, we wanted to get Sam on the podcast because we've seen a real explosion in the growth of fractional CMOs. So we wanted to hear from someone that's been operating this capacity for a number of years, get a real insight into latest trends, what he's seen, and I'm sure it will be a really interesting conversation. So Sam, thanks for joining the podcast.
00:57 Sam: Thanks, Craig. Great pleasure to be here. Well, I've been a marketer for 20 years, the last eight or so as a fractional, and the last five with the marketing center. I've worked in B2B, B2C, private equity, tech, and 15 other sectors.
01:17 Craig: We've seen a real increase in fractional leaders from all walks of life, not just marketing. I think it sort of doubled in the UK in the last year alone. I think Forrester's now predicting that from a CMO perspective, it's likely that they'll see an even greater increase, almost 50% over the next couple of years. So what's your take on it? Why do you think this sort of explosion has happened?
01:41 Sam: Well, I think the rise of the fractional has become a little bit of a plague to the industry. Marketing recruitment is down. Agency confidence, I would imagine you're seeing, is lowered as well. Budgets are down. And there's a lot of people who wash up, and we saw this in the sort of the fractional finance industry about 10 years before, where journeymen just ended up as fractionals for a time being until they found their next full-time position. And I think we're seeing that in the marketing space now.
02:20 Craig: Yeah, I mean, this podcast is very much about helping CEOs and go-to-market leaders think through all the changes that are happening in marketing. And we all know there's a huge amount of change happening right now. So I think really, we wanted to do this because we know that CEOs will be thinking about who's going to be leading their marketing function. And I think if the fractional option is on the table, then there's some key things they need to really think about in terms of what they really need. And like you say, you've got a real mixed bag of the sort of capabilities of people that would badge themselves as a fractional CMO. So you've obviously got a lot experience in doing it. Where are you typically brought in? Obviously, as a more senior leader that operates at that kind of board level, what is it that you're typically tasked with when you first engage with a new client?
03:12 Sam: It never seems to be proactive in kindness to everyone involved. It's usually when some form of disaster is either taking place or has occurred. And I think that's sort of marketing 101. It's like, can you come in and rescue this mess? And to CEOs listening, I think there are varying degrees of repetitive cycles that companies take place in terms of their marketing. One of them might be, they've been burned by the wrong type of agency, they've recruited the wrong people, and they're doing the wrong type of stuff. Generally speaking, there's three key areas. And it could be, oh, well, we've tried advertising, or we've spent 60 grand in an agency, or this marketing manager is just doing social media. And where are my leads? I just want some more leads. And you get in, you find that no one understands marketing. There's a general rule. And quite a lot of marketers, I think if most marketers were doing real marketing, they probably wouldn't like marketing. And let that land. Because I think if that were true of the finance industry, there'd be a complete disaster. But it's sort of allowed with marketing, you've got an amenable doer in the business. And so for me, the key question is, do you want a leader to lead your marketing? Or do you just want a better doer? And it tends to be between those two things.
04:42 Craig: I mean, I've had past experience working as a fractional as well. I don't think back then the fractional CMO phrase or term was really that well understood or widely used. So I tended to call myself an interim marketing director or something like that. But I think the challenge I always had, if you brought in to help with strategy, they also want you to be hands on, which if you're, as I'm sure you are working across different clients, it's almost impossible to do that. And I think that's maybe where CEOs go wrong, in terms of just expecting that you're going to have someone who is a specialist in every aspect of marketing, and is very commercial, and also a pretty good leader that can help you with strategy. Is that sort of an experience that you resonate with or different perspective?
05:29 Sam: Yeah, completely. And as I say, you know, in kindness to everyone who's involved, I think it doesn't matter what the size of the business, these things just happen in cycles. And so, you know, I find myself in, you know, in businesses where I go in and say, well, to use an analogy, well, the ship's sinking here. In other words, you really need a leader. They go, well, actually, would you mind just shoveling some coal? I just want, yeah, I just want more leads. Can you just shovel some more coal? You have to define, and I'm sort of describing the general buggeration factor of if you don't define what success looks like first, you have to define, do I want the leaky ship fixing first? Or do I just want to go at full steam? Do I just want more leads? And I think what some CEOs don't realize is they end up looking like, you know, one of my favorite films of all time, A View to a Kill, the Bond film with Christopher Walken. He's there at some point tied to the Golden Gate Bridge in an airship, and he's just going, more power, I want more power. And it's like, well, yeah, you can have more leads, but you know, you're tied to a bridge, and actually, you've got bigger problems to deal with. And I think it's like, you know, should we just define what good looks like first? And, you know, can we do both together? You know, can we fix your marketing scenario, build a strategy and get you some more leads all at once? I would say so. But you have to be given, as a fractional, you have to be given permission to do that.
