The CMO's New Hat: Chief Marketing AI Product Manager

I recently joined Drew Neisser on the CMO Huddles podcast, alongside Kevin Ruane, CMO of Precisely, and Jeff Morgan, CRO at Elements. We dug into the impact of generative AI on marketing—and one idea came through loud and clear: we're massively underestimating how AI is transforming marketing. 

There are at least three buckets of transformation happening right now:

Scale, speed and outcomes - how we work, how fast and how much we deliver, the quality of what we produce, how we allocate budgets, the structure of our teams, and the skills we hire for. It's evolving daily—with new use cases, features inside existing tools, agent-based workflows, and model updates dropping weekly.

Pipeline and demand generation - buyer behavior is rapidly changing. People are increasingly using generative engines to find answers instead of vendor sites found via keyword searches. The 30%-60% organic traffic and CTR drop for B2B software companies? That's not a blip. Yes, existing methods still work, but they are becoming less and less effective and there's a completely new way of generating demand being built right in front of us.

Teams and skills - AI is transforming every function. We're not even close to understanding or appreciating its full potential. Not just content, graphics, messaging, but demand generation, marketing ops, PR, analyst relations, and more. And yes, it's transforming us, CMOs as well.

The New Hat: AI Product Manager

How do you add AI to the mix when you're already juggling daily priorities, deadlines, and pipeline goals? This is where CMOs need to put on a new hat: Chief Marketing AI Product Manager.

The framework I've developed for this I call the ELEX model - Expand, Land, and Expand.

Expand Your Thinking and Horizons: 10x Impact

Actually, "expand" isn't strong enough. Blow up your horizon is a more relevant term in this case. AI gives us an opportunity to go 10x or even 1,000x instead of 2x. 

Case in point: Swan AI. Three founders on a mission to hit $30M ARR with just the three of them. Two years ago people would have laughed. Today, they're well on their way.

The question isn't just "how can AI help us do more and better what we're already doing?" It's: What could we do now that wasn't possible before?

AI unlocks a 10x multiplier by rethinking the entire system - from how you generate demand to how much you convert into revenue, how you tell a story, how fast you can tell and pivot the message, your PR, analyst relations, tech stack, content, research, competitive analysis. Literally everything in marketing is changing, and it's a golden opportunity to disrupt much larger competitors with smaller budgets and teams.

Product Management Tip: explore, research, ask around, and build a roadmap based on what can have immediate impact, mid-term, and longer-term benefits. Create a quarterly roadmap. It will most likely change as you learn more—that's the point.

Land: Execute Like a Product Manager

This is where strategy becomes action.

Experimentation without execution is just noise. Test specific use cases, measure outcomes, and refine fast.

Here are immediate impact areas based on what we've done and what I've seen work:

Content: Use LLMs to draft, repackage, and scale content—but always with strategic oversight from an experienced writers and SMEs.

Research: Quickly discover trends, news, competitive intel, reports, coverage, social media mentions and sentiment, customer reviews, analyst notes. You can create your own models to automate these workflows, distill insights, and communicate actionable intelligence fast.

Messaging: Accelerate and fine-tune positioning and messaging work with inputs from every source you can imagine. Create messages, landing pages, content, enablement in a fraction of the time—again with oversight from experienced PMMs and SMEs.

Demand generation: We're witnessing a seachange in how B2B marketing works—it's moving from search-engine to GPT user behavior. The time to act is now to grab the opportunity rather than fall behind. There are several new ways of generating demand using fresh approaches, custom models, and new AI tools like Swan AI, Clay, Regie and others.

Pipeline Acceleration: Analyze pipeline and conversion data based on hundreds of signals across systems—SFDC, Marketo, Gong, 6sense, other intent providers, reviews, social media, and other sources —and focus on accelerating the most promising opportunities with automated custom messaging (human in the loop is a good starting point), content, and campaigns. You can automate nurture workflows, identify blockers, and so much more.

Public Relations: Target smarter.  Use AI to find journalists who will most likely write about you, research their previous coverage, develop customized angles and ways to engage them, build customized and automated outreach workflows. Done right, you can accomplish in days what used to take months and several agencies.

