I was brought in to fix a marketing problem. What I found changed how I think about replacing commercial leaders when the plan falls behind.
I was asked to review product marketing at a PE-backed software company. Marketing was generating leads, and sales was not converting them, and the company wanted to know why. Most of the blame had settled on marketing. Its MQL numbers were constantly reviewed, and it was held responsible for leads that never converted to revenue.
I started where the brief pointed, with marketing. The further I got, the less it looked like a marketing problem, so I widened the review to follow the work from product all the way through to sales.
That is when it clicked.
Each of the three teams was doing its job, but each was working to its own definitions and its own timetable. Marketing delivered the volume of leads it had been asked for. Sales then qualified those leads against criteria nobody had ever shared with marketing. Because no one owned the handoff between the teams, no one could see that this was where the revenue was going missing.
I have come to call this the Synchronisation Tax, which is the cost a business pays when product, marketing and sales run on different clocks. The MQL count was a classic Ghost Metric. It looked healthy in the board pack, but told the business very little about revenue.
The conversation changed once I took this to the board. Nobody asked how to fix marketing anymore, because they wanted to know what had to change in the handoffs. I used the idea of passing the baton, the moment when one team’s work becomes another team’s job and pace is either kept or lost. Then I walked them through how and when each baton should pass and what would make it easier.
My sponsor was very satisfied with the presentation and with the feedback from the board. More importantly, the board now saw a business issue rather than a marketing one.
Marketing had been carrying the blame for something that spanned three functions. Had the business replaced the marketing leader, the next person would have walked into exactly the same situation and got exactly the same result. Only the name on the door would have changed.
Why this keeps happening
I have worked in commercial roles for more than 20 years and have been measured on numbers in every one of them. Every commercial leader lives with this. Half of what drives your number may sit with another team, and it is still your number.
When a portfolio company falls behind plan, the board naturally looks to whoever owns that number. Board packs are usually organised by function, so the gaps between product, marketing and sales rarely appear in them. Everyone can see the leader, but hardly anyone can see the handoff.
Sometimes replacing a CCO, CRO or CMO is the right call. It is rarely a quick one, though. Recruitment takes months. A new leader then needs time to settle in, and most begin with a diagnosis of their own. If the real bottleneck turns out to be between functions, a good part of the hold period may have passed before anyone notices.
What I ask now, before anyone is replaced
When commercial performance is behind plan, I now want answers to four questions before deciding the leader is the problem.
• Do marketing and sales agree on what a qualified lead is?
• Who holds the baton when it passes from product to the people taking it to market?
• Do sales and finance agree on the forecast?
• Did the last person in this role run into the same problems?
If the answers point to the system, a new leader will probably hit the same wall as the last one. If the system is sound and performance is still poor, the leadership decision becomes much easier to make.
Where I come in
My work with ClockSpeed starts by examining how product, marketing, and sales work together, so that system problems can be separated from leadership problems. I do not stop at the diagnosis. Too many reports land on teams that are already stretched, and nothing happens. I stay and work alongside the leadership team on handoffs and on who owns what, so the business maintains an operating rhythm that continues after I leave. If there is a genuine leadership gap, I can also cover it as an interim or fractional commercial leader while the permanent hire is found.
The question worth asking before you change the leader
If the next commercial leader inherits the same engine, what will they be able to do differently?
ClockSpeed helps investors and Operating Partners determine whether commercial underperformance is a leadership or a system problem, and then fix the system from within.