“I’m done being an operator,” shared a 3x CMO with an extraordinary track record of driving double-digit growth year after year. Fresh out of a tech company that grew from $100 to $300 million in 4 years, he lamented, “The job just stopped being fun.” I nodded empathetically and pondered, Why does this keep happening to highly competent CMOs, and what, if anything, can be done about it?

The Great CMO Burnout is real.

And it's not just about long hours or demanding CEOs. It's about brilliant marketers getting buried under operational quicksand—drowning in budget reconciliations, vendor negotiations, and endless attribution debates while the strategic thinking that got them hired gets pushed to nights and weekends.

Too Much Ops, Too Little Strategy

Most CMOs spend 70% of their time on tasks that don't require a CMO.

Let me say that again. Most CMOs spend 70% of their time on tasks that don't require a CMO. They're debugging marketing automation, reviewing keyword buys with junior reps from the PE-firm, and sitting through vendor demos for tools that promise to solve problems they didn't know they had. Meanwhile, the board wonders why marketing isn't driving more strategic value.

The promotion trap is killing marketing leadership.

Here's the cruel irony: the better you get at marketing, the more operational responsibilities get dumped on your plate. You start as a strategic thinker who can craft compelling narratives and identify untapped growth opportunities. But success means bigger budgets, which means more vendors, which means more meetings about meetings. Before you know it, you're a glorified project manager with a marketing title.

Delegation as a Lifeline

The solution isn't more hours—it's radical delegation.

Smart CMOs are building mini-COOs within their marketing organizations. Call them Marketing Operations Directors, Revenue Operations Managers, or Chief of Staff—whatever works. The point is creating a buffer between strategic thinking and operational execution.

One recovering CMO told me, "I hired someone whose job was literally to go to meetings I didn't need to be in. Best investment I ever made."

Protecting Strategic Time

Reclaim your Mondays (and your sanity).

Block every Monday morning for strategic thinking. No meetings, no Slack, no email. Just you, a whiteboard, and the big questions: Where are we winning? Where are we losing? What bets should we make next quarter?

The operational stuff will still be there on Monday afternoon. But your ability to think strategically? That disappears the moment you let urgency crowd out importance.

Bottom Line

If you're not having fun, take a break. Then rejigger your schedule so you're just focused on the big stuff.

The most successful CMOs I know protect their strategic thinking time as if it were their most valuable asset. Because it is. Your team can execute campaigns, optimize funnels, and manage vendors. But they can't replace your ability to see around corners and connect dots that others miss.

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 477: Retention as Your Revenue Engine

Putting the customer at the center has been preached for years, yet too often, B2B marketers are told to chase net new logos and leave expansion for someone else. That approach leaves growth on the table. Delighted customers are your advocates, your storytellers, your engine for long-term success.

Every company says it listens to customers. In this conversation, Drew and guests Allyson Havener (HG Insights), JD Dillon (Tigo Energy), and Alan Gonsenhauser (Demand Revenue) show how listening turns into concrete action, how feedback becomes a system, and how customer voices drive lasting growth.

In this episode:

• Allyson on how reviews, surveys, and customer spotlights at TrustRadius feed marketing and influence buying decisions early
• JD on how Tigo’s Green Glove Program creates loyalty through installer support and a seal of quality
• Alan on why retention is a financial driver CMOs must track as closely as revenue

Plus:

• Why framing churn as retention keeps teams motivated
• How to bring the customer voice into leadership discussions
• The metrics that capture customer impact, from adoption to earned growth
• How to operationalize cross-functional alignment around the customer

Catch this episode to hear how customer voices shape strategy, culture, and growth.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 476: GenAI Isn’t a Toy—It’s a Culture Shift

Adopting AI isn’t about tools. It’s about trust, training, and transformation. And yes, about CMO’s getting their hands on the keyboard.

In this Huddles Quick Take, GenAI consultants Tahnee Perry and Liza Adams break down the most common mistakes CMOs make when rolling out GenAI—from skipping change management to misunderstanding what “hands-on” really means for leaders.

They also share practical use cases (like reducing a six-week video workflow to two) and explain why a great AI strategy is rooted in empathy, context, and curiosity—not just efficiency.

In this episode:

• Why productivity gains mean nothing without training and team buy-in
• The difference between thought partnership and bad prompting
• What to measure when making the case for GenAI investment

Join us

Get more insights like these by joining our free Starter program at cmohuddles.com.

“A top consulting firm recommended a reorg and now our CMO reports to the CRO,” shared a stunned senior executive from a S&P 500 company. A funeral dirge drummed in my head not just for the CMO but for their whole department. Rant to follow.

A Demotion in Disguise

When a CMO reports to a CRO after having reported to the CEO, that’s a demotion.

