Your First 90 Days as CMO: How to Align, Unite, and Win Fast

#27 – The first 90 days in a new marketing leadership role can make or break your long-term success.

You’re learning a new company, navigating personalities and politics, absorbing new systems—and all eyes are on you to make an impact fast.

In this solo episode of Growth Activated, Mandy Walker is sharing the 3 priorities she focuses on in every new CMO role—priorities that help her align with the business, unite her team, and deliver quick wins without burning out.

Inside, we cover:

• How to prioritize alignment with the C-Suite so you’re focused on the right segments, solutions, and opportunities from day one
• How to get your marketing team rowing in the same direction and working toward shared goals instead of operating in silos
• How to leverage incrementality and quick wins to build trust and momentum while laying the foundation for long-term success
• The simple frameworks Mandy uses to depersonalize decision-making, clarify team priorities, and identify low-effort, high-impact actions

Whether you’re stepping into your first CMO role, moving into a new company, or leading a team as a fractional or interim CMO, these principles will help you start strong, earn trust, and set yourself up for measurable impact.

If you’re a B2B marketing leader who wants to hit the ground running in your next role—and lead with clarity and confidence—this episode is your playbook for the first 90 days.

🎧 Listen in, then go activate growth.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Growth Activated with Mandy Walker
• 1:18 Why the First 90 Days as CMO Are Critical
• 1:46 Fractional CMO Framework for New Roles
• 2:42 Priority #1: CMO Alignment with the CEO
• 4:43 CMO Prioritization Matrix for Market Focus
• 8:50 Priority #2: Get Marketing Rowing Together
• 10:36 Goals-Based Marketing Plan for CMOs
• 13:08 Priority #3: Incrementality & Quick Wins
• 14:33 Impact vs. Effort Matrix for Fast CMO Wins
• 15:54 First 90 Days CMO Recap & Key Habits

Transcript

00:00 – Welcome to Growth Activated with Mandy Walker

Welcome to Growth Activated.  I'm Mandy Walker, your host with 15 years of experience leading marketing teams ranging from small startups to large service organizations.  I've built high performing teams of all sizes and have seen firsthand how fast the landscape is evolving,  making marketing leadership more complex than ever.  Today, I help marketing leaders elevate their strategies,  lead with confidence and build careers they love.

00:28 – Why the First 90 Days as CMO Are Critical

If you're ready to drive impact and unlock growth for yourself and your company, you're in the right place.  Let's get started.  What's the very first thing you focus on when you step into a new marketing leadership role? If you're like most leaders, you probably feel the pressure to fix everything at once from campaigns to operations to team alignment. But here's the reality. You can't do it all at the same time. And honestly, you shouldn't try. Welcome to Growth Activated.

00:56 – Fractional CMO Framework for New Roles

I'm your host, Mandy Walker. And today we're talking about the first 90 days in a new leadership role. I'm personally approaching 90 days in my newest fractional CMO position, leading a team of about 15 to 20 in an organization that's about 500 million. And I have to say, I'm really loving the culture, the leadership and the company overall. But no matter how many CMO roles I've taken on, there are three priorities that always make the biggest difference for me in those first 90 days.

01:25
And in this episode, I'll walk you through them so you can step into your next role with clarity, confidence, and a plan to make an immediate impact. And frankly, even if you're not currently stepping into a new role,  I still think these three tips will help you re-center, realign, and see big movement in your current team.  Let's get into it. Okay. So one of the most important things that I prioritize above, frankly, all else

01:52 – Priority #1: CMO Alignment with the CEO

is prioritized alignment with the C-suite and really particularly the CEO. When you first start a role at a new company, everything feels like a priority, right? You're meeting all of your peers, all of the different stakeholders across the business. You're learning the sales strategy and frankly, everything feels important.

02:15
There are a lot of competing priorities and a lot of people vying for marketing this time. One of the biggest things I see within marketing teams and typically the teams that I'm taking over when I step into an organization  is that the marketing teams are really activity-based and reactive in the way that they operate as opposed to being a strategic proactive business partner and growth partner.

02:38
And frankly, it's so easy to fall into this trap, even when you can identify it, when you step into a new organization, it's hard not to continue that trend. Especially when you have all of your new peers and the different divisions and departments making a play for marketing's time. And of course we, as new leaders want to get on these people's good sides. want to build strong relationships and strong reporters.  And this is a common challenge that I see new leaders step into.

03:07
And on the flip side, you know, as  new leaders into the organization,  you might be fired up. might be really excited. You might see tons of opportunity within the marketing organization, and it might also feel overwhelming and daunting to figure out how we're going to go about it and get it all done  within the next 12 months.

03:26
Right?  And so one of the things I anchor myself in is really the prioritized alignment with the CEO. And to me, this isn't just about choosing marketing goals that are aligned to the business goals and vision, although that is incredibly important.  I actually work with the CEO to say, compositionally, this is where we're going to spend our time over the next year. These are the solutions we're going to market. These are the segments we're going to go after and prioritize.

