Dec. 31, 2020
Marketing Costs from the Perspective of the CFO with Jack Sweeney
This week, Eric Dickmann interviews Jack Sweeney. Jack is the host and producer of CFO Thought Leader — a podcast featuring interviews of finance leaders who are driving change within their organizations. He is managing director of Middle-Market Executive, the leader in audio on-demand content for the middle-market C-suite.
With a background of more than 20 years in print and online journalism, Jack has written extensively about finance, management consulting, information technology, and public policy. He is the former editor in chief of Business Finance Magazine and the founding editor of Consulting magazine. He served as editor of Integration Management and Washington Technology, both published by The Washington Post Cos. Prior to the Post, he worked as a reporter for CMP Media in London.
In this episode, we discuss the roles of the CMO and CFO, how they work together inside an organization to manage costs, and the challenges ahead for organizations in 2021.
CFO Thought Leader Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cfo-thought-leader/id832481615
Book: The CFO Yearbook, 2021: The Finance Career Builders Guide to the C-Suite is available on Amazon
Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com
Jack Sweeney can be found online on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/9249627/ and on Twitter @CFOTL
Episode Summary: The episode summary can be found at: Coming Soon!
If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/podcast
For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com
Episode #50
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The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group.
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If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.
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Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
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I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
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In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business.
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This week, I'm excited to welcome Jack Sweeney to the program.
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Jack is the host and producer of the CFO thought leader.
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A podcast featuring interviews with finance leaders who are driving change within their organization.
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He is the managing director of middle market executive, the leader in audio on demand content for the middle-market C-suite.
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With a background of more than 20 years in print and online journalism, Jack has written extensively about finance management, consulting, information technology, and public policy.
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He is the former editor in chief of business finance magazine and the founding editor of consulting magazine.
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Today, we're going to have an interesting discussion talking about how the role of the CFO.
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Interacts with marketing.
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Jack welcome to the virtual CMO podcast.
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I'm so glad you could join us today.
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Eric.
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Thank you for having me.
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This is a great, great opportunity.
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Appreciate
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Yeah, this is fun because we're recording this at the end of 2020, what a crazy year it has been.
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And I think it's interesting because we're going to get a chance to talk about something.
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We don't always get a chance to talk about on this show, which is the relationship between different branches, if you will, of the business.
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Maybe if we could just start out, share with the audience a little bit.
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Of your background.
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Well, certainly well I entered the professional world as a journalist in the late 1980s, and I.
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Was it tech reporter and back then there was no internet or.
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No Amazon.
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So it was about computer dealers on the corner.
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And, uh, I began writing about them.
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It was fun.
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It was exciting even.
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Uh, and then I went up the food chain and I began writing about.
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Systems integrators and large government contractors.
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And we launched a magazine.
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Uh, where I launched a couple of magazines over my career, but the first magazine I launched us with the Washington post companies, it was known as integration management.
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Just mentioned that it was for, the Washington post was interested in supplying information products.
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Too many of the companies in its backyard.
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So that was Northern Virginia and the beltway.
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And so that magazine was tailored from there.
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For them.
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And from there I went and, uh, a group of entrepreneurs who are starting up a magazine for management consultants, and I got to be editor of a magazine called consulting.
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Love driving about management consulting was there for roughly seven years as its editor and chief.
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And after that, I jumped up and media in New York where, they had just acquired a magazine called business finance.
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And we were going to help roll out all sorts of digital offerings for business finance.
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And I'm kind of smiling because, well, it wasn't a great experience in that fact that print dollars started evaporating so quickly.
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but it did put me on this path to my current podcast, CFO thought leader.
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and I stayed in the finance realm as I started to think about what type of information product I could serve this same community with.
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but of course I had to do that on my own but anyway, that's how I found you, Eric.
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Uh, in this podcasting land.
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Well, and it's great to talk to a fellow podcaster because I think one of the beauties of podcasting is that, we all can serve different niche audiences and there are so many.
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And by being able to provide content specific for a niche.
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you can really serve that audience well, and we get today to cross niches, if you will.
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And talk about the intersection really of two branches of the business, which is really the finance side and the marketing side.
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Let's just start out with sort of an overview of 2020, and in your conversations with CFOs.
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What has been some of the feedback?
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Clearly business has changed.
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There've been a lot of concerns, but what kinds of things are you hearing from the CFO's office?
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One of the dynamics that's been underway in the CFO office for some time is that the role has been broadening.
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So finance leaders.
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Are playing a much larger role than they did say 20 years ago.
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And of course, if you went to any, a finance conference in the last.
