Richard Fouts

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Richard Fouts
Research Vice President
2 years at Gartner
23 years IT industry

Richard Fouts guides digital marketers on best practices for evaluating and deploying emerging digital marketing techniques to ensure marketers make fully informed decisions about their marketing investments. With extensive experience in brand management and marketing communications ... Read Full Bio

Coverage Areas:

← →

Eloqua: Should CMOs should carry a quota?

by Richard Fouts  |  August 18, 2010  |  3 Comments

Eloqua is teasing us to attend their next webinar with the email subject line, Why the CMO Should Carry a Quota.  Great idea right?  After all, marketing executives are rapidly adopting the mantra, “We drive growth.”

While it might sound new, there are plenty of CMOs that carry quotas, and when I talk to them they admit it drives opportunistic behavior (you know, the kind of organization that does anything for a buck?). And it can drive growth, in the short term, but  at the expense of investments that drive long term growth – and stability.

What CMOs can learn from CIOs.

This question reminds me of the piles of research that Gartner and others have done on the New CIO Leader, the one that goes beyond just making the trains run on time and takes a seat at the strategic table. The CIOs that focused on the trains were not invited to the strategic table (why should they be?) and were eventually told, “Thanks for your contribution. You’ve made it easy to outsource IT. Thanks, again. Your gold watch is waiting at the door. ”

The CMO that is driven only by revenue falls into a similar trap. They end up generating leads and supporting sales, which is obviously a good thing to do. But the organization realizes all they really need is a good Sales VP and an adequate marcomm manager. In fact, if you read the Eloqua webinar description, it essentially turns the CMO into a pipeline manager. Don’t we already have one of those?

In Eloqua’s defense, I’m sure they aren’t this single minded, so I’ll tune into their webinar and see for myself.

3 Comments »

Category: Personal selling     Tags:

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Tweets that mention Eloqua: Should CMOs should carry a quota? -- Topsy.com   August 18, 2010 at 8:10 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Richard_Fouts, Greg Lambert Feed. Greg Lambert Feed said: Eloqua: Should CMOs should carry a quota? http://bit.ly/anWE9X [...]

  • 2 Brian Kardon   August 19, 2010 at 9:22 am

    Hi Richard -
    Great post! Indeed, from our experience, the CMO who does not have a seat at the strategy table won’t be around for long.

    I like your analogy to the CIO … who can face outsourcing if all they do is keep the trains going.

    Thx for tuning in!

    Best
    Brian Kardon
    CMO, Eloqua

  • 3 Kim Weins   August 19, 2010 at 10:43 am

    I agree that revenue is important, but only one piece of the way CMOs should be measured. In the past, many CMOs were barely measured or had meaningless metrics that didn’t tie to either short or long-term corporate results. They could hide behind the \strategy\ argument to spend money without any real accountability for the outocme.

    Smart companies are now moving into a world where marketing is being measured by clear metrics that tie to company goals – both tactical and strategic. Finally!

    Kim Weins
    SVP Marketing & Products
    OpenLogic

Leave a Comment