Product Management Tip: Update your roadmap into something like a PRD - Product Requirement Document. Complete your "AI product" with expected timelines, costs, people, and outcomes. Concrete priorities, scopes, and timelines. Features in the form of use cases, AI workflows, AI agents, AI products, existing products with new AI agents, custom developments, integrations, and interfaces.

Plan, update, and keep focused on execution and outcomes.

Expand Again: Build a Scalable System

Once you've landed some wins, it's time to build version 2.

More importantly, institutionalize your AI strategy:

• Assign AI owners across functions with clear deliverables
• Track outcomes weekly, and evolve your architecture quarterly
• Stay ahead of what's changing—tools, models, techniques

Kevin Ruane said something that stuck: AI isn't just a feature. It's an operating system. The speed of change is relentless, so your approach has to be adaptive and systematized.

Set up a review loop. Run playbooks. Build AI into your team structure. Don't just test AI—operationalize it.

Critical skill: Prompt engineering isn't just a skill, it's a science. A well-structured prompt can be the difference between mediocre output and something transformational. This is where we need to push ourselves and our teams for quality and not just quantity.  That's the difference between successful and failed initiatives.

Final Thought

AI isn't a side project. It's the next operating model for marketing.

The CMO role is evolving. We're not just running campaigns—we're building systems. We're not just leading teams—we're designing how work gets done.

The CMOs who step into the role of AI product manager will unlock speed, scale, and strategic advantage. Everyone else will be playing catch-up.

Fixing the Pipeline with Treasure Ops – From Problem to Permission

Pipeline is Permission

Over the weekend, I kept coming back to one simple idea: pipeline is permission.

It’s not that brand, category creation, or customer experience don’t matter—they do. But without pipeline, none of those things scale. Pipeline is what gives CMOs permission to build, influence, and lead. It’s the most visible indicator of a healthy GTM engine—and the fastest red flag when something’s broken.

Diagnosing pipeline isn't just about counting leads or opportunities. Done right, it reveals everything: demand gaps, weak messaging, sales breakdowns, product-market misalignment, even pricing and packaging issues.

At nearly every company I joined as CMO, pipeline was either the issue—or became the issue to focus on and fix fast. That’s when I leaned on the Treasure Ops model I built. It’s a way to operationalize the diagnosis, create visibility, align across GTM, and systematically fix what’s broken.

The 0.8x Wake-Up Call

A few years ago, month one as CMO. The post-Board meeting turns into a firing squad. One Board member unloads on the CRO:
“You need better sellers. Oracle-style closers. Bigger deals.”

The CRO defends his team. No one’s listening.

I speak up—new guy or not:
“It’s not the sellers. It’s the pipeline. We’re running at 0.8x coverage for the next three months. It doesn’t matter who’s selling—we don’t have enough to sell.”

All heads turn:
“When are you fixing it?”

Challenge accepted.

Eighteen months later, we’re running 3–4x coverage and growing 100% YoY. From negative growth to hypergrowth.

Twelve months after that: a $640M exit from a $90M valuation. Pipeline was the unlock.

So, How Do You Fix the Pipeline?

Treat it like software architecture. Pipeline is a system—complex, interconnected, and constantly evolving. You can’t brute-force it. You have to diagnose, prioritize, and systematically rebuild.

Start by mapping every key component—demand gen, sales motion, messaging, conversion points, segmentation, product-market fit, and more. Then zero in on the top 2–3 failure points. Fix those. Measure impact. Move to the next set.

Build the right teams. Align GTM. Partner tightly across sales, ops, and product. Instrument everything. Report what matters. And yes—embrace AI. It’s a multiplier, not a magic wand.

Pipeline problems don’t get solved in one sprint. But with the right model and mindset, they get solved.

Breaking Down the Pipeline System

Fixing pipeline isn’t just a tactic—it’s a system-wide diagnosis. Here’s how I break it down:

1. Market Intent
Are you creating a category, reshaping one, or competing in an existing space? Each requires a different pipeline motion. Make the wrong call here, and you’ll spend months solving the wrong problem with the wrong playbook.

2. Brand Awareness and Perception
If people know and love your brand—great. Maximize capture.
If they know you for the wrong reasons—perception repair must run alongside demand gen.
If they don’t know you at all—you’re starting from zero and need a different approach entirely. Perception fuels conversion.

