How to choose an interim CMO - Part II

Advice for screening, selecting, and hiring an interim marketing leader

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In my last post, I wrote about when startup founders should opt for an interim CMO over a full-time head of marketing. This post is about how founders can go about choosing an interim head of marketing.

Note: I’m using CMO to represent someone in a leadership role — it could also be a head of marketing or a VP of marketing.

Tips for screening your potential interim CMO

Stage of startup matters

Every stage of growth for a startup is a different inflection point in its journey, needing a particular kind of marketer.

Pre PMF — If you haven’t achieved PMF yet, you don’t need an interim CMO. You may need someone to help test and validate your hypothesis and advise you on GTM decisions. Better to opt for an advisor or a consultant who can help you with a particular set of needs (email outreach, messaging, sales deck, etc.)

Solid PMF/Some PMF — You may want to deepen your fit in your current use case, or you may want to expand to other use cases. Your interim needs to help you figure out potential use cases and position you in a place where you are not pigeonholed into a narrow vertical or exposed to being all things to everyone. They also need to help you develop a plan to test and validate additional use cases. Useful read: How do you know your startup has a positioning problem?

Growth stage — Your interim CMO must have proven experience with growth-stage startups. They must be able to speak to the challenges and opportunities of this stage and the impact they’ve had at similar companies both strategically (positioning, brand, GTM strategy) and operationally (execution, hiring, coaching). They must ask thoughtful questions to help discern your needs while bringing some clarity of thinking to your particular business model (B2B marketplace, developer tool, or an open-sourced solution with a SaaS platform).

Scaling stage — You are growing fast and furiously. It’s all about rapid growth and expansion. If you need an interim at this stage, it is probably because (a) your current head of marketing is out on leave or (b) she quit, and you need someone to steer the ship while you find a replacement.

Some questions to consider when screening an interim CMO for this stage: Has your interim CMO scaled from 50 million to 100 or 150 million? In what time frame and context? Did she inherit and grow a team or build it from scratch? Does she have the right mix of player-coach for a scaling stage startup?

Ability to pattern match and solve problems

One of the main reasons you opt for an interim CMO is because the interim has seen the movie before. Ideally, they have seen many such movies with similar narrative arcs, and they can quickly pattern-match stage, industry, growth model, pricing model, and your particular opportunities and challenges.

They should have solved pernicious problems related to one or more of the above and be able to frame hypotheses on how they might go about solving the challenges you are grappling with.

👉🏽 Pro tip: Ask your interim to give you more than one example of when they solved a problem you are grappling with. Was it the same stage? What was the interim’s role in solving the problem? What were the outcomes?

Core strength alignment

Before you go hunting for an interim CMO, ensure you are addressing the problem, not the symptoms.

Founders often say I need help with demand generation, top of funnel, or growth. But they don’t always know that for demand generation to work, they must put a proper strategic foundation in place. This includes positioning, messaging, sales narrative, user journey and experience, GTM plan, and success metrics. If you don’t have these things in place, your demand generation efforts will fail or, at best, work sporadically. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you do need them.

If you are clear about your problem, say:

• I need help with telling a good story

• I need someone to uplevel my team and help us execute

• My growth channels are underperforming, and I need someone to help me revitalize our growth strategy

Then make sure the interim you bring on excels in this particular area.

👉🏽 Pro tip: To make sure you are not just addressing the symptoms, talk to a few interim candidates and ask them what they think you need. Talk to advisors and investors and ask them the same question. Triangulate and get very specific about what outcomes you expect from your interim CMO. This will make your search more straightforward and targeted.

Year of experience as interim

Experience matters. Especially if you are a first-time founder or a founder tackling a problem in a new, unfamiliar space. Your interim must be able to hit the ground running. She must pattern-match accurately and problem-solve quickly. To do this well, she must have repeated, revised, and improved her approach, methodology, and frameworks over many similar gigs. You don’t want your interim learning the ropes in your startup, do you?

Interim roles are not like full-time roles, even if the job function is the same. The expectations are different. They are part of your team but also not your full-time employee. This distance allows them some objectivity; they are not jockeying for power, position, or a full-time job. An experienced interim can help you not just cross the chasm in front of you; they can help you anticipate and prepare for the chasms ahead.

👉🏽Pro tip: An experienced interim will not only help solve your current predicament, they will also frame the problems in a way that helps you to see the bigger picture. They should be able to share their methodology and approach and outline clear deliverables/outcomes. Vagueness is death here. Get specific and ask them to get specific.

Milestones, deliverables, and outcomes

Unlike a full-time marketing leader, an interim CMO is with you for a short period: 3-12 months. The bar is often high, and the time frame to deliver results is short. An experienced interim should be able to outline clear milestones and/or deliverables for the time they will be working with you. They must also tell you what outcomes you can and cannot expect.

Once, I worked with a founder who wanted me to execute demand generation campaigns. I told him it was not the best use of my time and that I could bring a boutique agency/contractor to do the work. He insisted that I do the work myself - “Shouldn’t an interim CMO be able to do this?” he asked me. Hmm. Just because someone is able to do something doesn’t mean they should. But ultimately, it was my fault because I had not set clear expectations ahead of time.

I learned my lesson, and now I’m over-scrupulous about communicating what I will and will not do as an interim.

Tips to set up your interim CMO for success

• Make sure they are part of your core leadership team. They must participate in leadership team meetings, strategic planning sessions, and leadership offsite.

• Remove operational roadblocks early. This seems obvious but often overlooked. If your interim leader doesn’t have access to the right systems, reporting tools, and other critical documents, they cannot hit the ground running.

• Weekly or bi-monthly check-ins to support and measure progress.

• Ensure you have a good transition plan when it’s time for them to roll off your startup. Ideally, this is baked into their agreement, where they help you hire their replacement and transition smoothly to the new full-time CMO.

Next up 👉🏽 Part III - The good, bad, and ugly of doing interim CMO work and the inherent risks of fractional work.