07:07 Craig: And a certain amount of time as well to get things working. I mean, I think that's, it's a little bit like being a football manager, I guess that, you know, you're sort of assessed on results, and you don't get an awful long time to actually get those results. And I think the tenure of a CMO is getting shorter and shorter from what I can gather. But I think if you are brought in at that more senior level, it normally suggests that there's some fairly fundamental problems that need to be fixed. And they're probably more strategic than tactical. So you're going to need some time to actually, you know, fix those foundations and get things working, particularly in the game that we work in. And I know you're sort of got experience both B2C and B2B. We tend to work with complex B2B organisations involved in those sort of high value long sales cycles. So it takes even longer sometimes to see results, particularly if it's about impacts in pipeline. So I think, again, I suppose the question is, is that the real tension that you find when you when you work with a new client, you've got to kind of prove value in that initial period, you've probably got 90 days or so to do that.
08:19 Sam: Yeah, and I spoke to this disaster scenario taking place, and you're sort of adding ballast in you know, in that in that scenario, by your sheer cost, you have to be, you're going to take on board a fractional CMO, and or a marketing agency, you have to be able to be able to afford it without resenting that cost. If it's a pain to the business, then you're always going to resent it, you have to budget appropriately. And as you say, you have to leave the right amount of time, but you sort of almost have to set that expectation yourself. Because if you if you bring in someone go, how long is it going to take? They'll always say the right amount of time, unless they're cynical. But you know, I think as a CEO, you have to define, right, I'm going to give this six months, I'm going to give it 12 months, I've got two years to make this picture work. And the proactive ones, they're talking to you, you know, when they've got two years, the sort of start of strategy, but more often than not, it's a three to six months to 12 month journey, generally speaking. And, and it does help to have an idea of, you know, where you know, where you want to go. I think most businesses don't have a strategy. They have a business plan. And there's some numbers in it, but that there's no go to market tied to that. And so there are various strategic platforms that you can use, you know, there's PR Smith soft stack that I use quite often, it's very agile. And Mark Ritson kind of comes across with these three questions, you know, who you're targeting, what's your position, what are your objectives? And that, you know, that is a really kind of neat way of arriving at a strategy, because it doesn't need to take two months, doesn't need to take six months, you can kind of almost get it done in an afternoon, and then apply it to the right tactics.
10:04 Craig: Yeah, would you say the true nature of a fractional CMO is someone that operates at that more strategic level, that sets the sets the whole strategy, and then it's about, you know, helping the business build the operations that are going to execute on that, but not necessarily getting their hands dirty, because just, you know, it's difficult to operate at both levels.
10:28 Sam: I think it always strategy first tactics after, but you it's not just a linear journey, you can be building a strategy whilst doing and building a pipeline, you know, as we know, building up your marketing operations to bring in a, you know, to bring in a new CRM or whatever. But generally speaking, yes, you have to be able to appreciate strategy. And it's like, you know, there has to be an alignment there in thinking, because if the organization, you know, I've been into organizations where it's just, they see you as the person who's going to deliver more leads, and actually marketing's misplaced, it's not, it's not a strategic department, it's just a lead generation department. And you can be there with your, you know, with all your qualifications, your MBA, and it's like you're, you know, you're Harrison Ford in the fugitive, and you stood by the tunnel, and you say, I didn't kill my wife, you know, I've got an MBA. And the CEO is Tommy Lee Jones is there going, I don't care. You know, I just want more leads. And so, you know, it can be both, it should be both, and get your strategy sorted first, and do some research, right? Because this is the other thing. I've been in projects where a huge amount of money has been spent on a concept, particularly in tech, particularly in B2B, where they've done zero market research whatsoever. Oh, we know our market, you know, we, we know there's going to be a demand for this. Well, have you bothered to ask anyone? Well, no. And then you go and ask them. And so a number of times entrepreneurs have come to me and said, well, Sam, what do you think about this idea? I said, it doesn't matter what I think. Go and ask the audience, right? And yeah, and quite a lot of those ideas go very quiet afterwards.
