Look for the leader who connects marketing to how the business makes money.
When CEOs and boards hire a chief marketing officer, the search often starts with the marketing a candidate has run: the brands they have built, the campaigns people remember, the size of the teams and budgets they have led. That record matters. The role itself is about what the company produces over the next several years: revenue, margin, and a reputation with the clients it most wants to win. The candidates who can deliver all three bring a combination of skills that rarely shows up in full on a résumé.
Earlier in my career, I often saw friction and misaligned plans inside marketing teams, between two groups who were each doing good work. One group focused on growing the business, the other on growing the brand. Brand work often had little connection to what the business sold, how its revenue broke down, or which sources of revenue deserved the most support in the economic conditions of the time. Both groups were needed. What brought them together was each side gaining a deeper understanding of how the other works and a real appreciation for what it contributes, so brand and growth could be planned as one effort.
Understanding both is one of the defining skills of today’s CMO, and fluency with AI now extends it. AI is making marketing faster and less expensive to produce for every firm, which raises the value of knowing where to aim it: at a reputation with the clients who matter most, connected directly to the revenue the business needs. A CMO who brings fluency in brand, growth, and AI together is one of the most valuable leaders in the enterprise.
The hire carries real financial weight. A CMO directs one of the larger discretionary budgets in the company, shapes how clients and investors see the firm, and decides how much of that budget turns into growth the business can see. Five qualities mark the leaders who make marketing part of the Growth Engine, and each one can be assessed before an offer is made.
Start With How the Business Makes Money
A growth CMO begins with the business and works back to marketing. They can explain how the company earns its revenue, which clients and offerings carry the strongest margin, where the plan depends on winning share, and which work is expensive to win and hard to keep. That understanding shapes every choice that follows: which markets get investment, which messages reach which executives, and what the brand should be known for with the clients the plan depends on.
It is also one of the easier qualities to assess. Share the company’s growth plan and a few of its real numbers with finalists, and ask where they would focus marketing in their first year and why. Strong candidates start with the revenue and margin the plan depends on. They ask about the sales plan, the most important clients, and where past revenue came from before they talk about channels or campaigns.
Picture a CEO choosing between two finalists. The first walks through an impressive brand relaunch and the awards it won. The second spends her first ten minutes asking which three client industries produce most of the firm’s margin and which one the sales team is struggling to grow. She then explains how she would aim the next year’s budget and the brand’s message at that industry. Both are talented marketers. The second is already working on the CEO’s problem.
“A CMO who brings fluency in brand, growth, and AI together is one of the most valuable leaders in the enterprise.”
Listen for Financial Fluency in Past Decisions
Growth leaders read a profit and loss statement as comfortably as a campaign report. They know how the company’s budget is built, how investment decisions get made, and what marketing spending is expected to return in revenue and margin. They talk with the CFO in the terms the CFO uses, which earns marketing the trust to invest ahead of results when an opportunity calls for it.
Financial fluency shows most clearly in how a candidate describes the decisions they have made. Ask finalists to walk through a budget they managed: what they expected each major investment to return, what it did return, and what they changed during the year once results came in. Leaders with this skill answer in revenue, margin, and timing. They can name an investment they cut and where they put the money instead.
The same standard applies at every level of a marketing organization. When I became CMO with responsibility for a wide range of industry sectors, I assessed each sector’s marketing leader for business and financial acumen as well as marketing skill, and made all three a requirement of the role. Some leaders already brought them. Where we needed them, I hired for them. With that standard in place, the team could align its marketing to growing each sector’s business as well as marketing it.
Ask How Marketing Adds to the Value of the Company
A growth leader also understands how the business is valued, whether it is public, backed by private equity, or preparing for a sale or new investment. Investors reward revenue that is predictable, growing, and profitable: work that renews, clients that expand, and new offerings that open markets the company did not serve before. A CMO who understands those drivers aims marketing at them.
In a private equity-backed firm, that means knowing the plan its investors have for growing the company’s value and the timeline behind it, then building marketing around what that plan has promised. In a public company, it means understanding what analysts watch each quarter and how the firm’s reputation with clients, future hires, and investors supports what the market expects. In both, the brand is part of what the company is worth, and a growth CMO treats it that way.
