Category: Show Notes

PE-backed CMOs have to make marketing make sense at board speed. 

The questions come faster. The comparisons come from portfolio companies that look nothing like yours. And no budget line stays “just marketing” for long. 

In this episode, Drew talks with Kevin Ruane (Precisely), Julie Kaplan (Higher Logic), and Alan Gonsenhauser (Demand Revenue) about what it takes to succeed as a PE-backed CMO. They explain how to learn the investment thesis, build CFO trust early, use customer success as a signal source, and make growth more predictable, explainable, and easier for the business to back. 

In This Episode: 

• Kevin shows how to make brand and demand credible with PE sponsors by tying every investment to a clear business story
• Julie explains why CMOs need to understand the PE firm’s thesis, exit story, and pressure points before adapting the marketing plan
• Alan shows how PE-backed CMOs make growth more predictable by owning outcomes and translating marketing into financial language

Plus: 

• Why PE-backed CMOs need a business point of view fast
• How marketing becomes the glue across the business
• Why CFOs need to see customers, not just line items
• How to use board meetings to sharpen priorities

Listen in for how PE-backed CMOs can turn the investment thesis into a stronger marketing agenda, make every bet easier to defend, and show the business exactly how marketing creates value. 

Change only looks sudden when you missed the signals. 

Rita McGrath gives that idea teeth for CMOs leading through AI, org design changes, and markets that refuse to sit still. The signals are usually there. But in businesses wired to confirm what already happened, they get drowned out by revenue, pipeline, CAC, and other lagging indicators. Those numbers still earn their seat, but left alone, they can keep everyone staring backward while customers and competitors move ahead. 

In this episode, Drew talks with Rita McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and author of Seeing Around Corners, about how CMOs can build the muscle to spot change early enough to act. Rita connects weak signals, leading indicators, arena thinking, and strategy-led AI to a bigger job for marketing leaders. Help the business move sooner, then make sure new efficiencies fund the next bet. Because as Rita says, you can’t shrink your way to greatness. 

What You’ll Learn: 

• How strategic centering helps leaders make stronger bets
• Why the next threat may not be the rival on the battlecard
• What separates AI users from AI-powered thinkers
• How to balance the core business with future growth options

Listen in for how CMOs can read the signals sooner, put strategy before AI, and turn efficiency pressure into fuel for the next bet. 

Marketing and comms lose leverage when the story, the proof, and the teams carrying them run in separate lanes. 

That’s how strong work gets less mileage than it should. Recognition stays in PR when demand could use it. Analyst proof misses the sales motion. Internal messaging sounds adjacent to the market story instead of connected to it. Bring the right lenses together early, and the narrative gets sharper, the proof works harder, and the brand voice becomes unmistakable wherever the business shows up. 

In this episode, Drew talks with Clay Helm (At the Helm Consulting), Julia Goebel (Alight Solutions), and Marni Puente (SAIC) about what it takes to make marketing and communications work as one team behind the business story. They focus on trust, shared measurement, clear decision rights, and a healthy respect for what each discipline brings to growth. 

In This Episode: 

• Clay shows what changes when comms plugs into pipeline, customer journey, and the daily rhythm of the business
• Julia explains how leaders can honor each team’s lens and make earned credibility work harder
• Marni shows why unified leadership can sharpen brand alignment, culture, execution, and market impact

Plus: 

• Why one unmistakable brand voice matters across employees, customers, media, and the market
• Why employee comms deserves C-suite attention in people-powered businesses
• Why separate CMO and CCO roles need tight partnership and clear swim lanes
• How to spot healthy integration before anyone has to force it

Listen in for how CMOs can bring marketing and communications into tighter sync and get more mileage from the story, proof, and credibility they already have. 

A stuffed content library can still leave a salesperson empty-handed. 

Somewhere along the way, sales enablement got mistaken for asset production. Sales asks, marketing makes, the asset goes somewhere, and the next thing you know, a seller is five minutes from a call wondering which deck, battle card, proof point, or customer story actually helps. If the seller has to stop selling to find the enablement, the enablement has not enabled. 

In this Drew-on-Drew solo episode, Drew plays both host and guest to take on the request-fulfillment loop. Drawing on conversations in the CMO Huddles community, he helps marketing leaders rethink sales enablement around one better question: Did it make sales more effective? 

The mandate is clear. Pick one selling outcome, build trusted answers where sellers work, and measure whether buyers move, deals advance, and sales wins faster, more often, or bigger. 

What You’ll Learn: 

• How AI can turn approved content into timely answers without creating more content chaos
• Why adoption depends on workflow, peer stories, and help at the moment of need
• How recorded sales calls can strengthen messaging, coaching, content, and product decisions

Listen in for Drew’s take on what sales enablement needs to become and how CMOs can replace the content maze with a system that helps sellers show up smarter and move buyers forward. 

When every marketing decision has to pay off this quarter, growth starts losing its owner. 

That’s the uncomfortable read from the latest CMO Survey. Under pressure, CMOs are making perfectly rational moves. Safer bets, tighter proof, more focus on the customers already in hand. The danger is what those choices start to signal. If every case for marketing comes back to pipeline now and near-term ROI, the function that should be finding growth can get managed into something much smaller. 

In this episode, Drew sits down with Christine Moorman, founder of The CMO Survey and professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, to unpack what the spring 2026 results say about marketing’s next move. The data points to rising AI value, a stubborn talent gap, and underfunded marketing capabilities. Running through it all is one warning CMOs cannot afford to ignore: Safe can get small. 

Three Findings CMOs Need to Take to Heart: 

• Short-termism is narrowing marketing’s role
• AI value is rising faster than team readiness
• Capabilities matter, but investment is lagging

What You’ll Learn: 

• Why safe bets can defend marketing today and shrink its role tomorrow
• How metrics shape what the C-suite believes marketing is for
• Why AI success depends as much on talent and training as it does on tools
• How CMOs can prove value beyond pipeline, from customer relationships to durable growth

Listen in for a clear read on the latest CMO Survey, from why safe can get small to how CMOs can use better metrics, stronger talent, and AI-ready capabilities to reclaim the growth agenda. 

Sales has one clean tell for whether it trusts marketing. Timing.

Bring marketing in late, and partnership turns into a very polite scramble. The field has moved, the campaign needs context, and sales is working leads without the story that made them worth chasing in the first place. Trust grows when marketing stays close enough to hear the objections, spot the stalls, and change the work while there’s still time to help. 

In this episode, Drew is joined by Ellina Shinnick (HUB), Joan Jenkins (Fastly), and Sara Braun (FORTA) to look at where marketing belongs inside the sales rhythm. Their examples ground partnership in the weekly decisions, shared numbers, and field-ready enablement that turn marketing from a separate function into a stronger growth partner. 

In this episode: 

• Ellina shows how HUB embedded marketing in weekly sales leadership meetings, creating faster pivots, clearer lead ownership, and a 3x lift in conversion 

• Joan explains why Fastly keeps marketing accountable through pipeline creation, progression, and revenue instead of stopping at the lead handoff 

• Sara shares how field visits, customer input, and rep feedback helped FORTA build sales playbooks around the accounts and moments that mattered most 

Plus: 

• How CMO-CRO behavior sets the tone for sales-marketing alignment 

• How AEO, AI content, and recorded calls surface new customer signals 

• What marketing needs from sales, from honest feedback to field activation 

• Why speed and flexibility matter more than rigid annual plans 

Listen in for how B2B CMOs can build stronger sales partnerships, improve pipeline accountability, and make marketing more useful from first signal to final outcome.