Why CEOs and CMOs Talk Past Each Other

Things are never darker than just before dawn, right? Same with miscommunication. It’s never more pronounced, never louder, than when the CEO and the CMO are both talking about growth…

And having completely different conversations.

In one corner, the CEO is asking about revenue, while Marketing is talking about campaigns. In the other corner, the CMO is reporting on activity, while the CEO is focused on pipeline.

Neither of these people are wrong. (Making the “in this corner!” adversarial approach probably a big ole’ miss…)

None of these people are lined up, either.

I’ve sat in these meetings and watched this in real-time. It’s posed as what really is a simple question, like “where does our pipeline actually come from?” It’s a hallmark of a good CEO if they’ve asked it. And then in real-time the response starts drifting.

“Well, we launched three campaigns last quarter… engagement is up… we’re seeing strong top-of-funnel activity…”

All true! All good indicators, even. Didn’t answer the question, though.

If you’ve seen this, you can predict the frustration level creeps up, but not in a loud and dramatic fashion… just enough to change the tone of the follow-up question. Because to the CEO, the question wasn’t complicated:

Pipeline -> Source -> Clarity

From marketing’s perspective, the answer wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t… complete.

That gap – the gap between the question asked and the answer given, the gap between where CEO and CMO tension straight up resides – is not an automatic indicator of an alignment challenge. It’s a translation one.

CEOs operate in a language shaped by outcomes.

·      Revenue

·      Growth rate

·      Pipeline coverage

·      Risk

They are accountable for the business performing, quarter after quarter. Their questions are designed to reduce uncertainty and increase confidence in what’s coming next.

Marketing leaders often operate in a language shaped by motion.

·      Campaigns

·      Content

·      Channels

·      Engagement

None of those are inherently wrong. In fact, they’re necessary. (Marketing lover here – they are NECESSARY NON-NEGOTIABLES.) But they still live another layer away from what the CEO is really trying to understand.

So the conversation becomes a loop of more slides, of more metrics, of more (attempts at) explanation. And in all of that, the clarity actually decreases instead of increasing.

Early diagnostics of this breakdown generally point at the wrong problem. “Sales and marketing aren’t aligned” and “we need a new dashboard” are reasonable threads to pull but they don’t fix the core issue. And that’s because the issue isn’t visibility, it’s ownership.

At some point, the role of marketing shifted from being a contributor to growth to being partially responsible for explaining growth and those aren’t the same thing.

When marketing owns activity, it reports activity. When marketing owns pipeline, it reports pipeline. When marketing owns revenue contribution, the conversation changes entirely. The same question can be asked, “where is our pipeline coming from?” and instead of a list of campaigns, the answer sounds like, “well, here are the segments driving the majority of our opportunities and which ones are accelerating and which ones are not.”

Same function. Different language.

Potato, potato.

Once marketing is accountable for pipeline, campaigns become inputs, not outcomes. Your strategic content lives to support the story, not become the story itself. And – this is big – reporting stops becoming an anxiety-inducing defense mechanism, and starts becoming a shared view of how the business is growing.

This is also where trust starts to rebuild.

CEOs don’t need marketing to sound smarter, they need it to sound connected. And the best marketing leaders know this. They’ve been in those tense and awkward conversations. They’ve seen their answer not land (or land with a thud). And they’ve shifted.

When the answers start matching the questions, the relationship between CEO and CMO stops feeling like translation… and starts feeling like partnership.