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Two decades you'd likely see a presentation on the changing role of the CFO.
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what it translates into in the current environment is they're playing a much bigger role with there.
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HR function.
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With their sales function and with their marketing function at no other time, I think COVID.
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Has really, uh, allowed CFOs to sort of build those relationships and make sure, they're being nurtured.
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and there's a lot of reasons why the finance role has broadened as, and data is a part of it.
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As we know marketing.
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data has transformed that function in such a meaningful way and the same has happened with finance and how it connects with these other functions.
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And I know that's something we'll, we'll be talking about how finances look to assist marketing and help marketing understand better, how to make better decisions.
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And again, that's a role finance leaders like to play throughout the organization, but particularly with marketing.
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I love the way that you frame that in that it's not an adversarial role.
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I think we talk a lot in marketing about being a cost center.
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We spend money in order to make money, but we're certainly spending the company's money to do that.
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But that doesn't mean that the relationship between the marketing side of the house and the finance side of the house has to be an adversarial relationship.
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And it's interesting, the way that you phrase that in how a CFO or the head of the finance side of the business can really be there to assist marketing in making good financial decisions.
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And how best to spend those dollars.
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And this can be pretty tricky.
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I mean, in large organizations, finance has been embedding financial analysts and different functions to assist the general manager in the business leader of that function, that area of the business.
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now in smaller organizations, finance leaders.
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I have been able to get greater visibility through so many of the applications and the data that's being collected throughout the organization today.
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They have a better sense of what's happening more than any other time.
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So part of what I've been asking, finance leaders part of our regular dialogue.
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First, I want to understand how they look at the business.
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So what are your financial metrics?
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But then I asked for those, what are the nonfinancial metrics that you're paying attention to?
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And what's interesting is there's sort of this ego for lack of a better word where they're coming forward and they ha they have a new metric that they discovered.
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And very often it's related to marketing.
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Or sales.
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And again finance today, nothing, excites a finance leader more than when they can explain to you their sales funnel or what's contributing to helping the sale get through the funnel and the marketing role.
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Turn back the clock, this was not a dialogue.
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They would have been having 10 years ago.
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but there are a lot of neck.
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technology assisting them.
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And I think at first you talked about the adversarial role, of course, no one wants finance, looking over their shoulder.
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no one wants finance saying no.
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you want finance to help make better business decisions.
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And most finance leaders are right there.
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They really want to understand why these marketing dollars are being spent and how we can see it.
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You know, the pay off.
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Well, it's interesting that you say it that way too, because what are a couple of things that you mentioned here one is, is the tools.
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And I think certainly from a marketing perspective, we've seen with the advent of, you know, the marketing automation platforms and the ability to track people throughout that buyer's journey into that sales funnel that you're talking about.
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Good organizations have a much better understanding of how their marketing dollars are working on their behalf.
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But I also think it's interesting that when you talk about the payback for a marketing spend, one of the challenges that marketers often face is that an investment today doesn't necessarily yield a result tomorrow.
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It could be a month from now three months from now, six months from now.
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And for finance people I think there's a perception that it's month to month, quarter to quarter, they want to see very clear results quickly.
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Do you think that's accurate?
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Do you think from your conversations, are they willing to give marketing time to work?
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Yeah.
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So I think that's where the relationship building.
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Uh, has to come into place, By that, I mean, uh, there needs to be an ongoing discussion with the CMO with the top marketing executives.
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And there needs to be a relationship.
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And I think in the past, again, finance leaders were isolated and this is why I enjoy producing CFO Thought Leader, because I think it's a piece of content that's helping finance leaders build those relationships with other functional areas by better explaining how they view their role.
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Very often I'll ask so there's a particular number in the organization that you think.
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Needs to be more top of mind or people aren't paying attention to.
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How do you bring that visibility to it?
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And of course there are several ways to do that.
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There's you might just add at the start of a meeting.
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Write it on the whiteboard.
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And put a circle around it and ask, how do we get more people aware of this number?
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And it might be your net promoter score.
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It could be any, any number that's impacting the organization.
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It might be a cost number.
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so how do finance leaders manage and lead?
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How do you do that?
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And it's changing how finance leaders lead there.
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Learning how to be more collaborative.
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And it begins with forming that relationship with marketing and establishing that trust where I understand you've explained to me why we're not going to have the visibility we would like over the next 90 days into this investment.
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Uh, but, in the next 20 days that follow we should be able to make some judgment calls, which we always have to make, we can't just continue to invest.
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I'm a huge fan of HubSpot as a company.
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And one of the things their CEO often talks about is this idea of transparency.
