Is the company ready for you? A checklist to run before you accept a CMO role

A CMO who joins a company before it has a product people keep buying, a positioning that holds and one channel that works will watch every plan go stale within a quarter, and the founder will remember the CMO. Eight checks, run in the first conversation and again before you sign, tell you whether the company can use the seat. Write the evidence beside each answer, because a yes without evidence is a no.

The checklist

1. Can the founder describe the best customer in one sentence, with at least ten of them paid and past the first renewal or reorder? A sentence with an or in it describes two customers and a choice not yet made.
2. Has the positioning survived a sales conversation the founder did not run? If only the founder can explain why a buyer should choose the company, the positioning lives in one head, and a marketer cannot scale a head.
3. Has one channel produced customers more than once, in a way the team could repeat? A referral from an investor is a gift, and five customers from the same search term, partner or ad set make a channel.
4. Does the company know its gross margin and payback period well enough to set a ceiling on customer acquisition cost? Your first real decision is how much to spend to win a customer, and without a ceiling it gets made on instinct.
5. Is there somebody who can execute, whether a coordinator, a freelancer, an agency or a cofounder with the hours? Strategy with no hands underneath it produces a deck, and the guide “Can you press the buttons? The question buyers ask every CMO” covers the detail.
6. Can the founder state in one sentence what the company needs a CMO to do in the next six to twelve months? A founder who says the marketing is a bit messy needs a diagnosis before a leader.
7. Will the product hold steady for six months? A pivot on the table turns every system you build before it into sunk cost.
8. Can the company afford your fee without it changing how it treats you? A bootstrapped founder who says a retainer is his living expenses and would halve his runway will supervise you closely, and one first time fractional CMO reports a client who saw the fee as a massive investment and answered with constant feedback and zero trust. A retainer that frightens the buyer buys you supervision in place of authority.

Reading the score

Eight yes answers with evidence: take the seat. Ask for decision rights over budget, channels and agencies in writing, and expect to move the numbers within two quarters.

Five to seven: the seat is smaller than the title suggests. Take it at a hands on director’s scope and fee, or propose a two week diagnostic that ends in a written plan the company can use with or without you. This is the most common result and the test of your discipline, since the larger title looks better on your profile.

Fewer than five: the company is early. Decline the retainer, name the checks that failed, and say what to build before coming back. The founder will remember that honesty longer than a retainer that ended in month four.

The question buyers ask in return

A Sydney fractional CMO recommends that buyers ask every candidate what would make the candidate tell the buyer not to hire them. The question tests this checklist. A candidate with a ready answer, usually about stage or execution capacity, qualifies clients, and buyers can tell that apart from a candidate who flatters the business. A full time role works the same way: a company that fails the checklist offers a bigger salary and the same risk, with your name on the plan that kept changing.

Practise this week

Run the checklist on the last company you joined, scored as it stood on your first day, and write the evidence for each answer. Then run it on a company you are considering now.