Winning Influence: How CMOs can strengthen C-suite relationships
For our most recent roundtable, we brought together an exceptional group of CMOs, senior marketing advisors and comms leaders to discuss how to build stronger, more influential relationships across the C-suite. The focus was on communicating with clarity, empathy, and commercial confidence.
Here are the key takeaways from the conversation as each guest shared how they have navigated dynamics in their leadership position.
Lead with empathy and clarity. Understand personality, timing and pressure before communicating.
Translate marketing into business value. Put aside the marketing metrics and tailor your narrative.
Build relationships proactively. Create a rhythm of open, regular communication with peers.
Be concise and confident. Distill, don’t dilute.
Future-proof your story. Track marketing’s influence on revenue now, before you’re asked to.
The role of the CMO
CMOs carry a unique responsibility to fly the flag of the customer. As Alex Noble, Head of Marketing at Bank of London, put it, “In a room where many leaders are focused inward on operations and performance, marketing is often the only voice at the table advocating for the outside world — the customer and the competitive landscape.”
That external perspective gives marketing its power, but it also means CMOs must constantly educate and translate what is happening in the market to business impact and direction.
The group also reflected on the need to future-proof the marketing function. Leadership changes such as CEOs, CFOs and boards are inevitable, and with each shift, institutional knowledge can be lost while new priorities arrive. We spoke about the need to put in place reporting systems, pipeline measurement and KPIs to clearly demonstrate marketing contribution to revenue and growth, even if current leadership isn’t asking for it.
“Mode” switching and personalities
Ingrid Sierra, CMO at Fancy, opened the conversation on leadership styles, drawing a clear distinction between founder and professional CEOs. “Founders tend to have more emotional drivers,” she explained, “whereas, on the flipside, professional CEOs focus on rationality and process.”
Laura McCracken, Blackheath Advisors, added further colour: “CEOs often have dual personalities. They can swing between confident bordering on arrogant, and deeply insecure with imposter syndrome. The rare ‘unicorn’ CEO balances both, strong-willed yet grounded.”
But as Will Gardiner, VP Marketing at Vertice, noted: “You need to understand who they are, but also which version of them you’re engaging with.” Most leaders fluctuate between “modes” depending on which hat they are wearing on any given day, or even just in the moment - be ready to switch multiple times within just one conversation:
Product Officer - they want all the detail
Chairman - a focus on investor optics and financials
People leader - all about internal comms and culture
But also the timing, as Will explained:
“Week after good financial results? Build the relationship. Week before a board meeting? Lead with data, lose the chat. Year three of PE backing? Expect reactive, short-term decisions as investors look for the off-ramp.”
The room agreed on this point that the key skill here is leading with empathy. Natasha Davidson, CMO at Learnlight, described her approach simply: “Let me help you.” That mindset of curiosity, empathy and partnership allows CMOs to steady the ship when leadership is under pressure and keep a long-term lens when others are thinking short-term.
The conversation also touched on practicalities: some executives prefer WhatsApp to email (as James Bridgman said, “compliance be damned”), and EAs can be an invaluable source of intelligence about timing, priorities, and mood.
Building a united front
Trust and influence are not earned in a single moment. They are built over time through consistency and credibility.
Noa Dekel-Smith, Pie Supply, emphasised that, “it’s important to actively listen and seek alignment across departments, asking how marketing can help others achieve their goals or overcome a key challenge.” She shared her approach of regular, two-way communication with C-suite and departmental leads to help build alignment and strengthen marketing’s credibility across the business.
Ingrid shared a similar experience: “A CFO told me they’d never heard a CMO say, ‘I’m here to help you.’ That changed everything.”
By building allies, you can “pre-sell ideas” and help secure early buy-in in advance of presenting marketing strategies and campaigns at leadership meetings and gain favour. Jessica Dahan, fractional CMO, emphasised the importance of focusing the conversation on “the impact of your campaign on their function and in meeting key business objectives, not the granularity of the plan”.
Outside formal strategy, rapport matters too. Steph Mullard, CMO at Apis Partners, shared an anecdote about finding common ground over golf: “Actively seek out a hobby, a university connection, a personal link, anything that grounds your relationship beyond business objectives will elevate your position.”
Communicating what matters
When it comes to communication, simplicity, confidence and commercial fluency matter most.
Speak the language of the business: revenue, growth and market share, not the language of marketing. Gins Ford-Young, CMO at S&P Global Ratings, suggested that you need to “understand what’s keeping each C-Suite member up at night - CEO: Growth, innovation, investor confidence. CFO: Margins, efficiency, predictability. COO: Operational scalability. Tailor your narrative to their priorities.”
As an example of communicating brand value, Ingrid shared: “We use the wrong words. I stopped saying ‘brand’ and started saying ‘product awareness’ and suddenly I got buy-in. Same work, different language, completely different reception.”
On the point of metrics, Danielle Le Toullec, CMO at Erevena, noted that demonstrating value can be challenging in businesses with long sales cycles, but “the key is to continually reinforce marketing’s long-term contribution to growth - focus on pipeline updates, and influenced/generated revenue”.
Everything should be anchored in data. Noa reminded the group, “Data wins arguments.” Several attendees agreed that data and third-party validation can take emotion out of the room. A tip Laura shared was to have a mantra: “Straight out of the gate, walk into your one-to-one with a punchy stat that gives a clear update on marketing progress. Think customer life-time value, cost of acquisition, the latest ROI from an event. Capture their attention and set the tone.”
As the Comms Leader in the room, however, Sophie Johnson, Head of Content & Comms at Third Bridge, made the clear distinction between comms and marketing: “it’s the intangibility, you can’t draw a dotted line between comms and revenue”. However, it is integral to brand and reputation management and can often be the glue across the C-suite.
Angela Casucci, Head of Marketing & PR at Clear Junction, cautioned that “everyone has an opinion on marketing, but you are the expert - share your vision.” She also suggested using agency partners to help connect creative work to measurable outcomes.
And above all, focus. CEOs don’t need everything, they need the right things. Gavin Haycock shared his experience with a CEO who only wanted one-line updates. The message was clear: keep it succinct, structured and outcome-oriented: “Don’t dilute, distill.”
