INTERIM & FRACTIONAL CMO SERVICES
The average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is 40 months, the lowest of all C-suite titles. Why is that? The short answer is that not all CMOs are alike, and as your company grows, you are going to need a different skill-set from your head of marketing. The mismatch between CEO expectations and CMO competencies creates heartburn. It is hard to find the perfect fit for this critical role. Since the average CEO is in place for 85 months, chances are you are going to need to replace your CMO at least once.
If you are planning on making a change to your marketing leadership, don’t rush to hire the wrong CMO. It may make sense to leverage the skills of an interim CMO to help you recalibrate what you and your marketing team need in order to grow your business. Hiring a temporary marketing leader is the perfect way to fill the gap.
The value of an Interim CMO
Filling the CMO leadership role can be lengthy and complex. Mike Gospe serves as an Interim CMO for companies growing from $50M ARR to $100M+ ARR (annual recurring revenue). With his 3+ decades of marketing leadership experience, he hits the ground running and contributes quickly to fix problems, stop ineffective marketing programs and practices, improve team performance, and drive pipeline growth. In agile sprint fashion, Mike builds and executes a 90-day plan while coaching the executive team to effectively screen candidates. He dramatically reduces the risk associated with stagnant or ineffective marketing programs by ensuring your marketing strategies, plans, and your team deliver their best performance.
Let us show you how.
“Mike joined us as our interim CMO. He quickly acclimated to our business and engaged our 20-person marketing team. During his 90-day sprint, he aligned the team, broke down silos, led the team in a comprehensive planning & budgeting exercise, and designed a series of go-to-market blueprints. He helped us find our new CMO in less than 90 days. For any CEOs navigating a company transition from $50M – $100M, Mike is a competent interim CMO for your team!”
Interim CMO package:
- Partner with the CEO
- Align business & marketing objectives
- Assess the marketing team
- Revise marketing organization structure, as needed
- Build & execute a 90-day plan
- Break down silos
- Improve marketing / sales relationship
- Stop “marketing popcorn”
- Coach marketers to improve performance
- Guide executives in screening CMO candidates
- Onboard & transition to the new CMO
If your B2B technology company is striving to grow from $50M – $100M+ ARR, you may need a new CMO. This is because the marketing skills that grew your company from zero to $50M are quite different from those required to get you to $100M. Because this role is so critical, the hiring process is lengthy and complex. It can, and should, take time. This white paper illustrates a proven interview process for screening CMO candidates so you will hire the best CMO.
CEOs: Hire the best CMO with this proven interview process
B2B ADVISORY BOARDS & FACILITATION
When it comes to executing your Advisory Board meetings, you can’t leave anything to chance. This may be the most important meeting you have all year! This is the one place and one time where you have your best customers, or your top tier partners, in the same room with your leadership team to discuss the future. It is very important to get this meeting right.
KickStart Alliance: a pioneer in CABs
KickStart Alilance has been a leader in designing and facilitating Advisory Board meetings from the get-go. We were the first to document these practices, and we wrote the first CAB Operations Manual. Since 2002 KickStart has guided innovative tech companies of all sizes to design and facilitate strategy-focused CXO discussions. More than 250 meeting, worldwide, and counting!
CEOs and executive teams trust us to deliver world-class CAB and PAB experiences that deliver validation, perspective, and actionable guidance.
Future-proof your business
We ensure these meetings capture value, identify new opportunities, create synergies with your best customers, and produce meaningful guidance that will help drive your business forward. Whether you are initiating your first Customer or Partner advisory meeting, or you want to refresh your program, we’ll guide you to maximize your ROI and deliver a world-class experience.
Let us show you how.
“With Mike’s leadership, we’ve enjoyed a new type of strategic conversation with our best customers. We could not have achieved this without his expertise in the preparation and delivery of our global CAB meetings.”
Services:
- CAB coaching for first-time CAB managers
- CAB coaching for experienced planners
- Full Advisory Board “behind the scenes” coaching
- Advisory Board “Health Check” services
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Discover the newest CAB & PAB trends
Learn about our new integrated model for harnessing the power of your global Advisory Board.
CAB “HEALTH CHECK” SERVICE
Designed for companies who are running their own CABs, this service provides a 360 degree assessment so you can take your CAB to the next level with confidence. If you’ve been running your CAB for a while, you know how easy it is to fall into a rut. Global conditions have required CAB programs to evolve from the once-a-year in-person meetings to a more global and flexible approach.
