The Ultimate Guide for Selling to a CMO

With an overflowing inbox and a packed schedule, today’s CMO is more elusive than ever. What gets them to schedule a discovery call (let alone open your email) in the first place? Even if you manage to get through to the CMO, it’s much more challenging to actually win a piece of their marketing budget.

Our own Winmo CMO Jennifer Groese recently sat down with Nicole Smith, CMO at UserIQ, to chat about this topic on our podcast. Here are some of the key takeaways from their conversation. Did you know that on average, it takes around 18 calls just to connect with a buyer? And being hard to reach isn’t the only thing standing between you and a sale.

Here are some of the other key challenges of selling to a CMO: 

• There’s a ton of noise in the market: In our social media feeds, inboxes, voicemail, and daily life — there are a ton of messages coming our way. CMOs are no exception, which makes it tough to break through the noise. 
• They don’t need you: That’s not to say they don’t need your product. But today’s CMOs are more proactive about finding solutions. They’re not sitting around waiting for a salesperson to call and solve their problems. Instead, they’re asking their networks, looking to industry experts, reading online reviews, and researching products.
• Bad sales reps have made it harder: Way too many salespeople are just plain lazy. They don’t do their research, and they copy and paste the exact same “Insert Company Name Here” email template. Inundated with generic and/or irrelevant sales emails and voicemails, it’s no surprise many CMOs immediately hit delete. Unfortunately, the bad ones make it that much harder for you to stand out.
• They’re short on time: Time is a CMO’s most precious asset. There’s not enough of it in a day, and they’re not about to waste it on a sales pitch.

So how do you overcome these challenges? Here are five ways to capture a CMO’s attention:

1)  Be relevant

Don’t share case studies on cat food if the prospect sells sports cars. Provide insights and solutions that help them fix a specific problem and focus on the customer’s needs. The best sales reps help the customer identify pain points, perhaps even some they’re not aware of, and find solutions. However, in order to do that, you’ve got to lay the groundwork. 

2)  Put in the work

Before you even send an email, put the effort in to educate yourself about their business, industry, customers, and the problems they’re trying to solve. Give your prospect a clear understanding of how they’ll measure the ROI of your product. This is particularly important given that CMO tenure tends to be shorter on average than their C-Suite counterparts. They’re under pressure to make an impact in a relatively short amount of time- clear metrics in terms of dollars or number of sales can help them prove ROI quickly. 

3)  Help them build a use case

You sell to the CMO, but they’ve got to sell your product or solution internally. Don’t put it on them to prove the business value and ROI. Building a strong business case for them makes it easier for them to sell it to their CEO. Then, let your product speak for itself. A trial is a huge help in building a use case for your product or solution and selling it to the rest of the C-suite. 

4)  Provide personalized  demos and emails

CMOs can see right through cookie-cutter, scripted discovery calls. It’s essential to tailor your demo to their needs and answer their specific questions. An email in the middle of a hectic workday isn’t likely to be read, let alone opened. Time your emails for early morning or after hours. It’s more likely that you’ll capture their interest while they’re getting ready in the morning or catching up after work.

5)  Be genuine and personal

Build a relationship with the person you’re reaching out to. As Nicole Smith put it, “When I say personalized I don’t mean something like, Oh, I saw you went to Georgia. Go Dawgs. Because I think those are the worst emails and delete.” Never underestimate the power of a sweet surprise. Here at Winmo, a prospecting company once sent an order of (branded) cupcakes to the office one afternoon. It was a huge hit with the entire organization. 

Smith shared an example of a successful outreach email she received and why it worked: 

He said something like, “I read your LinkedIn article where you talked about lessons you learned leading a start-up marketing team.” And then he references one of the lessons, which was Be Aware of Your Competitors but Don’t Obsess Over Them. And then proceeded to tell me in the email that in the spirit of honoring that lesson, one of our competitors is actually their customer and they’d help them succeed by doing X, Y, and Z. Honestly, that really piqued my interest. I will also say he sent me this email a little bit after-hours.

If you liked this blog post, check out:

1. (Podcast) How to Sell to the Elusive CMO
2. The CMO Lifecycle: 5 CMOs to Watch in 2019
3. 5 Simple Ways to Improve Sales and Prospecting Productivity