And a demoralizing demotion at that. The CMO has to explain to their team why their department no longer has a seat at the executive table. And how do you do that when you can’t explain it to yourself? Most self-respecting CMOs will pretend to accept the decision publicly while privately alerting their favorite recruiters that they’re ready to move on.

CMO Exit Countdown

Most likely, that CMO will leave in the next 6 months.

That will hurt the company a lot more than they realize. First, finding a qualified CMO to replace the old one will be time-consuming and expensive. Second, experienced CMOs, who are accustomed to having a seat at the “grown up's” table, won’t take a job that reports to a CRO. Third, it will take the new CMO time to get up to speed, and inevitably, they will make mistakes that the former CMO wouldn’t have. And finally, key staffers will also seek new opportunities, perhaps following their former CMO to their next gig. They’ll want to work at a place that respects marketing as a critical growth lever.

The CRO Problem

Most CROs have no experience in marketing.

Let me say that again. Most CROs have no experience in marketing. They are salespeople. Maybe even great salespeople. They could sell ice to penguins. No doubt, they are effective hunters and closers. They may even understand the inherent benefits of selling a product or service that is better known than competitors. But they sure as heck don’t know what it takes to build a marketing engine or run a highly diverse team with varied expertise (brand, martech, comms, content, product marketing, websites, etc).

Even a Former CMO Doesn’t Fix This

If the CRO is a former CMO, does that change the discussion?

Not really. Even if that particular CRO has a great understanding and appreciation for marketing, it doesn’t change the fact that the CMO is no longer part of the leadership team driving strategy. It might even be a fantastic job for many marketers. It’s just not a CMO role. Call it a VP of Marketing. And there’s nothing wrong with that title.

Is There More to Debate Here?

Perhaps. Last month my friend Erica Seidel tackled this topic with Daniel Incancela and Sandra Lopez (here’s an article on that). The discussion centered on the five critical considerations for CMOs before accepting this unacceptable reporting structure.

Written by Drew Neisser

CMO Huddles Names HG Insights as Official GTM Partner

Partnership empowers B2B CMOs with unparalleled market intelligence to accelerate growth

New York, NY — [September 8, 2026] — CMO Huddles, the #1 B2B CMO Community where savvy CMOs learn, network, and build their brands, today announced HG Insights as its official Go-to-Market (GTM) partner. HG Insights, the global leader in Revenue Growth Intelligence, equips organizations with actionable insights to drive revenue growth, reduce risk, and win more deals.

Through this partnership, CMO Huddles’ 500+ members, representing some of the world’s most innovative B2B brands, will gain access to HG Insights’ expertise, data, and thought leadership on GTM excellence. The collaboration underscores CMO Huddles’ commitment to arming CMOs with not only peer-driven learning and support but also cutting-edge resources to help them make smarter decisions in an increasingly complex market.

“At CMO Huddles, our mission is to make B2B CMOs the most effective executives in the C-Suite,” said Drew Neisser, Founder & CEO of CMO Huddles. “HG Insights is the perfect GTM partner for our community—helping Huddlers sharpen their strategies with the kind of precision data and intelligence that today’s fast-changing environment demands.”

“We are thrilled to partner with CMO Huddles and support the world’s top B2B CMOs,” said Shekar Heriharan, SVP Marketing at HG Insights. “By combining HG Insights’ market, account, and buyer intelligence with the collaborative power of the CMO Huddles community, we can help marketing leaders uncover the smartest paths to revenue growth.”

As the official GTM partner, HG Insights will be featured at CMO Huddles programming throughout the year, including Peer Huddles, Bonus Huddles, Dinner Huddles in multiple markets, panels during Dreamforce (October 14-16, 2025) and the flagship CMO Super Huddle on November 6-7, 2025, in Palo Alto, CA. The collaboration will also deliver exclusive content, research, and practical frameworks for CMO Huddles members.

About CMO Huddles

CMO Huddles is the only marketing community dedicated exclusively to B2B CMOs. Built on a foundation of Share, Care, Dare, the community unites marketing leaders through expertly moderated Huddles, curated peer-matching, and exclusive PR opportunities. With over 500 members across industries, CMO Huddles empowers CMOs to solve challenges faster, expand their networks, and be flocking awesome. CMO Huddles proudly donates 1% of revenue to the Global Penguin Society. Learn more at www.cmohuddles.com.

Media contact:
Drew Neisser
CEO & Founder, CMO Huddles
drew@cmohuddles.com 

About HG Insights

HG Insights delivers AI-powered Revenue Growth Intelligence (RGI) that transforms how B2B technology companies go to market. HG Insights solutions provide comprehensive market, account, and buyer insights; signal-triggered workflows; and in-market leads to help leaders modernize GTM decision-making and efficiently identify, engage, and win the most promising opportunities. 

