Charting your career path as a CMO
Charting your career path as a CMO
For marketing professionals, many consider the role of “Chief Marketing Officer” as a pinnacle to reach. However, increasingly the door is open for continued growth, into other roles in the C-suite.
The recent Technology Marketing Alliance (TMA) event featured an inspiring speaker well known in the DC-tech community, Michele Perry, a founding TMA board member, and former CMO, whose career trajectory went beyond her role as a successful CMO, and grew to include roles as COO, CEO, board advisor, investor, and more.
Regardless of where a marketing professional wants to take his or her career,, Michele believes that they must first consider how to nurture their career path by seeking out learning experiences, building industry relationships, and understanding overlapping job functions like sales and finance. Here is a recap of some of the advice she gave to the group:
Branding yourself as a marketing professional
Michele credits networking, relationships and consideration of her own brand
for many of the job opportunities that she’s secured. Through a number of awards, achievements, and different roles, Michele built an impressive roster of supporters and influencers, which ultimately supported her in her transition to CEO.
It’s these kinds of relationships that help open doors for career growth within the tech marketing industry. Recruiters can help marketers transition to different companies in the same role, but don’t often play a part in helping a candidate in a role her or she hasn’t held before. When it came down to it, it was her relationships, experience, and a company’s faith and trust in her abilities that got her expanded roles .
When leveraging one’s network, Michele says “it’s important to take stock of who you’ve helped make money.” If you played a significant role in helping a company grow by the millions, keep in touch with contacts there so that they keep you in mind for the next time turnover creates an opportunity. Consider how they can help introduce you to new experiences to help broaden your capabilities, whether it’s nominating you for a board position or seeking you out for a partnership, these relationships will help drive career advancement.
Preparing to shift from CMO to CEO
At one point, Michele felt as though she had hit a wall with her career growth. Opportunities to step in as a board member or CMO were relatively easy to come by, but she believed she was ready to serve in a CEO capacity
“I think that CMOs actually have great training to become CEOs,” said Michele, “They have unique skills in that you have to understand every part of the business: sales, basic finance, products, investor and analyst relations, and so on.” Marketers are accustomed to incorporating all aspects of the business into their work, making them uniquely optimized for the transition to CEO. And, according to Michele, a primary skill needed for the role of CEO is the ability to have a thick skin – which marketers inherently have.
For marketing professionals looking to transition from CMO to CEO, there is always an opportunity to diversify your knowledge and skills to create a well-rounded CEO. In fact, Michele shared a story about a coworker serving as the Vice President of Customer Success felt that they couldn’t adequately support the company’s growth efforts and made the decision to go back to school in order to understand the business side of a company. Whether it’s going back to school or getting lunch with someone on the finance team to talk through the basics, this experience will undoubtedly benefit you in the long run.
Making the jump
In moving from CMO to CEO, Michele indicated how important it is to advocate for yourself. Although recruiters play a significant role in career development, when it comes to filling a CEO position, they’re often looking for someone who has been a CEO before, or at least comes with a sales background. In fact, this is so common that Michele struggled at first to secure a CEO offer, even though she had sales experience. It took being on a board of a Nashville-based company, and being aware of the opportunity for a CEO role, to ask for the opportunity to take the job. She began as an interim CEO, then assumed the position permanently until she moved into the role of Vice-Chairman four years later.
The consistent themes we heard from Michele throughout, were the importance of a network– cultivated and nurtured over time–the value in understanding every function of the business, the credibility that “carrying a number” in a sales capacity will bring, and advocating for oneself. There are examples of CMOs who make the move to CEO, and they help pave the way. If this is a career trajectory of interest, it can be done!