3. ICP, Persona, and Target Market
Clarity here is non-negotiable. You can experiment early—but you need to land on a high-efficiency ICP fast, capitalize, then expand. Generalist targeting kills CAC and conversion.

4. Customer Segments and Deal Size
ACV drives everything. Enterprise and SMB require totally different engines, channels, and pacing. Same goes for geo: what works in North America rarely translates directly to EMEA or APAC.

5. Demand Gen Engine
Evaluate everything—definitions (lead vs opportunity), inbound/outbound/ABM/hybrid mix, channel ROI, scalability, CAC. Often, this is where the biggest fixes happen. I’ve rebuilt entire demand engines from the ground up—and it changed the growth curve overnight.

6. Pipeline Hygiene and Speed
Leads rot. Follow-up SLAs, lead routing, attribution accuracy—these aren’t ops details, they’re growth levers. In one case, just reducing first-response time from 30 minutes to 5 tripled our conversions.

7. Funnel Conversion + Velocity
Every stage matters. Every drop-off is a signal. From lead to closed-won, analyze conversion rates and time to convert—overall and per channel. Closed-lost and deferred deals often reveal the real issues: ICP misalignment, product gaps, pricing friction, or weak execution.

8. New vs. Expansion vs. Retention
Most teams start with new logo acquisition. But long-term scale comes from a pipeline strategy that includes expansion and retention. You’ll need all three.

9. Direct vs. Partner
Many start direct. Few prioritize partner early enough. Different motions, different hires, different metrics. But partner-driven scale often unlocks the next phase of growth—and better ROI.

10. Strategic Expansion
At some point, every company wants to go upmarket. Bigger ACVs, executive buyers, higher strategic value. That means a new message, new team motion, and a revamped engine—without breaking what’s already working.

11. Hyperscaling
The best question a CEO or Board can ask:
“If I gave you $1M / $10M / $100M more—how fast can you grow?”
That’s when you know you have pipeline permission. But not every channel scales. You have to know what will break, what will scale linearly, and what needs re-architecting.

12. Team
Every stage requires a different team DNA. Experience, mindset, and hunger all matter. Structure drives velocity—and misalignment here will stall everything.

13. AI
This is the biggest unlock. AI-first CMOs and AI-native teams will run leaner, move faster, and compete harder—even against giants. AI isn’t a layer—it’s the engine. Embrace it or fall behind.

14. Alignment
Pipeline doesn’t get fixed in a vacuum. Sales, Product, Finance, Ops—alignment here isn’t about meetings, it’s about outcomes. I’ve seen incredible results when GTM leaders lock arms, commit to impact, and leave politics behind. You don’t win alone.

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You Don’t Fix Everything at Once

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Don’t. That’s where Treasure Ops comes in.

Pick the three biggest unlocks. Focus. Execute. Measure. Move on to the next three.

That rhythm—identify, prioritize, execute—is what turned pipeline from a problem into a weapon at every company I’ve joined.

Analyst Relations: The Most Undervalued Strategic Weapon in B2B Marketing

 

After 20+ years in marketing and six CMO roles across high-growth tech companies, one thing has become crystal clear to me: most companies are doing analyst relations (AR) wrong.

Too many execs treat AR like a checkbox on the marketing plan or see it as a “necessary evil” to get into a Magic Quadrant or Wave. I’ve even heard CEOs brush analysts off, saying “they’re all pay-to-play.” That kind of thinking? It’s not just wrong—it’s dangerous.

Because done right, analyst relations can be one of your most powerful strategic levers across product marketing, demand generation, category creation, and even exit strategy.

Analysts Aren’t a Nuisance—They’re an Extension of Your Team

The best analysts are deeply embedded in the market—they understand trends, buyer behavior, competitive positioning, and industry perception better than most internal teams do. They talk to hundreds of your customers and prospects. They know things.

And if you engage them properly, they become an extension of your product, product marketing, and demand gen teams. But you’ll never unlock that value with “normal” AR tactics—occasional inquiries, reactive briefings, and participation in evaluations like Magic Quadrants or Waves.