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And that within that organization, really all the information about how the company is doing is available to the employees, as long as it doesn't violate some sec rule about, confidentiality or whatnot.
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But there's this idea that when people understand how a company is doing what the metrics are that they're all working towards, what are the numbers that they want to hit?
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You know, when your example of putting things up on the whiteboard so that people can see what the goals are to me, that seems like the way companies should be, they should be more transparent about that.
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But oftentimes numbers have been held very tight to the vest.
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If you will, do you see a change in CFO's wanting to be more transparent within the organization that they find that that's actually more helpful when employees understand the numbers and what targets they're actually shooting for.
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There is an evolution underway in terms of transparency and data and the visibility we're all enjoying in our professional lives today, I think has been growing steadily now certain finance leaders run across the spectrum.
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There are there's radical transparency where it's fascinating to see the results and how those organizations are being managed, where employees.
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I even get to see salaries and pay levels and what have you.
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and then there's a somewhere else along the spectrum might be a little more conservative in terms of those types of numbers being served up or visible at any given time but different finance leaders adapt the management, the board, there's lots of stakeholders involved in these types of decisions sometimes but the push towards greater transparency is underway and organizations.
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Without a doubt.
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I think.
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By and large are more transparent than they were 10 years ago.
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For sure.
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I'm sure.
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In your conversations, you talk to a mix of businesses that are both public and privately held.
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what do you see as obviously there's disclosure requirements and whatnot for public companies, right.
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But in terms of how companies are managed, do you see private companies willing to take more risks, willing to take more investments than public companies?
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Or is that really not a differentiator?
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Are there any broad statements you can make about conversations of a public company versus private?
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That's a interesting debate.
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That's been going on for some time now.
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And there has been something about.
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A drought in the IPO world until very recently, we've heard quite a bit about, IPO's but very quickly finance leaders would tell you they enjoy a good deal of strategic bandwidth, uh, in a private company today, they are able to, uh, take on certain initiatives or spend money in certain ways that Perhaps, if they were publicly held, it would not be convenient.
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so I would tell you that, meanwhile, if you're going to be moving into the deal-making mode, if you want to be liquid and you want to grow your company there are certainly perks to being public still however I do ask the question very frequently.
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When a new CFO comes into, uh, role I might ask, would you rather be a, would you rather be private today?
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And very often they'll say, Oh, yes, I'd rather be private.
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so it's not a, and again, that's largely smaller companies, I think at times Companies may go public.
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Too early.
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If there's a mistake it's going public.
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Too early and they didn't understand.
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How restrictive and how it could constrain the company when it most wants to grow and get to the next threshold.
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It's a debate that's still going on and you can have really strong ideas on both sides.
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Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast.
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But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level?
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If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you.
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We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step.
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00:16:06.375 --> 00:16:07.634
Now back to the podcast.
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We've just gone through this election cycle here in the States.
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Obviously there's going to be a new administration.
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There's going to be some changes.
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Do you think by and large businesses are excited about, what they see coming in the next four years or from a finance perspective, do you think they're looking towards more regulation.
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More constraints on what they can do.
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Has this been a topic of conversation?
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It is I think, uh, the topic that we've been Frequently touching on is how, the current environment, the pandemic has really moved the needle on so many strategic initiatives.
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The fact, and that phrase you continue to hear is that COVID has been an accelerant.
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If there were trends.
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Uh, that were sort of just surfacing, they've moved five years forward.
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Um, so you see a lot of companies taking the initiative and placing larger bets in some of the strategic initiatives, they believed would serve customers five years into the future.
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They're now, thinking that could be, you know, 20, 22.
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so that's the overriding in terms of.
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A trend.
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The what's happening in the, in big tech with, some of the regulatory challenges that it looks like are coming down and the next step 12 months should be interesting.
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I think right now, most of our finance leader, guests are really just observing and watching closely, but I think they are agreed that, as far as big tech is concerned, they're going to be some greater scrutiny.
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I think that's interesting because what you've said is a little bit counterintuitive or at least.
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What we've seen on the news that some things are accelerating.
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I think from a marketing perspective, we've certainly seen some pullback, right?
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In terms of what people are spending on, not really sure of the business climate, unsure of where to make their bets.
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We've seen that people have been saving more money, but that yet we're having a big holiday shopping season is people are buying things online or they didn't spend money on vacations and whatnot.
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So there's a lot of behavior that's just outside what people have expected the norm to be.
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And I think that scared some marketers, some companies marketing programs, at least away from placing any big bets.
