Agencies That Lead Win – Why CMOs Need More Than Just Order Takers

“The average CMO tenure is notoriously one of the shortest in the C-suite. Most Fortune 500 CMOs last just 51 months” 

This is from the piece by Rebecca Stewart & Paul Hiebert in Adweek this past week titled The Real Reasons Why CMOs Get Fired and it’s an important read for your agency business development strategy and your client retention strategy. 

The High-Stakes Reality for CMOs

Gartner’s study revealed “the average marketing function is involved in or accountable for 10 business areas and will take on additional responsibilities by 2029”. 

That insight comes from the article, where Stewart and Hiebert reference a Gartner study in which 125 CEOs and CFOs were interviewed to reveal their expectations for CMOs and how they can extend their tenure.

Another pertinent quote before we dive in: 

The main reason marketers are fired, Gartner found, was the inability to deliver promised results, with 69% of CEOs and CFOs stating this would lead to CMO removal. 

I think (I hope) you see where I’m going here. 

Your Agency Can Help Extend CMO tenure 

In an agency panel I hosted this week in our RSW virtual conference on maximizing agency/client value, Stephen Larkin, Chief Marketing Officer at Erich & Kallman, said this:

Clients want to be led. Clients are under so much pressure . . . and advertising is literally 20% of her job. There’s the other 80% taking them in every other direction. 

The Dreaded Order Taker 

Oh, agency teams love hearing it: You have to be more than just an order taker. 

One of the main reasons marketers look for a new agency? 

They’re not bringing fresh thinking or ideas to the table. 

And the fact is, this is true. 

To Stephen’s point above, marketers are under enormous pressure, and they’re feeling isolated often because of it. 

(We did a 3 Takeaways episode around it last year after our key note speaker, who had worked on the agency and client side, explained the isolating nature of the marketing position post-Covid.)  

 

Marketers do want to be lead, and you have the opportunity to do that.

Agencies That Lead, Win.

They’re not paying you for what you do. They’re paying you for the result. 

That’s a quote from the same panel, and from Jamil Buie, Growth and Innovation at Campbell Ewald, in response to the order taker question. 

He went on: 

The same reason why folks go to a barbershop or a hairstylist. You could probably cut your own hair at home. It’s the result that you’re getting and it’s the experience to get you to the result. Like the consultive nature of, “I see where you’re trying to go, I see what you want to accomplish”. I can also see the blind spot that you can’t see behind your head and make sure that you take care of.  

And so that’s the reason why you can’t just be a flat order taker, because if you do that, at some point in time, they will build a structure that says, I can cut you out. And that’s what a smart marketer would probably do. So a smart agency would say, I can continue to listen, evolve, and be, as said, a couple of steps ahead of where you want to be. Because we focus and think about this all day, every day. And that’s how you create a tremendous amount of value for a client. 

Exactly this. And by doing this for clients, that effort can and should be employed as you engage with prospects. 

Don’t let that knowledge go to waste. 

Incorporate it into your thought leadership content and get it in front of your prospects. 

Seth Gunderson, Sr. Director, Growth at Signal Theory, gave a concrete answer and example of how they go beyond order taker status in our conference panel: 

They’ve paid us money to do a specific job. And what we’ve learned is that if you’re not answering the brief, if you’re not answering what the client request is, no matter what you present next, it’s going to fall on deaf ears. So first and foremost, we make sure that we answer the brief.  

But then we have also amended our process to carve out time for teams. That’s not necessarily billing against the client’s hours, but it’s a time to really understand the business, truly understand the business, and bring up proactive ideas. And we do that on a quarterly basis to make sure that we are providing extra value to those clients. 

Please Stop Saying We make the CMO Look Like A Hero 

I’ve been in too many conversations with ad agency principals where they eventually bring this up as a selling point. 

It is not. 

It’s fantastic, but it’s pure fluff when you phrase it this way.   

Instead, you need 5-10 concrete examples of how you make her or him look like a hero. 

Fill in this blank 5 to 10 times: We make X client look like a hero because ____________

As Jamil said and I repeat: they’re not paying you for what you do. they’re paying you for the result. 

And maybe you don’t have a concrete, “we increased sales by 45%”.

That’s OK.  I mean, let’s be clear, it’s great if you do have that, but if not, then succinctly explain how you solved their business challenge, which in turn, made them look like a hero. 

Turning Insights Into Action

The Adweek piece ended with this: 

CMOs can rebuild CEO and CFO confidence by clarifying their accountabilities, communicating how marketing is connected to growth initiatives, improving collaboration with others, and more effectively demonstrating the impact of marketing. 

As an agency, you can’t, and shouldn’t, try to tackle every one of these for your clients, because not all are in your control, but you can absolutely help with a good portion of it. 

Take each of these and pinpoint where your agency specifically has an impact and get that in front of your client. 

Lead them. 

And then take those very same points and intertwine them into your prospecting process.