Growth Insights for CEOs

When the Founder Is the Rainmaker: How to Scale Without Losing the Spark
In many founder-led businesses, the founder isn’t just the leader—they’re also the best (and often only) rainmaker. They land the big deals. They have the trusted relationships. They know the pitch inside and out because they are the pitch.
It works—until it doesn’t.
As the business grows, this model creates a bottleneck. Every new opportunity depends on one and only person. And it’s the same person every time. But there’s a downside. When that person is also responsible for running the business, mentoring the team, and shaping the vision, something eventually gives.
Recent Posts

What Tech CEOs Get Wrong About Positioning
Thu, Jul 28, 2022 — If you are a CEO that is lamenting slowing sales and lagging growth at your company, it’s tempting to place the blame directly at the feet of the sales team – those well-intentioned front-line soldiers who are responsible to turn your solutions into the bucks that feed the company growth. Indeed, most CEO’s I talk to feel this way – when product and market fit is not happening with enough velocity, or visions of declaring leadership in their market are unrealized, the obstacle standing in the way is always sales.

Why HealthTech Startups Should Consider a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer
Thu, Apr 8, 2021 — Business opportunities in healthcare technology have never been more abundant. At the same time, the challenges of capturing market share in the complex healthcare marketplace are as daunting as ever. For young companies and startups looking to gain traction and generate revenue, a sound go-to-market strategy and demand generation plan are essential. For many resource-constrained companies, a fractional Chief Marketing Officer has proven to be the fastest, most cost-effective way to achieve their growth objectives.

Keeping Up With Technology
Thu, Jun 18, 2020 — According to a recent study by Chief Outsiders, a national business strategy consulting firm, 88% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) see difficulty in staying ahead of technological advancements.
Stay up-to-date with the latest from Chief Outsiders

An Audience of One: Neuromarketing the New Reality
Wed, Jun 14, 2017 — If you buy into the old corollary that the “future is now,” be prepared to be blown away by what tomorrow’s future holds. If you thought that today’s wave of marketing analytics tools represented a bold new frontier in how enterprises can track and nurture consumers through the buying cycle, well, in the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive – “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” And, if you believed that the kind of brain-reading technology that served up personalized advertisements to Tom Cruise in the movie “Minority Report” was the stuff of fiction, it may be closer to reality than you ever thought.

Are You Really Ready for Mobile?
Thu, Mar 2, 2017 — Let’s start with one important question. Which of the following is critical to effectively using mobile technologies to build your business and accelerate your revenues? (a) The commercial readiness of the technologies employed (b) Aligning mobile strategies with your business strategy (c) Having a plan which understands and prioritizes mobile deployment across customers, partners, and employees (d) Your internal business readiness to deploy and support mobile technologies (e) Developing a plan with goals, milestones, investments and returns, and key success metrics (f) All of the above.