12:15 Craig: Yeah, so many people don't take that really important step. So it's just guesswork generally, isn't it? And I think, but certainly my experience when that happens, you often get disagreement, and you'd never really get consensus at board level, people have got different perspectives, maybe, you know, part of the board believe that you should take more of a vertical approach, for example, others think that you should be going in a different direction, and you've got those tensions. And until you've got that real customer insight, it's almost impossible to get people on the same page. I think it helps, essentially, see others, maybe considering bringing in a fractional CMO, what are the pitfalls? Where can things go wrong?
12:49 Sam: Well, I mean, marketing is as broad as it's long, and it's ever changing. I think the first thing a CEO could do, and the best CEOs I've worked with, are those who have an understanding of what marketing is. So, you know, a profit driving centre, you know, and the whole business involved in marketing, to some extent. So where it goes wrong is usually skill mismatch. And then tied to I've gone and engaged with an agency because they came in and they were charming. And this is what I call the shoe salesman paradigm. Whereas if you've got like a one trick pony agency, that it's like you need a full outfit as a business for your marketing, you know, strategy tactics, you know, full customer engagement side of things. And they're just selling you shoes. And if you speak to a shoe salesman, they're just going to sell you a shoe. And I think that's the thing is, don't just go to an agency that sells SEO, because SEO sounds like a good thing. Like, get your strategy sorted, understand what tactics are required, and then the resource. And then you've got, you know, usually you've got someone who's just like adding stuff to the social media account in the business. And, you know, the ongoing cost of that, delivering zero ROI, because marketing is all about delivering ROI. So, you know, the whole setup of marketing is usually just in a B2B business, a meaningless sales support function, making brochures. That's sort of what I see nine times out of 10.
14:30 Craig: Yeah, there's no, obviously, there's degrees and there's a child institute of marketing, there's various other post grads, kind of courses that you can take and accreditations that you can get. But most marketeers are pretty much self taught, you know, it's the experiences that you get that shape, you know, your capabilities and skills as a marketeer. I think it's quite different to maybe being a CFO, where there are, you know, standard accounting rules that you must follow, for example. And I think with marketing, you know, it's a really mixed bag, which is why I think people, CEOs certainly have had maybe their fingers burned with different experiences of different people, different agencies, as you say. I think the role of a fractional CMO, as I see it now, and why it's really important, maybe for organizations that can't afford a full time CMO, maybe don't think that's necessarily justified, maybe midsize businesses, or smaller businesses, or even scale ups. I think right now, there's so much change happening in marketing, more so on execution than strategy. Strategies are still the same, it's still about differentiation, targeting, being clear about, you know, your ICP, brand development, etc. But the execution of strategy is massively changing. And I think we're seeing a lot of CEOs just really stuck and unsure where to go. And it all starts, like you said earlier, with strategy. And I think the fractional CMO can play that role of an advisor to help people move forward. But to be an effective advisor, obviously strategy, you need to know incredibly well, but you also need to know how things are changing. So how do you keep abreast of all the changes? And what are you seeing happening more fundamentally from an execution perspective?
