CEO doesn’t believe B2B SLG startups/scale ups need PMM
After being a generalist marketing director at my organization for a few years, we were acquired a couple years ago and have been growing and shifting to scaling mode. We are only a sales-led growth company, with ABM campaigns and Field Marketing/events as our key strategy and channels currently.
We have ambitious growth goals for next year and I’m recognizing that we need a leader for the team that has more of a demand gen background than I do - my strengths are more towards product marketing. It’s also what I personally enjoy more, and haven’t been able to dedicate much time to it this year because of my focus building and managing the existing team and trying to help us reach pipeline goals for the year.
I proposed to shift to specialize in PM, to give it the attention that role needs to help sales and marketing succeed with stronger ongoing foundations and support from that angle. I proposed this to my CMO today, but he said the CEO doesn’t believe SLG startups need someone specialized in product marketing.
What are your thoughts? How can I position this proposal to make myself and this role sound integral for our success? I see myself building essentially a new department for the org with this, but it might be an uphill battle.