03:53 – CMO Prioritization Matrix for Market Focus

These are the sales teams that we're going to work with the most. So one of the things I did stepping in this new role that I would encourage you to do too, is a prioritization matrix  of all of the possible solutions, segments, geographies, and departments that marketing could and should be serving. And with that, I created a prioritization  matrix that looked at several different factors. The first being, which are most aligned with the business vision?

04:22
Where is the company going in the next several years? Are we evolving from one solution to the next? Are we evolving into new markets? Right? Are we evolving into new industries? Where does the company want to go and which segments are going to take us there? That's step number one. The second piece of the prioritization matrix that I look at is the profitability potential. Which segments have the highest profit margins?

04:49
Where are we going to see the most, not only the most revenue, but the most profitability on the bottom line? That's definitely a key factor as we think about scalable, efficient growth. The third thing I look at is the market growth opportunity in that particular segment. Which segments have the highest growth potential in the next three to five years?

05:10
which ones are high growth and which ones have a potential to be stagnant or even decrease. The next thing I considered as a part of the prioritization metrics was buying trends. Are there any key buying trends or restrictions that would prevent us from being able to do our job? So for example, some of the heavily regulated industries,  healthcare comes to mind,  it can be harder to market to those personas and market to those accounts. They might have strict rules in place. I know financial services is another one.

05:40
So think about where, where's the ease of marketing, um, going to fit well. Now, certainly this is not an end all be all. And frankly, none of these factors are.  If you sell a cybersecurity product and it's really hard to get in front of cybersecurity professionals,  you're going to have to work around that. Right. But if you had a choice to go after cybersecurity professionals or software engineers, software engineers are probably going to be your lower barrier.

06:07
to growth than cybersecurity professionals who are very hard, who oftentimes don't want to be found. So something to keep in mind.  And then the last factor I considered as a part of this prioritization matrix was our proof points and our presence. So where do we already have a strong sales team or presence across the different segments or solutions or geographies? And where do we have a lot of proof where we have successful customers?

06:35
or we have customer stories to tell that are really strong and testimonials, right? It's only going to amplify our impact when we think about marketing's success factors going into a campaign. So if you haven't done this exercise before, I would highly encourage it. And it really allows you to bring the strategic mindset to the table back with your CEO and say, hey, based on everything I've learned internally, as well as the external markets research in terms of what's actually happening.

07:02
Here's where I feel like you're going to get the most bang for your buck out of the marketing function over the next year. And here's where we are really going to invest our time and our energy in order to be successful for the company. Now, quick note here, leverage ChatGBT or any of the LLMs to help you do this research. It can actually help you set up your prioritization matrix  and conduct some deep research with market research, but it can also help you rationalize how to prioritize

07:31
the segments and why after you add in all of these different factors and the inputs that you have for your particular business. And frankly, when you approach it this way, it helps us make a more strategic decision around where to focus as opposed to serving the loudest person on the team, which is sometimes the reality that many of us are familiar with.  So tip number one, create prioritized alignment with your CEO specifically.

08:00 – Priority #2: Get Marketing Rowing Together

and leverage a prioritization matrix  to help you justify where you and your team should spend their time over the next 12 months. This has been a game changer for me. All right. Focus number two, priority number two, when I step into a new role. And this  has been really top of mind for me as we're exiting the first 90 days and  getting into  run mode.  And that's getting everyone rowing in the same direction.

08:25
Another thing that's really common when I walk into a marketing organization is that every function or each of the programs seem to operate in their own silos. And the team members themselves may be doing excellent jobs within their particular area, but so often the team isn't looking up and out in terms of what is the collective and integrated impact we are making on the organization.  One of the biggest ways that I

08:51
culturally try and shift from this silo operations into a fluid empowered team  is that I structure the marketing plan to all be centered around goals rather than to be centered around functions. And so what I mean by this is a lot of times when I walk in and I see the existing marketing plans,  it's by function, right? It's here's what we're going to do for the website. Here's what SEO is going to do. Here's what social media is going to do over the next year.

09:19
And it's very, it's it's a very like programmatic approach.  Um, and honestly, just a dump of everything that we're going to do into one big roadmap. That's the reality of most of the marketing plans that I see when I step into an organization and how I flip that on its head  is I build a marketing plan that's goals oriented and goals forward as opposed to program and function forward. And so what that looks like is.

09:46 – Goals-Based Marketing Plan for CMOs

I will choose anywhere from three to five major marketing goals over the next 12 months. In this instance for this org, we have three main marketing goals, but I've also done upwards of five in the past. I typically don't do more than that because realistically we're not going to be able to achieve anything meaningful more than five most of the time.

10:08
But once I've identified those three goals, the entire marketing roadmap is centered around those three goals. And so each goal has a section and each section includes a roadmap specific to achieving that goal, as well as KPIs specific to achieving that goal. As opposed to, here's my social media KPIs, here's my campaign KPIs, right?  It's really centered around what are the KPIs that

10:38
will tell us that we've made movement and we are achieving the goal that we've set out to. Now, I personally even take it a step further than this. I will actually orient the team collaboration around these goals. So rather than having functional calls and standups, although those are powerful too,  feel free to continue doing those,  but I'll have goal standups. So  what are the major projects, initiatives and programs that tie directly into the goal?

