Before you hire · For CEOs with an open marketing-leader search
Build the function. Then hire the person who runs it.
Your next marketing leader should inherit a system, not build one. While you search, I run a two-week Diagnostic that defines the role, sets up the AI stack compliantly, and writes the ninety-day plan. Your hire walks into it on day one.
The hire still happens. They just start with the function already built, so their first month goes to strategy, the board, the team, and the forecast instead of the CRM.
The posting
Most of them were written for a job that no longer exists.
Read ten marketing-leader postings at B2B software companies this month and the same lines come up. They were right in 2022. Then producing content got cheap, and the scarce work moved to the plumbing underneath it.
What the postings say
- Build and manage a five-person content team
- Own the blog, the newsletter, and the social calendar
- Write and edit campaign copy
- Manage agency relationships
- Report MQLs to the board monthly
What the role runs now
- Own one number: pipeline, and the cost of each dollar of it
- Run the systems: one lead definition, routing, scoring, attribution, the scoreboard
- Own the AI stack: what it drafts, who signs, and the log that proves it
- Hold the regulated line: a written approval step before any claim ships
- Run the weekly loop where somebody decides something
The headcount plan under the role follows the same shift. A posting budgeted for a team of five usually describes two people and a system. Deciding that before the hire is cheaper than asking the hire to decide it in their first quarter.
The first quarter
The most expensive ninety days of their tenure.
Here is what a new marketing leader does in their first quarter when they inherit nothing. All of it at a leader's salary. None of it pipeline.
Weeks 1 to 4
Learns the company. Meets sales. Discovers there are three definitions of a lead and nobody agrees on which one the board sees.
Weeks 5 to 8
Audits the stack. Finds the AI tools somebody bought last spring, no process around them, no owner. Starts a tool evaluation.
Weeks 9 to 13
Rebuilds reporting. Negotiates the lead definition with sales. Presents a plan to the board. Pipeline from this quarter: whatever was already in motion.
Every item on that list can be done before they start, by someone who has done it before, in two weeks of diagnosis and a fixed build.
The same quarter, with a function in place
Weeks 1 to 4
Opens a scoreboard with numbers in it. Meets sales over a lead definition both sides already signed. Walks into the first board meeting with a read, not a plan to produce one.
Weeks 5 to 8
Sets the strategy: which segments, which channel bets, what gets killed. Decides who to hire under them, against a headcount plan that already accounts for what AI covers.
Weeks 9 to 13
Forecasts pipeline for the next two quarters from attribution that already works. Manages people instead of tools. Pipeline from this quarter: theirs.
That is what you're paying a leader for: strategy, the board, the team, the forecast. Build the function before they start and they get to it in month one instead of month four.
The Diagnostic, during the search · Two weeks · $7,500
Three things your hire walks into.
The Diagnostic is the same two-week audit I run for every client: stack, funnel, interviews, the last ninety days of requests. Run during a search, the readout is written for the hire as much as for you.
01
The role, scoped
What the role actually runs at your company, the headcount under it set after deciding what AI covers, and a rewritten posting. The candidate pool changes when the posting changes.
02
The AI operating baseline
The tools you already own, assigned an owner, a review step, and a written usage policy that matches the rules you operate under. Set up compliantly before anyone generates a word.
03
The ninety-day plan the hire walks into
One lead definition sales agreed to, the scoreboard with numbers in it, and the first-quarter plan written down. Day one is a working document, not a blank page.
If the readout shows the function needs building before anyone can run it, that's The Marketing Engine: ninety days, fixed scope, timed to finish before or as the hire starts. If it shows you're ready to hire, you get a better posting and a plan, and the $7,500 was the cheapest part of the search.
The scorecard
Ten questions to ask of the posting before it goes up.
Open the posting as it reads today. Tick each line that is true. Nothing here is stored or sent anywhere.
0/10
Score your posting.
Tick each line that is true of the posting as it reads today. Eight or more and the search is the right next step. Four or fewer and the first hire is a system, not a person.
Download the scorecard as a one-page PDF to mark up with your sales leader.
Day one
What the hire inherits.
I left a marketing function in June that kept running without me. This is what it had. It's what I build, in your tools, with the person you already have beside me.
One lead definition
Written, with deal-value thresholds, signed by sales. The fight the new leader would otherwise spend their first month on is already over.
Routing and scoring in the CRM
Leads move to the right person on a rule, not a Slack message. Scoring reflects the definition above.
A scoreboard with numbers in it
Five metrics, anchored on pipeline, owners named, wired to real data. The board one-pager is assembled from it.
An AI stack with an owner
What AI may draft, what a person must sign, and the log that shows who reviewed what. Built to the rulebook that applies to you.
A go-to-market per business unit
ICP, segments, channel bets, and the criteria for killing or scaling each one. One page each.
A weekly loop that already runs
The Monday agenda with inputs, decisions, and owners. The operator you already have knows how to run it.
Fit
This works when four things are true.
- You run a B2B software company that sells into regulated or institutional buyers: fintech, healthtech, edtech, govtech.
- A Head of Marketing, VP of Marketing, or CMO posting is open, or about to be, and the role reports to you or your COO.
- Marketing is sitting with you, or with a manager, until the hire lands.
- You'd rather the hire's first quarter produce pipeline than infrastructure.
Where I'll point you elsewhere
- You need an interim leader three days a week. I don't sell days, and the Diagnostic is scoped to end before or as the hire starts.
- You need campaigns run and content produced this quarter. That's an agency or a coordinator hire, and I can point you to people I trust.
One more thing, since it comes up: I'm not a candidate for the role. I build the function and hand it off. The person you hire runs it, and I'm always trying to work myself out of a job.