A growth CMO also shapes how the company’s progress reaches the people who decide what it is worth. Quarterly results, major client wins, new offerings, acquisitions, and leadership appointments all influence how investors and analysts judge the company’s prospects and, in a public company, its stock price. The strongest CMOs plan the timing and message of these announcements with investor relations, finance, and legal, so the media, analysts, and investors hear the same story as clients and employees. In a public company, that partnership also keeps every announcement within disclosure rules. In a private equity-backed firm, the same discipline applies to updates for investors and, in time, prospective buyers.
To assess this, ask candidates which numbers they believe investors watch most closely for a business like yours, and how marketing would help improve them. Then ask about an announcement they helped plan that mattered to the company’s value: who they worked with, how they decided what to say and when, and how the market responded. The answers show quickly whether a candidate thinks about the business the way its owners and board do.
Assess How They Lead Marketing as AI Changes the Work
The marketing leaders a CEO interviews today built their careers in a function where research, content, campaigns, and reporting each took steady manual effort. AI now handles much of that groundwork, which shifts a team’s time toward deciding what is worth doing and doing it well. For brand, that means keeping the firm’s message consistent as it is adapted for more clients, industries, and channels. For growth, it means seeing sooner which clients and opportunities are responding. A strong candidate has a clear view of what this means for how marketing runs: which work AI should take on, how roles change around it, and how the team will learn the new work.
The best evidence is first-hand. Ask finalists how they use AI in their own work today, what they have changed in how their team works, and which results improved. Listen for leaders who describe AI as a way to raise what their team can do, so the same team serves more clients, markets, and opportunities at a higher level. Leaders who have done it can describe what they tried, what did not work at first, and what they learned. That experience is quickly becoming one of the most valuable things a CMO brings to a company.
Look for Self-Awareness and Steady Judgment
The CMO role is one of the most visible in the company. Clients, investors, and employees all see marketing’s work, and the CMO works across sales, finance, delivery, and the CEO’s office, often leading through influence with people who report elsewhere. That makes two qualities especially valuable: an accurate sense of how the leader comes across to colleagues, and the discipline to stay measured when a plan slips, a result disappoints, or a peer pushes back.
Leaders with both build partnerships with the head of sales and the CFO that last through a hard quarter, and they make sounder calls under pressure. They are also the leaders who can bring brand and growth teams together, helping each see what the other contributes. In a role where results depend on influence as much as authority, these qualities often decide whether the other skills turn into growth.
These qualities are harder to see in an interview, where every candidate is at their best. To assess them, speak with peers in sales and finance and with people who worked on the candidate’s team, as well as those they reported to. Ask how the candidate responded the last time a major plan fell short, how they handled a disagreement with a peer, and whether people brought them problems early. Consistent answers across those conversations add a useful perspective alongside the interviews themselves.
Give the Role the Mandate These Skills Need
Hiring for these skills pays off when the role is set up to use them. In most firms, that means a CMO who works beside the head of sales as a peer, with shared goals, and who takes part in growth planning with the CEO and CFO from the start. A leader hired for commercial judgment needs to be present where commercial decisions are made: planning, budgeting, and the board discussions where performance is reviewed.
Scope matters as much as placement. Give the role responsibility for both the brand and the growth outcomes the business needs, measured in the same numbers the CEO uses to judge the rest of the business. The CMO can then plan the two together and report results in terms the board already uses.
Write Down the Growth the Role Must Deliver
Before the search begins, write down the three or four outcomes the next CMO will own over the coming years. They might include revenue from a priority industry, expansion inside the largest clients, a new offering’s first year in market, or a stronger reputation in a market the firm is entering. Build every interview, case discussion, and reference call around those outcomes. The candidates who are strongest on them stand out quickly, and the leader who is hired starts with a clear mandate and a shared view with the CEO and board of what success looks like.
About John Fildes
I grow the top line by connecting marketing to business strategy. By leveraging powerful positioning, content marketing, and client insights, I help organizations drive qualitative and quantitative results at scale.
I've built an amazing network of incredibly talented people over the years. What I've appreciated most is those who have invested in me, mentored me, and helped me become the talented professional I am today. I pay it forward by doing the same for other high performing professionals and entrepreneurs.
Learn More: Growth Leader | Business Builder | Leadership Multiplier
All views are my own and not those of my current or prior employers.