AI-driven analytics, copilots, and agents empower marketing, RevOps, sales, and strategy teams to:

• Streamline market analyses

• Leverage deep account and buyer intent details

• Optimize campaigns and sales execution

All of this is powered by billions of market data points covering 22,000+ technologies across 20 million companies worldwide.

That’s why 95% of Fortune 1000 B2B tech companies and all major hyperscalers rely on HG Insights to help increase pipeline, accelerate revenue, and drive GTM success. 

For more information, visit www.hginsights.com.

Media contact:
Shekar Hariharan
SVP Marketing, HG Insights
shekar.hariharan@hginsights.com
(650) 868-1071

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 475: Customer Centricity: The Art of Picking Favorites

Most marketers still treat all customers like they’re created equal. Spoiler: they’re not. Some will buy once and vanish, others will stick with you for years and fuel your growth. The challenge and opportunity is learning to tell the difference, predicting their future value, and acting accordingly.

That’s where Wharton professor and The Customer Centricity Playbook co-author Peter Fader comes in. He shows why real growth starts with admitting that not every customer is equally valuable, then using lifetime value as the north star for smarter acquisition, retention, and development moves. Forget chasing volume or squeezing acquisition costs. Peter makes the case for putting your chips on the customers who matter most and letting their behaviors guide your strategy.

In this episode:

• Why chasing “average” customer value hides real growth
• How lifetime value sharpens acquisition, retention, and upsell
• The blind spots of treating CPA as a north star

Plus:

• What B2B and B2C leaders can borrow from each other’s strengths
• How sticky offerings reveal your best customers
• Why performance metrics must connect to customer value
• How customer-based valuation is “reshaping how finance values companies

If you want to see how lifetime value separates your best customers from the rest and why that changes everything, this one’s for you.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

“I’m excited about using GenAI for video, but my team is resisting,” shared a frustrated CMO from a $100M tech firm. Heads nodded. Turns out, this wasn’t an isolated case. Just about every CMO in the Huddle had heard some version of “we don’t have time,” or “it won’t look good enough,” or “what about the copyright issues?”

That resistance is understandable. Video has heretofore been expensive, time-consuming, and daunting for teams without full-time producers. But GenAI is changing that, just like every other aspect of content creation and marketing.

To understand how far a rank amateur could go with the current tools, I decided to produce a video about the upcoming CMO Super Huddle.

Step-by-Step with GenAI

Wisely, I had an experienced coach from Day 1 in the form of Samantha Stark, founder of Phyusion, an AI adoption & consulting firm. Sam helped me through each of these key steps:

1. BrandGPT - A container for all your brand guidelines, assets, and previous content
2. Strategy - Use BrandGPT to develop and refine objectives and strategy
3. Script & Storyboard - Use BrandGPT to draft script, storyboard and prompts for animations
4. Voiceover track - I used my own voice recorded via GarageBand (for virtual voices, try ElevenLabs)
5. Audio track - Reverse engineered the sound I was looking for on ChatGPT and created the track on Suno
6. Animation - I used ImagineArt (Veo 2 & Kling) to create 7 penguin animations because I was familiar with the tool, had credits, and Sora couldn’t get the tone right (Sam recommends Sora, RunwayML, Midjourney, Veo 3)
7. Editing - I used Descript since I already had a license, which was fine for a proof of concept. When the pros took over, they moved to Kapwing.

Halfway through, I was ready to quit. Sam talked me off the ledge.

When to Call in the Pros

While I can create short (under 10 seconds) animated scenes, crafting a professional-looking 60-second video was well beyond my skill level and current toolset. Clearly, I needed even more professional help, and that’s when Steve Mudd of Talentless.ai came into the picture.

Steve and his team used Veo3 to create more, better animations. They added sound effects. They tightened up the edits and added speaker card animations in Adobe Premiere and After Effects. They retextured the Super Huddle logo into ice and then exploded it with Midjourney.

The result? Flocking awesome or for the birds? You tell me

The Best Is Yet to Come

As Sam noted during our Bonus Huddle last week, “These tools are getting better almost daily, so what you see now is the worst it will be," while adding, “Your brand isn’t just what you say. It’s the experience of how you say it.” Sharing her enthusiasm, Steve exclaimed, “We’re at the beginning of a creative renaissance.”

With GenAI, video is no longer an expensive, time-consuming luxury. The only question is whether you're ready to press play.

Watch the CMO Super Huddle video here, created with GenAI, polished by pros.