16:20 Sam: I think the more complex, it's always been the case that agencies, because of the way they invest in training, and the way that they have specialist people, there's always this in-source, out-source argument, right? Do I in-source a team? Do I outsource a team? Do I hybridize? You know, do I bring agency staff into the business? There's always this sort of circular argument. If you're not just to extend the earlier analogy, in the market for a pair of shoes, and you want a sort of a full outfit, then you're going to need to make sure that all the bases are covered. Strategy is well covered by a fractional CMO, but sometimes you end up doing some heavy lifting as well. Quite more often than not, I'm fixing overly complex challenges that have been created. So it's very much a tidier room. Get things simple first and sorted within the organization. So it's like fix the leaky shit first. Let's not add complexity. But if you do need to add complexity, that's where I really feel where agencies come in, because they've invested in the most modern training. You're not taking someone out of the marketplace to bring them in, when more often than not, their training stops. And so you can see some of these things go a little bit round in circles. So why do you break it? And if you ever watched Kitchen Nightmares, and Gordon Ramsay went in and he'd go, stop cooking. And sometimes you've got to say, let's just stop. Let's just stop. You're actually doing harm. And what do I mean by harm? So harm is burning through data. You've got a finite number of people you can contact, and you're just emailing them. We know one of the reasons why marketing is changing at the moment is because the email situation, in respect to spam filters, Microsoft, Gmail, they've pretty much made it impossible to email people with the regularity and the success that we were doing before. And so sending an essay on email as well, people aren't reading as much. There's a whole gamut of digital maturity happening at the moment. And the great thing for strategy is we can look at that data based on digital, and we can make some really good decisions based on it. But the bad thing is if you're just rinse and repeating, you've hired someone from, and this is another mistake people make, you've hired someone from the same sector, from a competitive business to come in, and they're going to be the panacea for all your ills. And all they're going to do is rinse and repeat everything that worked for their customers, and you think it's going to apply to yours. That's another huge disaster waiting to happen. And then in six months time, you're all just going, I don't know what happened. And so making the same plays over and over again. I think really, if you want cutting edge, once you've got your strategy in place, go to an agency. And that's no great ad for agencies. You can't do it internally well. You wouldn't attempt to build your own house. You'd go to a builder.
19:29 Craig: Yeah, it's got to be a hybrid model. You do see, and I'm sure you've seen these things as well, when you see a job post for a marketing manager or a content marketing manager, whatever the role is. And it's a list as long as your arm of all the capabilities that they want someone to have from being able to design and develop a website to create content and interview subject matter experts and be really up to speed with search and SEO. The list goes on and on and on. And you just can't simply recruit someone that's got all of those capabilities and that whole skill set. I guess the frustration for many CEOs, it just looks very offensive to have a marketing function in house that does all the things that you need it to do to make the function effective. So that hybrid model, certainly for mid-sized businesses that maybe have less resources that some of the enterprise businesses have, who will have very large in-house teams from demand generation to brands, to corporate comms, et cetera. So yeah, I think a hybrid model is the right way to go. But then going back to your earlier point, often CEOs have had their fingers burnt with agencies too. So it does kind of create this environment where many people feel stuck and they're not really sure which way to turn. And I think often a good fraction of them seem open and block that and help to get CEOs to see their way through the fog and actually move forward.
20:55 Sam: I would say most CEOs don't want the hard truth and this burns them eventually because some do to their credit, but I found that most don't. And I think one, they're too busy and they don't always have the time to understand the marketing journey fully. And then they just don't want to be challenged, generally speaking. And so you have this whole permission, can I give you the hard truth here? The hard truth is this, there you go, you've got it. And then you can lead in with, well, I think we need this. And I've been referred to on a day rate as a fractional, as sort of earning the big bucks. It's a big weight to carry. And if that's a Ferrari, don't buy a Ferrari if you can't afford to service it. So it's like, you want the Ferrari, you want the tires, you want to put fuel in it, you want to ensure it. That's your marketing department. And I think there are no golden rules in marketing really. But one of the patterns I spot is that it's serially underinvested. And what tends to happen is someone in the finance department has set an arbitrary budget that's baked into the plan. And what tends to happen is the organization for five or 10 years plays a juggling match with that money. We'll get a fractional then. Now we'll use an agency when actually what they needed to do was to be completely realistic that they just needed to have a vehicle that they could afford to run and service. And usually that is probably double if not triple what they put in budget. And that might mean losing a couple of the full-time hires and having a hybrid model. I think that's the thing. But people like having a graphic designer, people like having a marketing manager because they can go and tap them on the shoulder and ask for a brochure. When you add up five years of 50 grand a year for a marketing manager, that's an awful lot you've spent on brochures and social media.
