A Memo from Your Last Dollar Spent

 

 

Dear CMO,

Well, I finally made it. Out here in the marketplace at last! Trying my best to help you live up to the promises you made and deliver the results you argued so fervently would come from my deployment.

I really appreciate the way you fought for me. That argument you won with the head of sales to get me in your budget vs. his … brilliant work there. And going up against the finance department like that, staking your reputation on such an uncertain outcome — now that took guts. I hope I don’t let you down!

But as grateful as I am to be liberated from that stuffy treasury account, there are a few things I’d like to suggest, based on my journey out here in the field, that may make it easier for the next young buck to get through and improve his chances of success.

First off, I don’t fully understand exactly what you expect of me. I have a general idea of what I’m supposed to do, but there are several ways I might have to try doing it and I’m not clear on what your standard is for “success.” Next time, you might want to send my colleagues and me out with a more focused mission statement and specific targets for performance. That way we might work together more efficiently to help you achieve your goals. You may just see more of us come back to you in return.

That said, I’m not feeling too confident I can deliver even the general results you promised this time around. I know, you went way out on a limb for us in promising both short- and long-term results, and we are trying our best to help you reach those performance goals. But I’m not sure there are enough of us focused on accomplishing this particular task. Don’t get me wrong: There are plenty of us out here in the field. It just seems that we’re spread a little thin, across everything from search engine marketing to print ads to PR. I suspect we may have been more effective if you had prioritized a bit differently and put more of us together on this critical campaign.

So here’s something to think about for the next cycle: Send some of us out on a “recon” mission to test how effective we can be. Play around with various circumstances and see which combinations bring back the best results. I promise that, at a minimum, we’ll bring back some clear insights to help you to better understand our impact, which in turn will help you avoid those unproductive compromises that often result from the subjective arguments I’ve heard you having with the finance and sales folks.

Speaking of finance, I picked up a lot of hostility from the accountants as I passed through their ledgers to your budget account. They were grumbling that you steamrolled their investment concerns with lots of fancy slides and marketing mumbo-jumbo that may have fooled the CEO but sounded ominously vague to them. I think they resented the way you pushed me through over their objections. I’ve been circulating for a while, and, let me tell you, finance people have long memories. So you may want to open a more productive dialogue with them soon to show them that you actually hear their concerns and are trying to get to sound, fact-based answers regarding payback on your investments — even if those answers may take awhile to gather. You don’t want to wait until business slows and there are fewer of me to go around; that’s when finance will have the leverage for a different type of payback, at your expense.

Enough about other departments; can we talk about your internal team? I have to say that between your staff and your vendors, I got pretty banged up last quarter. Your team didn’t seem very schooled in how to handle me effectively — squeezing in some spots, tossing me around like candy in others. Let me ask you: Did these people major in guesswork? Because I didn’t see a whole lot of disciplined thinking behind where and how I was assigned. It was almost like my performance out here wasn’t as important as the task of simply getting me into the marketplace.

I’m not alone; I saw lots of my peers slip through the cracks during the process. For the sake of those who will follow me, you may want to smooth over those fissures to keep more of us flowing to places and programs where we can actually help you. A little sensitivity training for some of your people around setting, communicating, and managing expectations would definitely help there.

Finally — and admittedly I’m being a bit selfish here — I’m concerned about my legacy. After all this work to get here and do my thing, I worry that no one will really be able to point to what I did with any certainty and say, “That dollar really worked hard for us.” There just don’t seem to be enough mechanisms in place to capture and relate the story of my journey in a way that will help future budgetary generations in theirs. At some point, you may want to redirect a few of my successors toward building a better framework for measuring the performance of guys like me not just at their end point, but throughout all the stages in which we can make an impact.

But this isn’t all about me. I’d like my experience to help you make better, smarter decisions in the future. Our relationship can help you start to reshape the foundation of your reputation from that of an executive who has subject expertise and powerful persuasion skills to a leader who has built a foundation of disciplined learning, active listening, intelligent guessing, and continuous improvement in both process and results. Those are the skills the next dollar you spend will need from you to work most effectively and efficiently.

Thanks again for the opportunity to play a role in this important mission. I promise that if you continue to invest in my capabilities in the field, I (and those who follow) will pay you back in multiples.

Best wishes,

G. Washington
Your Last Dollar Spent