It’s time for an upgrade
Mike Gospe is a CAB evangelist, having helped some of today’s most innovative B2B companies design interactive CAB programs over the past 20 years. With experience drawn from having facilitated 250 CAB, PAB, and Executive Roundtable meetings, he’s an expert in tuning CAB programs to deliver real business value to the host company and their CAB members.
With our 360 degree assessment, we’ll compare your CAB with hundreds of others and let you know how yours stacks up. Most importantly, we’ll show you what you need to do to improve. Let Mike help you deliver a world-class experience that differentiates yours from your competitors’ CAB engagements.
“You will find no one better than Mike Gospe to help your team build a solid CAB strategy and then execute a fantastic program to the benefit of your company and ultimately your customers.”
Our CAB 360-degree assessment:
- Talk with your stakeholders
- Review your CAB charter
- Interview your CAB members
- Dig into your pre-CAB process and your post-CAB follow-up
- Analyze how you are harnessing the power of your CAB
- Provide a detailed report on where you are best-in-class and opportunities for improvement
PAB “HEALTH CHECK” SERVICE
This service is specifically designed for companies that rely heavily on the channel and have been managing their own Partner Advisory Board program internally. PAB programs should not be confused with operations, deal registration, or training. World-class PAB programs are strategic, providing an opportunity for broad market research and true collaboration that drives mutual success. How does yours stack up? We’ll conduct a 360 degree assessment to find the true answer.
Accelerate your pipeline
The dramatic events taking place today are reshaping your partners’ priorities, how they operate, and what they expect from you. It is critically important to form meaningful partnerships, at every level, for your mutual benefit. Our executives will interview your senior partners to understand their priorities and how the conversations they are having with their customers are changing. Answers to these questions will have a profound impact on your channel strategy.
We’ll show you where your program is strong. And, we’ll provide a prescription on where improvements are needed.
“Imperva is a ‘Channel First’ company, and with Mike’s help, we rewrote the book on Partner Advisory Boards.”
Our PAB-360 assessment:
- Talk with your stakeholders
- Review your PAB charter
- Interview your most important partners
- Dig into your pre-PAB process and your post-PAB communications
- Analyze how you are communicating with your PAB members
- Provide a detailed report on where you are best-in-class and opportunities for improvement
CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS
We are voice-of-the-customer (VOC) experts who are skilled at conducting executive-level customer interviews.
Understanding customers is critical for your ongoing financial and operational success, especially for businesses running as a service. In order to develop that knowledge, we interview your customers to uncover feedback, what makes them loyal, and if they are possibly at risk. Incorporating this and other measures of customer feedback into your business plan drives better decisions and produces more profitable outcomes. Whether you need ongoing customer feedback, or just have a spot-project, we will capture the customer insights you need.
B2B companies trust KickStart Alliance
B2B companies hire us to gather customer insights and make them actionable. We start by working with your team to create an interview guide, noting what key questions you are interested in asking your customers. Not only will we provide a detailed report on each completed interview, we will also provide an analysis of the trends and observations we collected across all interviews. We’ll share with you what we expected to hear and did hear. More importantly, we’ll share what surprised us. You’ll get the unvarnished truth: the good, bad and ugly. We’ll also offer some proactive advice and recommendations on how to incorporate and share this new knowledge internally.
“As our business grew, we needed to better understand where and why customers might be at risk of churning. KickStart uncovered those answers and provided us with actionable insights. They have become trusted members of my team.”
Interview programs we provide:
- Win/loss interviews & analysis
- Churn analysis
- Long-term happy customers
- New customers
- Lost customers
COACHING SERVICES FOR MARKETING LEADERS
Becoming a solid leader does not just happen. The best business leaders have coaches to help them on their journey. Why not you?
Unlock your full potential
We coach new and experienced leaders who want to be strategic, not tactical: remove roadblocks, build strong teams, improve profits, and manage by objective.
Our seasoned coaches have 30+ years of leadership in VP or marketing and CMO positions. We are experienced and trusted resources to help you navigate blind spots. Your boss has a coach. Shouldn’t you?
Even Tiger Woods has a coach!
A seasoned coach is an unbiased, trusted resource who can help you navigate blind spots.
We help you to:
- Learn how to be the best marketing leader you can be
- Assess your leadership style
- Improve “management by objective”
- Gain executive and cross-functional alignment
- Build personal and professional confidence