“How the heck do I cut 50% of our staff?” a frustrated CMO from a $275 million fintech asked after his CEO made this request. I hate hearing these stories. But they keep coming. So, I thought I’d use this rant to imagine how the conversation could play out.

CEO: I keep reading about the efficiencies others are gaining by using GenAI. I’d like you to explore ways to reduce your staffing costs by 50%.

CMO: I appreciate your desire to improve our company's EBITDA by reducing costs, and I’m firmly committed to finding efficiencies using GenAI. In fact, we’ve already reduced our content production time by 25% which has freed up resources to expand our new vertical audience initiatives. Those, in turn, have helped us continue to drive 50% of revenue.

CEO: 50% of revenue sounds good, but couldn’t you do that even more efficiently?

CMO: We’re always looking for efficiencies. Have you considered that your marketing department is already outperforming all of our competitors? And that our CPA is the lowest in the industry, and our contribution to revenue is the highest?

CEO: Yes, you and your team have done great work. But we’re entering a new era, and we will all need to do better.

CMO: Challenge accepted. Do you have any thoughts on how we might maintain our revenue contribution at 50% while reducing our staff by 50%?

CEO: Frankly, I don’t. That’s your job.

CMO: I appreciate your honesty. I’m prepared to sit down with our CFO and review our current team structure, staffing costs, and marketing plans, and consider new approaches. For example, we currently allocate 45% of our programming budget to events, which are highly staff-intensive (and so far, robot-proof). We could reduce the number of events by 50%, which would make some staff reductions possible. However, our CRO won’t like it since events are where they accelerate deals most effectively.

CEO: Understand. Cutting events may not be the right route. But surely you can find other areas to automate.

CMO: I’m so glad you brought that up. Yes, we are currently piloting SDR, campaign, workflow, and translation automations. Some of these pilots are looking quite promising, but there’s a catch. It turns out that we need new types of staff members who can help build these automations and fine-tune them. Currently, maintaining our staffing count feels like a victory. And then there’s AEO.

CEO: What’s AEO?

CMO: Answer engine optimization. It’s about how brands show up in LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. It’s why our site traffic is down 20%. People just aren’t clicking on Google anymore. They’re discovering and choosing brands based on what the LLMs suggest. It’s a brand new ballgame, requiring a new playbook and new expertise. We’re on top of this, and the good news is that traffic from LLMs to our website is converting at 4x the rate of Google-driven traffic.

CEO: Could you write something up about this for me to share with the Board?

CMO: I’d be happy to.

Written by Drew Neisser