11:06
that we are trying to accomplish. And that's how I orient the team. For example, if driving a certain amount of pipeline is our goal and one of the biggest ways we're going to move the needle on that, our demand generation campaigns, then we will set  up team standups around those campaigns  that involve everybody who is tied into achieving the success with that campaign.

11:29
And so what I've personally found is this just really helps connect the entire team and their roles and their responsibilities to the actual goal and end game that we're trying to accomplish within the marketing function that year. It provides clear ownership, it reduces confusion, and it creates a lot stronger collaboration than operating in silos. And my last tip here is that I always start with aligning.

11:55
marketing and getting everyone rowing in the same direction, right? Are we on the same bus going to the same destination?  Once I've achieved that and I feel like marketing is really in lockstep after the first 90 days, at that point, I'll look to bring in other departments and make sure we're rowing on the same boat as well, right? So if you add sales into the equation or product or customer success,

12:18 – Priority #3: Incrementality & Quick Wins

We certainly all want to be rowing in the same direction as a go-to-market organization, absolutely.  But I try and get my own house in order before I start adding in a ton of more personalities and confusion to the mix. Okay, and the number three thing that I always focus on in the first 90 days  is centered around the idea of incrementality and quick wins. So when you're stepping into a new organization, there can be this intense pressure to fix it all, right? The moment you walk in the door.

12:47
or the CEO asking when will we start creating a lot of pipeline? And on the flip side, we ourselves can be incredibly excited and jazzed up about everything we want to accomplish over the next year. we, depending on your own personality, want to be accomplishing things very quickly. And so for me, one of the things that I've always prioritized in the first 90 days is this incrementality mindset. How can we be creating a vision and a foundation

13:15
to achieve the long-term plan while still doing the next best thing today to move the needle. And so one of the ways in practice that I like to do this is when I have my different functional leaders all think about what their functions are going to do to help us achieve the goals and they build out their plans, I'll then ask them to use an impact versus effort matrix to identify low effort, high impact actions.

13:43 – Impact vs. Effort Matrix for Fast CMO Wins

So if you imagine the  X axis being effort level, so low effort on the left, high effort on the right, and impact being the Y axis,  so low impact on the bottom and high impact on the top, we really wanna be choosing the activities or the tactics or the projects that are gonna be low effort, high impact. Those are your quick wins, and those are the things that you can do today and not wait to see

14:12
success, right? And we all want to see some success in our first 90 days. You want your C-suite team to know that they made the right choice  and they're starting to see some of the trickle effects of having you in, even though your job is certainly to build a long-term strategy and be able to manage to that strategy. So creating this culture and focus of incrementality and quick wins is one of the

14:35
Ways that I create this best of both worlds. We're building momentum while working towards longer term changes. And I'm encouraging the team and supporting the team to think about their functions in terms of short term and long term. Awesome. So I don't know about you, but the first 90 days for me at a new role, just completely fly by. I'm having a lot of fun right now. Um, but when I step back and look at what are really the meaningful things I'm putting into.

15:04 – First 90 Days CMO Recap & Key Habits

practice for the marketing team  to build a strong foundation over the next year and beyond.  They really boil down to these three things for me. So number one, getting prioritized alignment with your C-suite. The prioritized piece is incredibly important. Yes, you want to get aligned with your C-suite and your CEO,  but you need to also make sure that you're prioritizing your efforts within that alignment.

15:29
Because  so often everyone wants to do everything at once and we just know we won't be successful  if that's the case.  Number two, getting your team rowing in the same direction. No more operating in silos. Our teams are meant to be fluid and empowered with how they approach their work. So start with a goals-based plan.

15:51
that everyone knows how they exactly plug into the plan  in order to achieve the goals that the department is committing to for the next year. And third, but not least, focus on those incremental and quick wins that build momentum and trust quickly. Make sure that by the end of your first 90 days, your C-suite is not questioning why they've brought you in and they're already starting to feel the ripple impact of your role and your leadership. And as I mentioned at the beginning,  these aren't just first 90 day strategies.

16:21
They're leadership habits that will serve you well in any season of your career. So even if you have been at your company for six months or a year or three years, if any of these three focus areas will help you, please take what you can and put it into practice within your team. And if you're heading into annual planning and want a partner to help you set your vision, build a strategic roadmap and strengthen your executive presence, check out my Lead Like a CMO Strategy Planning Sprint.

16:50
You can visit growthactivated.com to learn more and set up some time to speak with me. It's a high impact way to go into planning season, clear, confident, and ready to lead. And as always in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company.  See you next time.  Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Growth Activated.  I hope this conversation sparked new ideas,  challenged your thinking, and gave you practical tools to help elevate your impact as a marketing leader.

17:20
If it did, I would love for you to pass it along to a friend or a colleague in B2B marketing.  The more we grow together, the more we raise the bar for what marketing leadership can look like.  And as always, in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company.  See you next time.