Do you need a CMO, or a head of BD?
Firms reach for the CMO title when what they are actually short of is revenue. Here is how to tell which hire you need.
When a firm decides its marketing is not working, the first instinct is often a chief marketing officer. Sometimes that is right. Often the gap is somewhere else entirely, and an expensive brand leader is hired to fix a revenue problem.
Start with the problem, not the title
If the complaint is that the firm is invisible, inconsistent or telling ten different stories in the market, that is a brand and communications problem, and a CMO is built for it. If the complaint is that pitches are ad hoc, key clients are drifting and partners each sell in their own way, that is a revenue problem, and it belongs to a head of BD or client development.
The two roles attract different people, are measured differently and fail differently. A CMO judged on win rates will struggle. A head of BD judged on brand awareness will be miserable.
The questions that settle it
Where will this person spend their first ninety days: on positioning and campaigns, or in pitch rooms and client reviews? Who do they answer to when a pitch and a campaign collide? And what will the board look at in a year to decide the hire worked?
Answer those three honestly and the title writes itself. Plenty of firms need both, in sequence: the revenue role first, because it pays for the second.
Hire for the problem the partners actually complain about, not the title that sounds most senior.
Twenty years of these briefs have taught me that the job description is usually written before the problem is agreed. Settling the problem first is the cheapest fix in recruitment: charles@daltonhandley.com.