23:07 Craig: Sometimes you do encounter organizations that have got a lot of resources in-house and you just think they can't be fully utilized or maybe they're just operational and there's no real strategy that binds everything together. But it's really about how effective that function is ultimately. I suspect there's going to be a few fractional CMOs watching this, hopefully. So what advice would you give to someone that's maybe got through? Because let's be honest, a lot of fractional CMOs certainly, and this is in my case, sort of fell into it, not necessarily by choice. Because I think to do this, you're effectively becoming self-employed and that's a big risk for a lot of people, but particularly if you've been gainfully employed for a number of years and you don't always have a runway. If you come into it, maybe given this, as you said earlier, a lot of people have lost their jobs and then fallen into this kind of fractional capacity. And I think, again, in my experience and certainly for the fractionals that I know, almost if you come through that first 12 to 18 months and you've got regular work, then you probably feel that you can make a real go of this as a career. So for those in that position, because there'll be others that will be sort of after six months, they go back to full-time employment because that's what they just feel more comfortable doing and that's absolutely fine. But if you've really given this whole thing a go, as someone that's a lot more further down the line, more experienced, what advice would you give to someone at that sort of stage?
24:39 Sam: Don't do it as a stopgap. It just, it doesn't work and you'll hate it. You have to go into it with your eyes open and you have to bring some, I think you have to bring some likeability. That's the thing. And that means you've got to be really flexible. Quite often you're sat in the corner with the marketing department and it's not always on an industrial estate somewhere where you might not want to be. And you're thinking, well, I've got to enjoy this time. You've got to bring what you want that department to be and that does take more effort than a nine to five. And personally, I like that. I like that variation. I like meeting different people. But you have to be able to bring that personally. And so this is why now we see people coming and going as fractional CMOs. Their staying power just isn't there. And I've done this type of work now for the best part of a decade. I think I've been doing it for about eight years. I've seen a lot of changes, but the constant is that people will just, they just come and go. And it also makes you fairly unemployable. For some reason, full-time employers look at people who've worked as fractionals and go, hmm, they're a flight risk. There's no logic, no great logic to that. But if you're in a full-time position, you're thinking about, well, I could do that for a bit. I would think twice. Yeah.
26:13 Craig: Yeah. You can kind of see why that would be the case. So I'm going to spring something on you now that I hadn't prepared you for. But we always ask our guests, given the topic of the podcast, truth, lies and B2B growth, there's an awful lot of lies out there. And we're trying to find our way through all of that to get to the truth. So is there any one bit of bullshit that you constantly see that really gets under your skin that you'd like to call out?
26:46 Sam: I think I alluded to it earlier, actually, Craig, and that self-delusion that comes from, well, we've not really asked anyone, but this is a great product. It's going to be fantastic. And so, case in point, I come into an organisation at least 12 months too late on a product launch, and I'm looking at something that is quite clearly indefensible from an intellectual property point of view. And that's from the brand side of things. And then they go, well, we've got this concept. And you go, well, do you know how much demand there's going to be for it? No, we're just going to take it to market. Oh, well, how much are you going to spend on it? Oh, wow. Okay. Into the millions. And on the back of nothing, on the back of a hunch, that's the biggest lie I think a business can tell itself. And it's the start and the end of the product. It's the start when you're thinking about launching something. We're just assuming that we know everything. It's a huge lie. It's the greatest fib you can tell yourself. And then right at the end, when you go, should we just find out what people think about this? Should we see how well they're engaged? Oh, no, no. Our customers love us. Right. Well, should we just ask? No, no, there's no need for that. Well, what exactly are you afraid of finding out? And I'll just leave that question hanging because most people who are self-delete, they know, they just don't want to hear it. And when you go and find out, it's either going to be a joyous moment or a terrible one, but wouldn't you rather have the terrible one now? So I think that's one of the biggest lies. I think that's for businesses, for marketeers. I think the other lie that quite a lot of people are telling themselves is that AI will change everything. I think we're facing just a sort of a phase two of the digital revolution. Yes, it's changing things, changing that one content agency that we were paying quite a lot the other day started delivering content, all AI generated, which didn't, you know, there's a whopping lie, you know, paying you to write content. They're not transparent about that. They weren't transparent about that.
29:09 Craig: No, no. It went from being written by humans, being written by, oh, we could make a killing if we just, you know, absolutely terrible.
29:12 Sam: But at the moment, and I trend a bit younger than some of my colleagues, and with respect to them, you know, a lot of 55 year olds running around going, you know, AI is going to steal my job is somewhat ironic. It's the 20 year olds who ought to be worried. The 55 year olds, you know, they need to be kind of the expert in AI in the business. And I think perhaps that's a trend happening in marketing at the moment. And, you know, it's interesting, but I don't think it'll amount to anything more than phase two of the digital revolution. I think we're all just lying to ourselves about that. And that comes from someone who's fairly AI fluent. Yeah.