That’s a recipe for mediocrity. And in analyst relations, mediocrity doesn’t just mean missed opportunities. It means getting actively hurt by your competitors who are shaping the narrative for you.

The Cost of Neglect: You’re Not Just Ignored—You’re Outsold

If top analysts aren’t deeply familiar with your product, value prop, and differentiation, they fill in the gaps—with your competitors’ messaging. And when prospects come asking for recommendations, guess who gets sent to the shortlist?

You can’t undo that kind of damage easily. AR isn’t something you can “flip on” when a Magic Quadrant comes around. It takes time, consistency, and a real strategy.

The Blueprint for Analyst Relations That Actually Works

So how do you do AR right? Here’s the blueprint I’ve used to drive category leadership and exits in cybersecurity, fraud prevention, and employee experience:

1. Start With the Right Analysts

Identify the analysts who influence your buyers. For B2B tech with IT or security buyers, that’s often Gartner, Forrester, and IDC. Don’t ignore the smaller players like 451 Research—they punch above their weight and often influence the big guys.

2. Inquiries Are Your Secret Weapon

Use them. Relentlessly. Learn how you’re perceived. Learn how your competitors position themselves. Test messaging, get feedback, refine positioning. Inquiries are how you build relationships and drive insight.

3. Briefings Are Overrated (Until They’re Not)

Don’t treat briefings as your first move—they should be your final play. By the time you brief, you should already know what the analyst will say. You should’ve influenced their thinking through repeated, valuable engagement.

4. Build Real Human Connections

Analysts are people. Meet them in person. Host analyst days. Visit them. Grab coffee at a conference. Human connection builds trust and trust builds influence.

5. Bring in Your Experts

Don’t just send AR folks. Involve SMEs. Show the product. Run demos. Ask for feedback and loop it back into product development. Create a feedback loop that adds real value.

6. Surround and Reinforce Your Message

Engage smaller analyst firms to amplify your narrative. Big analysts read their reports and see signals. Share your news, wins, and big moves. Keep them in the loop.

7. Dominate the Magic Quadrants and Waves

By the time evaluations come, the analyst should already see you as a leader. The methodology matters—but only if you’ve laid the groundwork first.

8. Redefine and Own the Category

This is a multi-year effort. But it’s how you build durable competitive advantage. I’ve done this at HP (Intrusion Prevention), Kount (Identity Trust Network), and now at Simpplr in Employee Experience.

9. Build a Scalable Demand Engine

Analysts talk to enterprise buyers constantly. If you're one of the 2–3 vendors they recommend, you unlock a stream of RFPs and qualified opportunities that money can’t buy.

10. Position for Exit or IPO

Companies that dominate categories attract strategic buyers and go public. At Kount, our analyst-driven repositioning led to a $640M acquisition by Equifax. They still use the Identity Trust Network branding we created.

So… Are Analysts Pay-for-Play?

Sure, some are. But overwhelmingly, AR is a skill play. With the right strategy, consistency, and execution, the returns—in insight, influence, and revenue—are exponential.

Winning the Chaos: Lessons from the Battlefield for CMOs

A CMO’s Life Is a Battlefield

A CMO’s life is often a battlefield. We move between high-priority areas and activities daily—sometimes hourly.

One moment, we’re focused on pipeline creation, then we pivot to conversion, strategic messaging, PR, analyst relations, executive meetings, board meetings, team management, customer conversations, content, branding, regional strategies, partner relationships, online commerce, and the countless random requests from internal and external stakeholders.

 And then there are meetings. More meetings. And just when we think we have a handle on it all—unexpected crises emerge.

As a wise man once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

We strategize. We plan. But then reality hits—some moments are electrifying, others feel like a relentless onslaught. It’s easy to lose focus, chase the wrong priorities, or get bogged down in tasks that feel urgent but aren’t truly critical. The cost of misplaced focus? Missed opportunities.

Winning the Chaos: Lessons from the Battlefield

One of the best strategies I’ve learned to manage, survive, and dominate in the chaos comes from the military: Prepare. Train. Execute. Then, when the crisis inevitably hits—adapt and respond.

When chaos erupts, what’s the first move?

Address the biggest, most dangerous threat in front of you. Then move from there.

