Chief Outsiders: CMO Playbook

Chief Outsiders tapped ClearEdge to help them create the most compelling content and build an interactive and professionally designed CMO Playbook to increase sales and marketing effectiveness.

Challenge: Chief Outsiders, the leading fractional CMO service company for mid-sized and private equity clients, needed to help their 80+ CMOs develop more targeted opportunities, engage into more productive and relevant conversations with prospects, and close new business. They tapped ClearEdge to help them create the most compelling content and build an interactive and professionally designed Sales Process Playbook to meet this challenge.

Approach: Over the course of the 10-week project, we curated existing material and created new content through interviews with internal stakeholders. The playbook content creation process helped clarify and more accurately define the stages and activities of the sales process from lead identification through to close and beyond. The end result was a beautifully designed, fully tested, interactive playbook of 50 pages, optimized for email delivery and web download. It was built to view on laptops, tablets and mobile devices and included live links to sales tools, best practices, forms and videos for easy and direct access. We also included a high-resolution printable version of the file, which Chief Outsiders printed and spiral-bound so every CMO has a hard copy version to use for reference.

Impact: The Sales Process Playbook added value to the Chief Outsider organization in four key ways by serving as:

A referenceable guide to help Chief Outsider CMOS:

• Become fully versed in the Chief Outsiders sales process

• Identify and meet new target prospects and network more effectively

• Get clarity on the real problems that target prospects face, identify pain points, ask the right questions and create the urgency to close business

• Ask for referral business, either from their personal networks or from existing accounts

An on-boarding resource for new hire training:

• Using the playbook contents as a roadmap for onboarding drove consistency, efficiency and effectiveness

• The new hires were able to take away a referenceable guide that mirrored what they learned in their first few days with the company and hit the ground running

A recruiting tool to entice new potential CMOs:

• During interviews with potential new hires, the playbook is a showpiece for what a new consultant can expect in the way of support

• Reinforces Chief Outsiders commitment to support the team with a visual example of the key sales resources that will be available to new team members

A recognition vehicle to promote team spirit and cascade knowledge in the organization:

• The playbook calls out and showcases successes from Chief Outsider CMOs and highlights peer to peer best practices for others to learn from and emulate

“Basically, we were stuck. We knew we needed to train and support our expanding team of CMOs with better sales guidance but didn’t know how to go about it beyond simply hiring a sales trainer. We ended up with a clean and crisp packaging of our own processes, personas and best practices that can be built upon for even more extensive impact in the future. Our sales playbook from ClearEdge is a game changer for us.” - Pete Hayes, Co-principal and CMO

Learn how ClearEdge playbooks can increase sales and marketing effectiveness in your organization!