What Has Expired? The CFO or CMO Strategy?

Carla A. Fleming

What Has Expired?

Two different conversations. Same building.

When a PE-backed company hits a growth wall, the CEO and CFO align quickly. The board is asking questions. The pressure has a timestamp.

They align on a revenue plan, which markets to prioritize, which segments to protect, and which levers to pull. That conversation is rigorous.

Then it stops.

The go-to-market roadmap was built before that conversation happened. Last year’s assumptions. Last year’s ICP. Last year’s competitive picture. Built without anyone asking the one question that actually matters: “What does the market need to hear from us right now?”

That’s the gap. Not a metrics gap. Not a budget gap. A strategic translation gap.

Scenario

A regional logistics company. PE pressure to grow a technology services line alongside traditional freight. The CFO has modeled the attach rate needed to hit the target. Marketing was still leading with the freight story that the brand was built on. The technology services message was buried three levels deep on the website.

Sales were getting meetings but losing on positioning. The market heard “freight company trying to sell software.” The CFO’s model required the market to hear “technology-forward logistics partner.”

Nobody had translated the strategy into a story.

The CMO’s real job in a PE-backed company

It’s not demand generation. Not brand. Not content.

It’s taking the revenue plan that the CEO and CFO are aligned on and connecting it to customers in the market. Owning the question: does our go-to-market roadmap still reflect our actual revenue plan, or are we executing a plan that’s already expired?

That last question is the one nobody asks until the numbers force them to.

This series is called Expired for a reason.

The strategies that got these companies to $10M, $15M, $20M they worked. And then, quietly, they stopped working. Not because the market disappeared. Because the go-to-market roadmap expired before anyone replaced it.

The CEO and CFO can see that in the numbers.

The CMO is the one who has to close the gap in the market.

But only if they’re in the room for the right conversation.

Have you seen it play out? If so, and you want to change this, schedule a Discovery Session.