Nobody said hiring a Chief Marketing Officer was easy, but over the past five years that challenge has become even tougher.
AI is reshaping what marketing teams deliver, what boards expect and the kind of CMO businesses need. Familiar leadership archetypes are breaking down, but the new model has yet to settle.
We’ve created this 17-page guide to help, drawing on decades of experience hiring CMOs into technology businesses.
How the CMO is evolving in a world of AI, and why familiar leadership archetypes are breaking down.
How to hire a relevant CMO that will help your business thrive, starting with getting the brief right.
Salary, bonus and equity guidance for software CMOs across every key company type and stage.
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Many searches begin with the CEO / Board asking me “who is the best CMO?”. I reframe by responding with my own question: “What constraint is preventing growth?”
Terry Shaw Partner, Calibre One
Not every software business needs a CMO, and choosing when to appoint one is as important as what type of CMO you might need. CMOs become valuable when what is holding back growth needs strategic thinking, rather than tactical refinement. For instance growth has stalled, founder-led selling no longer scales or the business needs stronger positioning and go-to-market leadership.
Even experienced leadership teams can get CMO hiring wrong. This has been exacerbated by major shifts in the CMO role itself; previous success is a less reliable indicator of success in the future. Often the problem is not the quality of the candidate, but a mismatch between the CMO hired and the business they are joining. At the core of this is the brief – get that right, and everything else follows.
AI is creating one of the most fundamental shifts in the CMO role we have ever seen. Markets are moving faster, and so is marketing. CMOs need to think very differently about how they resource and support their business. Right now, there are no clear rules. Apart from one – agility is key.
The role of marketing hasn’t changed, but the context in which it operates has. Successful CMOs are leaning into different skillsets: storytelling, hyper-adaptability, AI fluency, breadth over narrow specialism, and rolling up their sleeves.
When hiring, the key is to be clear and specific about the problem you are trying to solve. Get that right, and everything else becomes much, much easier. Hire for the next stage of growth and avoid searching for the unicorn – they don’t exist.
Compensation is significantly impacted by company stage; base salary, bonus and equity/LTIP expectations vary significantly depending on size and growth ambition. In this report we provide salary and compensation benchmarks across all key company types.
Seventeen pages of insight on hiring CMOs into software businesses, from how AI is reshaping the role to salary and compensation benchmarks across every key company type.
If you’re weighing up a CMO appointment, our team is happy to discuss your brief.
Discuss your CMO briefYou can download CMOs in Software: A Role in Flux here. We’ve also emailed you a link so you can return to it later.
We hope it gives you some useful ideas as you think about the future of marketing leadership in your business.
The Calibre One team
