Your marketing team isn't performing
I step in as your CMO — diagnose what's broken, rewrite the plan, and lead the people already in seats. Six months later you have a team performing under a plan, and a leader they've promoted or hired.
Is this you?
- You have marketers on payroll and can't say what pipeline they created last quarter.
- The team is busy — content ships, the booth gets built — but the founder still sources every serious deal.
- Your marketing manager is capable but out of depth at this stage, and you both know it.
- You've considered hiring a VP of Marketing, but you're not sure what the role even is yet.
If you recognised at least three of those, keep reading. If none of them landed, one of the other two tracks probably fits better.
What I do, month by month
00
Review
Thirty minutes on your team, your plan and your market. I arrive with three observations already prepared.
Free · 30 min
01
Teardown
The full diagnostic — twelve audit areas — plus a team capability assessment and a vendor review. Out: a prioritized roadmap and an honest read on who can own what.
Month 1
02
Build
The plan gets reset against the Teardown. Roles get redefined, priorities get cut, instrumentation goes live, and the team starts shipping against a plan they helped pressure-test.
Months 2–3
03
Run
Weekly leadership, 1:1s and capability coaching, with monthly reporting against pipeline. The team levels up rather than just executing my orders.
Months 4–5
04
Transfer
A hiring or promotion recommendation for my successor, a documented operating system, and a 30-day handoff to the leader who replaces me.
Month 6
What you get at month six
- A team performing against a validated roadmap, reported monthly against pipeline.
- A written capability assessment and development plan for each team member.
- A hiring or promotion recommendation for your next marketing leader, with a job spec.
- The documented operating cadence: planning, reporting, vendor management, board updates.
- A 30-day leadership handoff plan, executed with your incoming leader.
What I need from you
- A decision-maker in the monthly review — the CEO or whoever owns revenue.
- Access to sales data, the CRM, and the last twelve months of marketing spend.
- Authority to actually lead the team: set priorities, run 1:1s, redirect vendors.
- A commitment to promote or hire my successor by month five, so the transfer is real.
Where AI fits in this track
The team inherits AI-native systems, not just a plan: signal monitoring for their accounts, enrichment pipelines instead of list-building interns, and reporting automation that makes the monthly review a ten-minute read. Smaller team, more output — that's what makes the handoff stick.
Relevant work
The closest published work: building and running Motivo Engineering's marketing and BD function — leadership, systems and reporting in one seat.
Motivo Engineering case studyRelevant industries
Questions about Lead
Will you fire people?
That's your call, not mine — but I'll give you an honest capability assessment in month one, and if someone is in the wrong seat I'll say so with evidence. More often the finding is the opposite: capable people executing a plan that was never going to work.
What if the team resents an outsider?
The Teardown defuses most of it, because it usually vindicates the team: the diagnosis names the strategy and the systems, not the people. I lead through weekly 1:1s and a plan people can see themselves succeeding in, and the track ends with one of them — or a new hire — taking over.
Who do you report to?
The CEO or the founder who owns revenue, in a monthly review with the roadmap on the table. If there's a board reporting cadence, I'll build the marketing section of it and sit in when useful.
What happens to our existing agency and vendors?
They get assessed in the Teardown like everything else. If they're good, they get a better brief and clearer direction. If they're not, I'll manage the transition. I have no production capacity of my own to sell into the gap, so the recommendation is clean.
Structure, terms and the month-three checkpoint are on the engagements page. The method behind all three tracks is on the Approach page. Month one is the Teardown.
Bring me your hardest go-to-market problem
Thirty minutes. I'll come with three observations about your market already prepared. No deck.