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 474: Go for Launch: How CMOs Drive Market-Ready Products

Every product launch is a countdown to liftoff. High stakes. High visibility. High chance of failure if systems aren’t in sync. Misaligned messaging, unready sellers, vaporware promises. There are endless ways to completely blow it.

In this episode, Melanie Marcus (Surescripts), Kevin Brooks (Surescripts), and John Hale (Consilio) join Drew to dig into what it takes to pull off a successful launch. They explain why alignment cannot be assumed, how preparation has to be disciplined and ongoing, and why CMOs need to surface tough truths before the market does. Marketing may set the pace, but lasting success only happens when the entire company rallies behind the story and delivers it together.

In this episode:

• Melanie shares how to stretch a brand into new markets without losing credibility
• Kevin explains the launch-tiering framework that keeps efforts focused and sales-ready
• John reveals why the secret weapon is “ours, not mine” and how humble listening drives alignment

Plus:

• How to avoid the vaporware trap that kills trust fast
• Why one sharp value prop beats a laundry list of features
• What leading indicators to track before revenue shows up
• Where the real magic happens once a launch hits the market floor

If you want to hear how CMOs line up a launch and deliver when it matters most, this one’s for you.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/

“One of our salespeople keeps going rogue, and I’m doing all I can to reel him in,” shared a seasoned CMO at a tech startup. While the other CMOs in the Huddle offered guidance on gaining alignment, it made me wonder: Is it time to completely rethink Sales Enablement?

The problem isn’t just rogue reps. It’s a system that encourages chaos. One CMO shared, “We’ve got great messages that resonate, but Sales Enablement says it’s the wrong time to share them.” Another noted, “Product is producing substandard collateral because Sales went directly to them—cutting Marketing out of the loop entirely.”

It’s no wonder CMOs are frustrated. We build slick decks and elegant one-pagers—yet Sales clings to a 2019 slide with the wrong logo. We set up portals, and no one logs in. We host training sessions, and still get last-minute Slack messages: “Hey, do we have a case study for a mid-sized healthcare firm in Ohio?”

So what’s a savvy CMO to do?

1. Understand Your Rogues

Before condemning, listen. The rogue rep in question was closing deals—but not the kind you’d want. It turns out he was winning on price, undercutting the value proposition and increasing churn. As one CMO put it, “They don’t talk about our real differentiators—just a three-month discount.” If you don’t know what’s being said on sales calls, you can’t fix the funnel.

2. Collaborate, Don’t Dictate

Rather than fighting every deviation, smart CMOs co-create. One suggestion: “Treat the rogue like a partner, not a problem.” Pull them in. Learn what’s working. Then use that to shape flexible messaging frameworks—ones that adapt to buyers without fracturing the brand.

3. Think Co-Creation, Not Vending

Often, the problem isn’t the quality of the materials—it’s the disconnect between what Marketing thinks reps need and what Sales uses. As one CMO admitted, “We created great sell sheets—but one rep told me he never looked at them.” Why? Because they didn’t fit how he sold. Instead of assuming what Sales needs, ask. Sit in on calls. Shadow top performers. Then tailor your materials around real objections, use cases, and buyer personas.

4. Build Smart Systems, Not Static Assets

Sales enablement isn’t about creating more slides—it’s about architecting systems that drive revenue. From AI-powered content recommendations to dynamic digital deal rooms, today’s toolkit can turn random acts of enablement into precision plays. (Need ideas? See link in comments.)

5. Let Sales Be Sales—but Keep Score

Sometimes, the best way to prove the value of your materials is to put on your own sales hat. One CMO noted, “I started running a few calls myself to pressure-test the content.” Another shared, “We gave the events budget to Sales, along with the accountability. That ended the debate quickly.”

Bottom Line

Sales Enablement in 2025 isn’t about policing rogue reps. It’s about empowering the entire team—Sales included—with tools, insights, and guardrails that elevate performance without squashing initiative.

Written by Drew Neisser

Listen Here | From Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 473: Data Sync or Sink: How Does Your Tech Stack, Stack Up?

Think your tech stack is working for you? Think again.

After analyzing 100 stacks from the CMO Huddles community, Ryan Koonce of Growth Bench exposes what’s broken, what’s bloated, and what to do instead. From misfiring attribution models to misused tools like Google Analytics and Salesforce, this episode offers a fast, practical reset for any CMO serious about smarter growth.

In this episode:

• Why Salesforce isn’t always the answer
• The fatal flaw in Google Analytics you can’t ignore
• The real reason attribution is still a mess
• What “great” data access looks like for marketing teams

For the rest of the conversation, visit our YouTube channel (CMO Huddles Hub) or click here: [https://youtu.be/wRWHIrzsD68]. Get more insights like these by joining our free Starter program at cmohuddles.com.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcast/