What a Chief Marketing Officer Needs to Know

Today's chief marketing officer (CMO) has to have a very broad set of skills. Here is a longer list of skills and abilities one should look for in that individual:

• Demonstrated ability to lead and inspire teams
• Passionate customer advocacy
• Business development skills
• Excellent analytical skills
• Strategic vision
• Creative thinking
• A passion for continuous learning
• A willingness to stay abreast of the latest brand management and marketing trends
• A willingness to stay abreast of the latest industry trends
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills
• Strong influencing and persuasion skills
• Strong observation and listening skills
• An ability to view the world through the lens of others
• A profound understanding of human motivations
• Common sense
• An entrepreneurial spirit
• Agility and adaptability to change
• Financial management skills
• The ability to interact well with cross-functional peers on the senior leadership team
• Understanding the varied marketing needs of different internal stakeholder groups
• Understanding all the ways in which the marketing function needs to interact seamlessly and productively with the sales organization
• Being familiar with different types of organization designs/structures for marketing departments and sales organizations
• Understanding the pros and cons of different approaches to sales incentives
• Knowing how to determine the appropriate size of the marketing budget and how to optimize its use across a wide variety of marketing functions
• Being able to create professional development programs and plans for marketers throughout the enterprise
• Willingness to inform and educate the organization about the brand's unique value proposition
• Knowing how to develop succession plans for marketers including when and how to cross-train them in various marketing sub-functions
• Knowing how to identify organizational knowledge gaps and ways to fill those gaps
• Knowing how to gather sales and customer data from throughout the enterprise
• Knowing how to gather competitive intelligence
• Knowing how to discover, interact with and use organization outsider feedback loops through social media
• Knowing how to measure and provide an ongoing internal feedback loop of customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Knowing how to create an appropriate brand scorecard and suggesting which metrics should be included on a balanced organizational scorecard and in common measures
• Knowing how to create and manage a sound marketing planning process
• Knowing which marketing strategies and tactics lend themselves to accurate ROI assessments
• Knowing how to choose and best manage marketing agency relationships
• Having a knowledge of the different types of research methodologies and understanding which work best to identify and extract different types of information
• Understanding CRM and its uses
• Understanding pricing strategy
• Understanding distribution strategy
• Understanding marketing research, big data analytics, brand management, brand licensing, advertising, media planning, promotion, direct marketing, corporate communications, public relations, investor relations, product development, package design, digital marketing, mobile marketing, retail merchandising, membership management and trade marketing as appropriate