I love how Jason Redman, a former Navy SEAL and battlefield hero, explains crisis decision-making. His mindset is a masterclass in staying focused under pressure.

How This Applies to CMOs

1. Keep Your Eye on the Main Target

Most of the time, that means revenue and pipeline—new customer acquisition, expansion, and retention. Never lose sight of it.

2. Assemble, Uplevel, and Bond with Your Team

In battle, your team wins the war. It’s both about how AND who. Communication and trust are critical, not just within your team, but across partner teams like Sales, Product, Customer Support, and Finance.

3. Aggressively Build Brand

Think of this as your fortification and air cover. Brand-building doesn’t have to be expensive or flashy—it can be grassroots or highly strategic. But it needs to be intentional, consistent, measurable, and constantly optimized.

4. Arm Your Troops with the Best Weapons

This is where Product Marketing comes in. Sharp differentiation, powerful messaging, competitive intelligence, enablement tools—these are the weapons your team needs to win.

5. Establish Wartime Communications

Metrics and reporting, customer and partner feedback, competitive and social monitoring, analyst relations, press coverage—every data point matters. Analyze, act fast, and adjust as the situation evolves.

Deploy. Battle. Win.

But the fight never stops. The battlefield is never static. Competitors are always moving. Unexpected crises arise. And this is where Jason Redman’s advice is so crucial.

You must evaluate the battlefield constantly. When a critical attack comes, neutralize it—fast—so it doesn’t take you down. But be ready to fight on multiple fronts.

Like a pipeline funnel, personnel issues, and PR crises all hitting in the same week?  Prioritize. Assess based on gravity, impact, and outcomes. Execute. This is where your team and training make the difference. As the saying goes, “A gallon of sweat saves a pint of blood.”

Win the fight. Celebrate. Then take on even bigger goals.

What else is impossible?

200-Mile Bike Ride: Start As Individuals, Finish As A Team!

"We start as individuals; We finish as a team!"

That thought came at mile 199 of a 201-mile bicycle race, as I was getting close to the finish line in Port Hueneme, CA.

I finished a few minutes later, at 9:15pm, as a part of the team of people that I met earlier that day. Many of us started as individuals or small groups and became a team after 200 long, hot, grinding, and windy miles.

It is very similar to the business environment. 

We often start our jobs or projects as individuals.  We meet other professionals as we go.  We build teams that make the most impossible things become possible.  The ability to form such teams separates successful companies from the mediocre ones.

Just like riding 200+ miles in a single day.  What I realized that day is while hard projects (like riding 100 or 130 miles) can be completed through preparation and perseverance, much bigger projects require teamwork to complete.

Prior to that ride, I had completed 100-mile rides many times and 130-mile ride twice. But 200 miles were elusive.  I tried once and was not able to finish it, just to get a DNF (Did Not Finish) status.  It turns out that the missing ingredient was the team.  The team did it! 

The key things I discovered during my first successful 200 mile ride were that strong teams make the biggest difference in extreme situations by:

• Helping each other through situational difficulties, such as shielding against the wind to go faster with less energy spent
• Helping with directions when there are no pointers, it’s dark outside, and when many team members feel lost. One of the team members happens to have planned the ride better, the other one had a better app, and someone else knew that particular area from previous rides. 
• Mentally supporting each other when the going gets tough and the doubts start creeping in about the sanity of the project and the ability to finish

If you think about it, this mimics business challenges as well.  By working closely together, we go faster through overcoming extreme difficulties, we give each other mental support and find directions when we get stuck.  And then we finish and win as a team -- way ahead of a collection of individuals.

The feeling of an accomplishment was immense at the end of the race, similar to the one when you launch a product, or a web site, or close a partnership, or deal that seemed impossible just a few months ago.

The right team makes that crazy undertaking look normal.  With the right team, you push the limits even further, asking, “What else is impossible?”

Just to prove that point, I did another bike race 3 weeks later, to push my limits even further. I completed the STP (Seattle to Portland) ride in one day. 213 miles. 5,200 ft climb.  9,200 calories burnt.

And like in the first race, I started alone and finished as a team! It was much easier than the first time, faster, and more fun.  

And the best thing was that my family was at the finish line to celebrate with me!