29:57 Craig: It's impossible really to predict. I think you've got huge variances in terms of capability right now across marketing teams, marketing leaders in terms of their adoption of AI. The classic phrase you hear is you won't be replaced by AI, but you'll be replaced by marketers who know how to use AI. And I think I'm kind of tired of hearing that one being trotted out, but there's an element of truth in that obviously. But it will be interesting how this whole thing develops. I think there's a lot of talk about the well-known and established measure in marketing, certainly B2B marketing being the MQL, and really whether that has any validity anymore. And I think most marketers have worked on trying to generate volume of MQLs as opposed to really focusing on what matters most, which is generating pipeline. Certainly in the field that we operate, it is very much a long-term game, but you have to have the short-term mechanics in place to also convert demand. And I think a lot of people now are questioning this sort of the last maybe three or four years, heavy, heavy focus on demand generation, almost at the cost of building the brand. And now we're getting back to more of an even balance maybe between brand and demand. So are those the sort of conversations that you're having with CEOs right now? Is that something you think we'll get back to?
31:24 Sam: Yeah. And you mentioned along in the short of it, and Burnett & Field's research was quite seismic for the industry, but really only being inactive now in B2B circles. So posing the question, is long-term brand building or short-term sales promotions better for the business? Which is financially going to work out best? And kind of the answer was a mix of the two. And I think you combine that with research that's been taking place, Ehrenberg Bass in Australia, LinkedIn Business, who are tied with them, and an advert for Jenny Romanek's book on distinctive brand assets, which is absolutely fantastic. Essential business reading, I would say. The conclusion of all of that is we've got loads of great data from 10 years of digital marketing that proves satisfactorily that long-term brand building plus short-term sales promotions combined together and run as a campaign ad infinitum work better than the two in isolation. And so what's great for well-appointed agencies and for fractional CMOs is they can come in and they can say to the CEO, right, we'll sort out your strategy, we'll sort out your brand and what it stands for, and then we're going to sort out all your tactics and we're going to run them together and it's going to make a huge impact on your business. And here's all the evidence to support it.
33:01 Craig: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think the 95-5 rule, which is I think what you're referencing in terms of the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, that there's something that we talk a lot about on this podcast. I think where I've always had success, it's about when you've helped a company become that real go-to company in their particular field, and you only do that through long-term brand awareness and building authority. One of the prime examples I can draw on, I was working with a big international business. They turned over around 50 million and they couldn't quite understand why some minnow competitor somewhere out on the East Coast was appearing in all of the industry publications. And when people spoke to them, all they were talking about was their competitor and it was because they were getting that brand journey correct. And it's not about social media posts, it's about getting your brand to stand for something and sticking to that message for the long-term. And combined with some excellent tactics, as you say, compounding effect, and only very few people get that.
34:11 Craig: Okay, so in summary then, if you were in front of a CEO and they were considering working with a fractional, what would be the three or four key things that you would say that they really need to strongly consider?
34:22 Sam: Do I want to hear some truth? Do I want a leader? Do I want just more leads? You know, what does success look like for me and in what timeframe? And can I afford it?
34:37 Craig: So I think on that note, it's probably a good place to end. It's been a really, really enjoyable conversation, Sam. So I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today.
34:47 Sam: It's been a pleasure, Craig. And I must say that background of yours, I thought it was fake at first. It's so good. So hats off to the style guru.
34:55 Craig: I'm not going to claim credit for that, but I'll take the compliment all the same. Cheers, Sam.
35:01 Craig: Thanks for listening or watching the podcast. We hope you enjoyed that. And if you did, help us out by subscribing or even leave us a review. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.
Things to look out for:
01:41 The fractional CMO explosion: why it's become "a plague to the industry"
04:37 The core question CEOs must answer: do you want a leader or just a better doer?
08:30 Budget trap: if you resent the cost of a fractional, you'll always resent them
13:27 The "shoe salesman paradigm": why one-trick agencies are killing your marketing
21:09 Hard truth alert: most CEOs don't actually want to hear the truth
26:46 The biggest lie in B2B: "we know our market" (without asking anyone)
31:24 The data-backed answer: long-term brand + short-term tactics beats either alone
34:22 Three questions before hiring a fractional: truth, leadership, or just leads?