Business Growth Strategies For CEOs: Top CMOs On Marketing Strategy Implementations

Tom McCrary

Tom McCrary is a visionary senior marketing executive and management consultant with extensive experience across a wide range of industries and companies. He is an insightful expert at identifying, synthesizing and clarifying ideas and opportunities, inspiring teams to deliver significant results and creating unique approaches for solving problems to accomplish business objectives. An innovative and flexible decision-maker, he honed his keen conceptual, analytical and communication skills at Frito-Lay, Tony Roma’s, Northeast Savings, Embassy Suites, Greyhound, Pro Staff, and NRG/ Reliant Energy, among others. He has also leveraged his marketing and business strategy skills as a valued, hands-on consultant at start-up, early-stage and growth companies.

Vistage Chairs: Is Your Member’s Marketing Really Working? Ask These 5 Questions.

Tue, Aug 11, 2026 | Posted by Karen Hayward

Executive Takeaways

Most CEOs challenge every capital investment but can't say with confidence whether their marketing is working.
More leads isn't better marketing. Better customers are.
If sales and marketing are blaming each other, the CEO hasn't asked the right question.
The real measure isn't what marketing produced. It's what it changed about the future economics of the business.

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A Conversation with Robert Cialdini, Author of "Pre-Suasion, A Revolutionary Way To Influence And Persuade"

Tue, Apr 4, 2017 — At our recent National Meeting, Chief Outsiders hosted a dynamic Skype conversation with Dr. Robert Cialdini on his latest book Pre-Suasion, A Revolutionary Way To Influence And Persuade. The discussion not only further clarified not only Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion principles, but also provided insight into their applications to our clients’ and our specific business as well.

D.A.R.E. to Grow

Wed, Feb 20, 2013 — Sometimes it is difficult for our organizations to take the steps necessary to grow – to change – to leave what is comfortable and strive for something more. We stop ourselves with questions like: How will my organization adapt to the changes? Can we handle the new challenges? Do we have the skills required to meet the new demands? Why should we upset what is already going well? It makes perfect sense for us to question. In fact, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs as leaders if we didn’t. At some point though, if we want to move forward, we must also move beyond the questions. We must take our own dare, if you will – and D.A.R.E. to grow. Here are some thoughts to get us started. D = Discover

The Importance of Authentic Service and Hospitality in Business

Tue, Oct 2, 2012 — What Makes Exceptional Service in Your Business? Recently I have been looking more closely at service — which factors contribute to great service in business and which elevate the quality of service to exceptional levels. I have considered both the objective, measurable components of service as well as the subjective — less tangible factors that focus on the specific relationship between those served and those serving. It's fairly simple for us to evaluate the concrete aspects of service. We, as marketers, preach and follow mantras of "what gets measured, gets done," and "if we can't measure it, we can't manage it." We rate and measure service quality with customer satisfaction research and Net Promoter scores. Measurement is, and will continue to be, a critical component of our understanding and responding to day-to-day performance in our businesses. In today's increasingly competitive market though, is evaluating only the easily measured variables sufficient? Is doing this alone enough to raise our customer service from great to exceptional? Does it ensure that our business performance is consistent with our vision, values and strategy?

3 Top Sources of Strategic Marketing Insights

Mon, Jul 18, 2011 — Effective marketing strategies that drive significant results are almost always based on key insights. Insights can come from a lot of different places – from research, from a review of operations, from an analysis of the market, from a review of available data, from experience. The critical common element to game-changing insights is perspective – looking at the situation from a customer/prospect/market point of view. Let’s look at some examples: 1. Research-based Insight At Northeast Savings, we conducted a major customer segmentation study to better understand the needs of our consumers. One of the key findings of the research was a hierarchy of concerns expressed by a key constituency – 50+ consumers. Their number one issue was their health; followed closely by their financial well being, especially as it related to being able to take care of themselves should anything happen to them physically. This insight, coupled with an understanding of the need for conservative investments (in this case, CDs) due to the risk profile of older people, led to the creation of the “Take Ten” CD. This was a traditional CD, earning market interest rates, with a twist – you could withdraw up to 10% of your principal without penalty. Northeast Savings was the first bank in the country to offer this type of CD and was recognized in USA Today. More importantly, the CD garnered $180M in new deposits in the first three months and, after a year, no one had exercised the option to withdraw principal. Consumers wanted the security of knowing that they could, but really needed to earn interest on their deposits.

Growth Insights for CEOs