If you own a company or sit on the board of one, plan on your marketing leader leaving before the growth plan you hired them for is finished. That is no knock on marketers. It is a reason to build the plan so it belongs to the company instead of the person running it.
The clock is short. Chief marketing officers at private equity-backed companies last an average of 3.1 years, according to a Findem and CMO Huddles study reported by Marketing Dive. Three years is not much time for the work most owners hand a new CMO: repositioning the brand, rebuilding demand, restarting a growth line that stalled. If that work takes longer than the person stays, the next leader inherits it half done, and most new leaders arrive with a plan of their own.
What happens to the marketing plan when your CMO leaves?
If the plan lives in one person's head and one person's tools, it leaves when they do. The company keeps the invoices and loses the reasoning behind them.
The companies with the hardest deadline lose their marketing leader fastest. A PE-backed company has a plan that has to land before the exit, yet its CMO leaves sooner than one at a larger public brand, where CMOs tend to last about four years, according to the same reporting. That is the wrong way round, and it means the plan has to be built to survive a handoff partway through.
I put the test as a question: is it important that I do this, or is it just important that it gets done? Ask it about your marketing plan. A good leader brings judgment that nobody else can supply. Most of the plan itself only has to get done, and the parts that only have to get done should not depend on who holds the title.
The company should own the plan, the numbers and the forecast
Three things should stay with the company no matter who sits in the seat.
The first is the plan, written down with an owner and a date beside every line that matters, so a new leader can see what was promised and what is already moving. Whoever sits in the chair can change it, but they should be changing something they can read.
The second is the measurement. Reporting that credits only the last dollar spent misses most of the picture. I want a company to track the layers of benefit it gets from a dollar spent and pair that with a granular forecast, because that is how you start to see "what's bringing stuff back and what is just going out the door." That record should sit in a system the company owns, built so the next person can pick it up on their first day.
The third is the forecast itself, with a number the marketing leader is willing to be held to. When it lives on the company's books instead of in a departing executive's spreadsheet, the next leader starts from a baseline instead of a story.
I grew the Asia e-commerce business I ran for an apparel retailer from $15M to $100M in annual run rate in eighteen months, hitting my own forecast. When the company wanted it back inside its general operations, I taught the team to run it without me and recommended that the role move to Shanghai. I still judge a leader's work by whether it keeps running after they go, and that standard fits the marketing seat as well as any other.
Hire the next CMO for what they will leave behind
When you interview for the seat, ask every candidate one more question: if you leave in three years, what will the company still have? Listen for the system, the team and the numbers in the answer. A candidate who only describes their own playbook is telling you what will leave with them.
The gap between leaders is where most of this gets lost, and it is where a fractional marketing executive can help. An experienced operator can hold the seat for a stretch, keep the plan moving, and leave the next full-time hire a plan, a measurement system and a forecast they can step into. The owner keeps the direction. The operator's job is to make the seat easy to fill well.
A long-tenured CMO with shared systems does not need this fix
Some marketing leaders do stay. About a third of the CMOs in the study have held the job for more than five years. If yours is one of them, and the plan, the reporting and the forecast already live where the rest of the leadership team can see them, leave the arrangement alone and spend your attention on something else.
Ask what the next leader would find on day one
Pull up your marketing plan this week and ask one question: if your marketing leader resigned on Friday, what would the next person find on Monday? If the honest answer is a password list and a slide deck, start there.
If you run a portfolio company or sit beside one, here is how I think about the leadership gaps that open during a hold, and why a new leader needs a forecast they can be held to. If your marketing seat is turning over now, I am glad to talk it through.
Source note: Findem and CMO Huddles studied employment data on 13,000 current CMOs at U.S. businesses with 100 or more employees.
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