What CMOs Really Care About

And why you're not getting buy in for your initiatives

Author

Shiva Manjunath
December 02, 2025

Have you ever struggled to get buy in from senior leadership? Never in your entire life, right?

Well I've faced it. A lot. And I wanted to get in the mind of a super seasoned CMO to truly understand what makes them tick. What they care about. What they DON'T care about.

Who better than Kelly Hopping, CMO at Demandbase. And y'all, this one is CHOCK FULL of amazing insights from her to better understand how to communicate what you're doing to senior leadership.

This was the first episode I listened to twice, just to make sure I got everything down.

We got into:

- How to translate OKRs into what you do in experimentation / product (to help you actually get buy in)

- What CMOs (and senior leadership) ACTUALLY cares about (and what you're messaging to them is irrelevant to them)

- AMAZING career advice from her on how to pivot in your career appropriately

- Why leadership challenges A/B testing

Featured Clip from Episode: What DO CMOs really care about…?

Latest Skit

How many of y’all were TERRIFIED of launching tests? Thinking you might break something? Or going over your checklist 50 times?

Look at you now. Accidently launching tests and shit. I see you 😉 

Latest Meme

Stop treating other's ideas as less than yours.

Everyone's test ideas are (mostly) valuable. They might have different levels of prioritization, BUT very few test ideas pass the level of 'dumb.'

If we, as CROs / Product Owners just outright refuse to even consider other's POVs, we end up:

- Missing out on MANY good ideas (sometimes, the least intuitive ideas end up winning!)
- Creating resentment and frustration

Take any and all ideas. Just ruthlessly prioritize the ones which have higher potential for impact. Prioritize the tests backed in multiple sources of data.

And if someone comes to you asking why their idea isn't prioritized, walk them through your framework so they can understand why their idea wasn't prioritized. Maybe they HAD data but didn't know how to communicate it. Or maybe they will go seek out data to get their ideas prioritized.

Photo courtesy of Priscilla Leake and Collin Crowell from EXL 2025 😉 

Thing on my mind

Many of us are getting into holiday slowdowns. Use this time to mentally recharge, but go to that backlog of shit you’ve been putting off and go do it.

Seriously.

Do the thing. Finish it. Or, delete it.

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