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But you're saying on the other hand, companies are using this time to really accelerate some of maybe the infrastructure changes that they need to make within their companies.
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Uh, because of the changes brought on by COVID.
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So it's really two sides of a coin, right?
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Pull back in some areas and acceleration and others.
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Yeah, no.
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And in fact, I should have mentioned in your you're correct.
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Cash is top of mind for most of the CFOs are speaking to and cash management.
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And where they are investing is yes, it is in that technology infrastructure they understand that people are using technology today.
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Digital communications technology in particular, more than ever in the comfort level's there so they are making more investment in tools, technology tools, and how to do business in remote environments.
00:19:16.478 --> 00:19:17.438
Very aggressively.
00:19:17.438 --> 00:19:17.978
Many of them.
00:19:18.691 --> 00:19:31.351
When you talk about a small companies versus larger companies is typically even in a very small company, the role of an accountant or an accounting team to manage the books.
00:19:31.621 --> 00:19:45.270
But when you start to talk about something to the extent of a CFO or somebody who is really responsible for a finance function, it's more than just keeping the books, it's guiding the company's strategy.
00:19:45.510 --> 00:19:59.730
So when you talk to some of these smaller companies, do you think some wait too long to bring on that role, to have that active financial management and planning, and they just are stuck in sort of an accounting function.
00:20:00.030 --> 00:20:01.050
Does that question make sense?
00:20:01.590 --> 00:20:09.411
Oh, absolutely and you're talking about one of the biggest challenges, a small to medium sized business has, is.
00:20:09.861 --> 00:20:13.401
Making a good CFO hire making the right CFO hire.
00:20:14.121 --> 00:20:25.111
And it's hard to do and again, there's a saying among finance leaders and senior finance executives, that to become a CFO you already have to be a CFO.
00:20:25.661 --> 00:20:30.820
and it's very, it's a hard step to take, to get into the C-suite.
00:20:31.240 --> 00:20:35.221
Many will, do a gradually inside of a company.
00:20:35.280 --> 00:20:37.351
So they'll graduate from controller.
00:20:37.740 --> 00:20:44.280
To, uh, either a senior vice president of finance and then into a CFO role or some other steps often between the two.
00:20:44.980 --> 00:20:52.050
but to your point, I think It's gotta be a chemistry as well with the CEO very often.
00:20:52.050 --> 00:20:56.851
We're w we're talking often about the founder led company.
00:20:57.540 --> 00:21:02.820
And comes to that threshold of growth where they have to step beyond it.
00:21:03.330 --> 00:21:12.101
And often a finance leader is what marks that threshold we need another C-suite leader.
00:21:12.780 --> 00:21:20.790
let's say that founder's name is Max to match Max's visionary mindset we need a financial mindset.
00:21:21.121 --> 00:21:23.371
If you're going to begin raising capital.
00:21:23.641 --> 00:21:38.290
And educating the banking community about the vision of the company, Max is going to want a competent seasoned finance executive beside them as that discussion takes place.
00:21:38.661 --> 00:21:50.060
meanwhile, inside your financial functions, you may have outsourced accounting up to a certain date in time, and now you have to bring those processes in house as you begin to raise capital.
00:21:50.601 --> 00:22:00.800
And you're you again, if the company just becomes so much more complex, as you serve customers, as you create an HR function and serve your employees.
00:22:01.421 --> 00:22:04.421
Who's going to make these hires along with the CEO.
00:22:04.901 --> 00:22:12.881
And often a CFO, someone who's trusted within the organization, a C-suite trusted partner is what's required.
00:22:13.780 --> 00:22:16.391
Yeah, that trust on the executive team is so important.
00:22:16.421 --> 00:22:18.310
I've seen it firsthand many times.
00:22:18.590 --> 00:22:25.641
Founders, they typically have a lot of control and bringing these other C-suite executives in means giving up some of that control.
00:22:25.641 --> 00:22:38.810
And sometimes that's not an easy process for a company to go through, but bringing in people who are real experts in their field, who can help guide the company to the next level of growth is so important for so many companies.
00:22:39.250 --> 00:22:43.840
As we're nearing the end of our show here, I wanted to get your comments on one last thing.
00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:53.171
We were talking about it a little bit in the pre-call, but the previous episode of the show we had on a content marketing expert who was talking about the power of content marketing.
00:22:53.411 --> 00:22:58.681
And you said something very interesting about the language that the CFOs use.
00:22:58.921 --> 00:23:01.320
I wonder if you could expand on that again for the audience.
00:23:01.770 --> 00:23:04.681
Yeah, I was explaining that, and I think his name was Liam.
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