Tony Watkins and Stefan Repin | Fractional CMOs & The 90-Day Win
This video is a podcast interview with Tony Watkins and Stefan Repin discussing the role and strategies of fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in achieving significant business wins within the first 90 days of engagement.
Conclusion
Fractional CMOs focus on aligning marketing strategies with business goals, addressing foundational issues, and leveraging data to drive growth. They emphasize the importance of communication, consistency, and integrating effectively into the team to ensure success.
Key points
🔍 Understand Company Needs: Ensure that the company’s leadership understands the role of marketing and its limitations.
📊 Data Utilization: Leverage data to understand the current state of the business and make informed decisions.
🗣️ Consistent Messaging: Maintain clear and consistent messaging across all channels to build a strong brand presence and avoid confusion.
📈 Early Wins: Focus on quick, impactful wins to demonstrate value and build trust with clients.
💡 Customer Insights: Conduct thorough customer research to understand their needs and how they perceive the brand.
🤝 Team Collaboration: Work closely with internal stakeholders to align strategies and improve overall effectiveness.
🚀 Execution and Resources: Develop realistic and executable marketing plans with measurable goals and ensure the necessary resources are in place.
👥 Stakeholder Engagement: Engage key stakeholders early on to ensure alignment with the company’s vision and strategy.
🧠 Marketing Education: Educate clients on the importance of strategic marketing and the iterative nature of positioning.
📋 Long-term Objectives: Establish both short-term and long-term goals to guide marketing efforts and ensure accountability.
Summary
- Introduction: The podcast introduces the topic of fractional CMOs and their impact within the first 90 days.
- Stefan’s Background: Stefan Repin discusses his decade-long experience in fractional marketing, focusing on companies with long sales cycles, particularly in the B2B sector.
- Initial Challenges: Stefan highlights that the primary challenge is understanding if the company gets marketing, emphasizing that marketing is not a cure-all but can help with brand awareness, acquisition, and lead nurturing.
- Attribution Issues: Stefan talks about the importance of attribution clarity between marketing and sales to ensure proper credit is given and roles are understood.
- Tony’s Background: Tony Watkins shares his experience working with companies where growth has stalled, focusing on translating growth strategies into actionable marketing activities.
- Identifying True Problems: Tony emphasizes the importance of identifying the true problem within the organization, bringing stakeholders together to ensure alignment and clarity.
- CEO Expectations: Tony advises CEOs to allow fractional CMOs to focus on their strengths, keep the focus on agreed goals, be open to challenge, and articulate business goals clearly.
- Effective Attribution: Stefan discusses the importance of correct attribution and honesty between marketing and sales, citing the example of conferences and events as valuable despite high costs.
- Experimentation and Failure: Stefan talks about the necessity of experimentation and being comfortable with failure, encouraging CEOs to support risk-taking for better results.
- Advice for New Fractional CMOs: Both guests advise new fractional CMOs to build trust, understand team dynamics, and provide clear leadership and vision to align the team.
Quotes - 00:37: “The foremost and biggest challenge that companies nowadays come to me with is, ‘We want more leads. We want better quality leads.'” – Stefan Repin
- 01:16: “Marketing is not a cure for all diseases. It can help with brand awareness, acquisition, and nurturing.” – Stefan Repin
- 01:50: “The main task is to understand that the leaders of the company, the C-level, understand what marketing is for and what sort of KPIs are assigned to marketing.” – Stefan Repin
- 02:22: “Clarity is the thing that you need the most when you start an engagement with a client.” – Stefan Repin
- 02:47: “Growth is stalled, where it’s just flatlined or plateaued, and there’s a need to move the growth strategy to action.” – Tony Watkins
- 03:02: “The first problem for me to actually fix is actually, what is the problem?” – Tony Watkins
- 03:35: “Bring the stakeholders together, get all those opinions out on the table, and help people understand how much they have in common.” – Tony Watkins
- 04:25: “The first thing is to let us focus on what we do well. The second thing is to make sure we keep focus.” – Tony Watkins
- 04:50: “Be open to challenge, particularly in the early days. I’m going to need to come back to you and ask you some stuff that might make you feel uncomfortable.” – Tony Watkins
- 05:16: “Make sure the CEO is able to talk about the business goals. This seems like a really dumb thing, but how do they articulate that?” – Tony Watkins
- 05:55: “The biggest waste of money is when you’re bought in for a particular set of skills, and then you’re just asked to do a bunch of stuff because you’re there.” – Tony Watkins
- 06:32: “Attribution and honesty are very important between marketing and sales.” – Stefan Repin
- 07:15: “You have to experiment. You have to be brave enough to experiment.” – Stefan Repin
- 07:45: “If you don’t try, you cannot win.” – Stefan Repin
- 08:32: “Get rid of the people who are not consistent.” – Stefan Repin
- 09:15: “Try to be friends with your head of sales because you’re going to be doing a lot of good work together.” – Stefan Repin
- 10:02: “Build trust. Marketing and sales have got to be lockstep; they are there for the same purpose.” – Tony Watkins
- 10:55: “You need to exhibit all of those qualities and behaviors of leadership that got you to where you are.” – Tony Watkins
- 11:35: “Create the plan, own the plan, and do not let the people paying the bill control it.” – Tony Watkins
- 12:22: “Plan your next 90 days with the client or your exit, but make sure you know how you want to end.” – Tony Watkins