The 12-Week Fractional CMO Engagement
The 12-Week Fractional CMO Engagement is designed to quickly and effectively get your Venture-Backed B2B SaaS company on-track to achieve your Business Goals through scaling inbound revenue
Week 1-4:
Discovery Process
“The Discovery Process was valuable, because Michael uncovered exactly where we were as a business. He took a detailed look at all our collateral, including the website, and the systems underneath that. He explored our CRM, whether or not we had analytics, what our sales process was, and left no stone unturned”
Discovery Process Breakdown
Week 1
Executive Sponsor Discovery
The Engagement Executive Sponsor is the person who holds the responsibility for all revenue in the company. Typically, in scale-up B2B SaaS companies, this falls on the CEO - but can sometimes be the COO or CRO.
During this week, there are 4-5 conversations with the Executive Sponsor to prioritize and solidify the overall Business Goals and also gain a deeper understanding of the company’s current context (people, industry, history, etc).
“Michael has this ability to dig into your psyche, understand your challenges, and provide guidance and insights that only someone who is a step back from your business can provide”
Week 2 & 3
Engagement Team Discovery
The Engagement Team is comprised of everyone that will likely be collaborating to execute the Engagement Goals identified (and/or the Marketing Goals on a move-forward basis). Typically, this is everyone on the Marketing Team (if there is a Marketing Team in place), Sales Leader, Client/Customer Success Leader and Finance Leader.
During these 2 weeks, there are between 1-3 conversations with each member of the Engagement Team. The purpose of these conversations is to better understand everyone’s strengths, bandwidths and roles, as well as their perspectives on how best to achieve the Business Goals.
“He identified areas we could improve, defined the path forward, and then spent time with key individuals on every impacted team building trust. He showed them the metrics, why they were important, and how it would help them do their jobs better”
Week 4
Discovery Summary Alignment
During the last week of this process, the Discovery Summary is written and presented to the Executive Sponsor and Engagement Team.
This Discovery Summary lays out the Business Goals, the Marketing Goals (that ladder-up directly to the Business Goals) and the Engagement Goals (that ladder-up directly to the Marketing Goals).
The goal by the end of the week is for the Engagement Team and Executive Sponsor to be aligned on the Engagement Goals - and the Engagement Roadmap by which they will be achieved.
“When he looks at your business, he quickly gets to what the recommendations are and the reasons why, always prioritizing the impact actions will have in accelerating your business”
Week 5-11:
Engagement Execution
“Michael worked with us side by side and guided us through the entire process, making sure we’re not distracted by other business issues, but also doing it in a way that’s fun, engaging, and productive”
Engagement Goal Execution Areas
Below are the 4 main areas that Engagement Goals fall into. Typically, 4-6 Engagement Goals are completed during the 12-Week Fractional CMO Engagement.
Clarity on Who to Target & How They Buy
Ensuring that there is validation, understanding and alignment in who you are targeting and how they buy is absolutely paramount. If you don’t have this objective, shared perspective in place, every dollar you spend on people, process or technology to scale revenue will be less efficient.
Making sure that your Ideal Client Profile (ICP), and associated Buyer Journey, reflects your best clients - those that you have provided-outsized value to and have a strong commercial relationship with - is how you get more of those best clients.
ICP and Buyer Journey is not a Marketing exercise that holds no relevance for other Teams - but is in fact the 'Treasure Map’ for messaging that increases conversion rates, that forms of content move leads through the pipeline faster, and identifying the Marketing channels that have a higher probability of scaling inbound revenue.
“We’re starting to benefit from the ICP and Buyer Journey and everything that feeds into that—thanks to a lot of the stuff that Michael set up”
Processes That Better Qualify Leads
Having the right Team Members taking the right actions on right leads at the right time is critical to converting leads to closed-won at higher rate and in less time. This is what solid processes gives you.
To do this, mapping your ICP and associated Buyer Journey to your definitions of a Lead, MQL, SQL and Deal/Opportunity Stages is required. This requires all revenue stakeholders to be at the table and bought-in. The outcome should be clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify exactly: 1) who is responsible for Leads/Deals at what time and 2) how are they expected to engage with them.
Developing a Process Map which outlines the above, as well as objective, buyer-led entry/exit criteria for each stage of the Buyer Journey and is understood by everyone at the organization is a required ingredient to not only scale your inbound revenue - but to plug the holes in your revenue pipeline, more generally.
“Michael helped us hone the journey our leads and clients go through, and adjusted the processes our people follow so they qualify leads better and don’t flood account executives with a bunch of low-quality leads”
Technology That Drives Performance
In order to hit aggressive ARR/MRR Goals, you not only need strong processes in place, but also the appropriate technology that is set up in the right way. This is why leveraging, integrating and aligning your CRM, marketing automation, website analytics, sales enablement and other software is so critical.
Whether you run HubSpot, Salesforce or another CRM, the two main requirements for creating a best-of-breed System of Record (SOR) do not change: 1) you need people to use it (properly) to get the data needed for insights/scalability and 2) you need people to get tremendous value out of it so that they use it.
For Revenue Leaders, Dashboards and accurate forecasting are only possible if these two requirements are satisfied. For Marketing and Sales Teams, the automations (emails/alerts sent, stage/owner/field changes, data enrichment etc) that allow for scalability are only possible if these two requirements are satisfied.
A Few Previous Engagement Goals Achieved…
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HubSpot, Salesforce
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HubSpot, Salesforce
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Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google Search Console, SEO (more generally)
“Getting HubSpot up and organized, setting up targets and tracking across channels, and creating dashboards was a huge milestone,” says Brian. “Now we just open our deals dashboard and we can see our goals and how we’re tracking. We were so far away from having that visibility before”
Teams That are Fit-For-Purpose & Truly Aligned
Ensuring that your Team is built for your Plan to best scale inbound revenue and, not the reverse, is critical to success.
This does not mean a wholesale-change to the Team Members in place, but simply to ensure that they have the skills (including training), bandwidth, autonomy, data and direction to scale inbound revenue. These Team Members can and should be complemented by other resources (be it full-time or contract) that are required in order to execute on the Plan to best scale inbound revenue.
In addition, the entire Marketing Team (and larger Revenue Team, for that matter) needs to be aligned on who they are targeting and how they buy (ICP & Buyer Journey), how each Team Member contributes to the Business Goals and how their success will be measured/determined.
A Few Previous Engagement Goals Achieved…
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CEO, CRO, COO, CSO, VP of Sales, Marketing Director, Account Executive, BDR/SDR, Content Marketing Manager, Revenue Operations Manager
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VP Marketing, Marketing Director, Demand Gen Manager, Content Marketing Manager, Marketing Automation Manager, CRO, Sales Director
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Fractional Sales Leadership, Revenue Operations (SF and HubSpot), Paid Media Agency (Search, Social, ABM), Web Design Agency (WordPress, Webflow), Case Study Agency
“Michael worked with each of the leads to think in a more ARR-centric (annual recurring revenue) way and leverage the best-practices from leading B2B SaaS organizations - he inspired them to feel empowered as true drivers of revenue, rather than operating as siloed support functions”
Week 12:
Next Steps Plan & Transition
“Now, the teams in sales and marketing know exactly what they have to accomplish and what we’re doing as a group to rebuild the organization for rapid scaling and capacity”
Next Steps Plan
At the conclusion of the 12-Week Fractional CMO Engagement, a 12-month Plan will be presented to the Executive Sponsor and Engagement Team.
This Plan has two purposes: 1) ensure that there is no backsliding on the Goals achieved during the Engagement and 2) to build on the foundations established in order to continue to efficiently scale inbound revenue further.
“With clear KPIs and a measurement framework now in place, all our activities directly ladder up to clear business goals - it enables us to constantly refine our activities and ensure we’re prioritizing our investment in the right areas to drive more revenue through the pipeline”
Transition of Responsibilities
Note: About 1/3 of the time, it does make sense to partake in a subsequent Fractional CMO Engagement.
All Marketing strategy and execution responsibilities are transitioned to individuals on the (now) purpose-built Marketing Team, which has been augmented through upskilling and additional Team Members/contractors - as needed in order to successfully run and execute the 12-month Plan to scale inbound revenue.
After this is complete, the Fractional CMO Engagement transitions to a much more light-weight (a few hours a month), Advisory role to further ensure success of the Plan to scale inbound revenue.
“He’s left us in a great place, with a framework for the future growth of the company”
