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Forbes
30-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why CMOs Must Own The GTM Operating System
Deboshree Sarkar is the Head of Marketing at Platform. Marketing has always been seen as a creative engine behind the brand, responsible for messaging, brand awareness and top-of-funnel content. But today's reality is far more complicated than that. The role of marketing has shifted, and it's no longer simply a support function to the sales team. Thanks to long buying cycles, cross-functional decision-makers and fragmented tech stacks, marketing is becoming the operating layer that holds the entire go-to-market (GTM) engine together. And CMOs have evolved from brand stewards to system architects. This shift redefines the value that marketing brings to the business. And it starts with a modern marketing mandate. That mandate? CMOs need to own the entire GTM operating system: the tools, processes, data and cross-functional alignment that drive growth. From Campaign Executor To Strategic Operator The role of the CMO has transformed dramatically. We're no longer focused solely on generating leads. As marketing leaders, we're now responsible for pipeline quality, revenue acceleration and enabling sales execution. Effective CMOs in today's environment help define and govern lead qualification frameworks. We partner with product teams to build roadmap-aligned campaigns. We collaborate with sales to set SLAs, improve forecasting accuracy and monitor pipeline health. We make decisions about tools, tech stacks, attribution models and data hygiene. Put simply, we operate as both growth enablers and creative leads. In my own work, this became clear when our company transitioned from NetNumber to a newly independent brand, Titanium. When I joined the team, there was no marketing foundation. No systems. No awareness. We had to start from scratch, building the website, tech stack, lead funnel, analyst engagement and ABM campaigns. Within just two years, Titanium has established brand recognition, a high-performing GTM engine and a scalable operating system that integrates marketing and sales. That's the modern marketing mandate in action. Our marketing team has led the entire GTM operating system. What A GTM Operating System Actually Looks Like If you're wondering what this 'GTM operating system' includes, think beyond campaigns and content calendars. A true GTM OS is an interconnected framework that enables predictable, repeatable growth. It includes: • Tools: Platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce and LinkedIn Sales Navigator that are tightly integrated and data-synced • Processes: Life-cycle management, lead scoring, ABM execution and efficient handoffs between marketing and sales • Data: Unified definitions of MQLs, SQLs and pipeline stages, with clear attribution models • Alignment: A shared roadmap across functions, from product to sales to finance One of the biggest breakdowns I've seen in GTM systems is misalignment between marketing and sales, particularly around lead definitions. Without clearly defined and agreed-upon qualification criteria, even the best campaigns can fall flat. That's why we built formal MQL-to-SQL-to-opportunity frameworks and integrated them directly into our CRM and automation tools. Equally important are effective feedback loops. At Titanium, we evaluate lead performance quarterly. We evaluate not just the volume of leads but also lead quality, source performance and long-term conversion trends. That's how we keep improving the system. Advice For CMOs Inheriting A Messy GTM Stack If you're stepping into a marketing leadership role and find yourself faced with fragmented systems, siloed data and unclear processes, my advice is simple. Don't be afraid to start from scratch. Sometimes, you can't fix what's broken. You have to rebuild it from the ground up. My team didn't try to patch old systems. We built a new stack that aligned with our strategy. To do that, we had to: • Work with the product team early to align on roadmap visibility and GTM timing. • Align marketing goals directly to sales objectives. • Define target audiences and lead qualification jointly with sales. • Build tech infrastructure based on our strategic needs. Only after we created that foundational alignment did we choose the tools to use and build out the campaigns. The stack followed the strategy, not the other way around. Key Takeaways For Marketing Leaders If you're a CMO or head of marketing looking to elevate your role, here are five core principles I've found essential: The Future Belongs To Systems-Driven CMOs The CMOs who will shape the next decade of business growth will be creative thinkers. But they'll also be operators. And builders. And connectors. Owning the GTM operating system is a strategic imperative. And when done well, it transforms marketing from its former role as the mouthpiece of the brand into the engine room that drives revenue. And for those of us ready to take on this mandate, the opportunity has never been greater. Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Forbes
03-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Rethinking B2B Email Marketing: Why You've Been Doing It Backward
Deboshree Sarkar is the Head of Marketing at Platform. In the high-stakes world of B2B marketing, email often gets reduced to a tactical checkbox—a lead-nurturing tool driven by templates, automation and so-called 'best practices.' But here's an inconvenient truth: Many of those best practices are stale, formulaic and disconnected from how people actually experience email in 2025. As leaders, we need to stop asking 'What's our click-through rate?' and start asking 'Did this email move someone?' The Broken Psychology Of B2B Email Most B2B emails are structured like polite sales letters: clear, predictable and forgettable. They're optimized for structure, not surprise. And in a world where inboxes are saturated and attention is a currency, that predictability is a liability. Instead of delivering value, we deliver templates. Instead of writing for humans, we write for HubSpot dashboards. It's time to rethink. Proactive Leadership: Building An Email Philosophy, Not Just A Calendar One of the most overlooked assets in email marketing is a shared point of view. Not content. Not cadence. Philosophy. Do your emails reflect how your company thinks, talks and solves problems? Or are they just another echo in the noise? We built a simple internal playbook, and every email we send must do at least one of three things: 1. Teach something others aren't teaching. 2. Say something others aren't saying. 3. Make the reader feel something others aren't making them feel. That filter keeps us accountable. It stops us from being lazy. It ensures we're not just writing at our audience but writing with them in mind. The Inbox As A Stage, Not A Transaction We encourage our team to treat the inbox as a stage, not a sales funnel. Every email is a 10-second opportunity to earn a next click, not force it. One of our boldest experiments? A 'No Pitch Thursday' series where we told real product lessons, failures and learnings from inside our org. No CTAs. No gated content. Just authentic storytelling. The result was 45% higher open rates and double the replies. Turns out, honesty still sells—even when you're not selling. Flip The Funnel: Making The Audience Famous Here's something even fewer marketers are doing: using email to spotlight the audience, not just to send info, but to make your audience feel seen. We started highlighting our customers' achievements, referencing their insights and quoting their LinkedIn posts. Not just case studies—celebrations. Why does this work? Because attention is reciprocal. You spotlight someone, and they'll open your next email just to see who else you spotlighted. The Next Frontier: Predictive Email Thinking If you're truly future-forward, you're not just tracking engagement; you're anticipating disengagement. Here's one proactive move we made: We built an 'Attention Loss Index' for our subscribers. We track declining engagement over a 90-day window and trigger reengagement journeys that don't look like win-back campaigns. Instead, we send thought pieces, customer POVs or ask provocative questions ('What's one thing we should never talk about again?'). The response rates? Often better than our lead-gen campaigns. Email As A Strategic Leadership Lever Email isn't dying, but bad email is. Great email marketing is a leadership act. It requires listening deeper, empathizing harder and breaking the templates in service of truth, not trends. The future of B2B email isn't louder; it's braver. It's not just automated, but intentionally authored. And in that future, the marketers who win won't be those who optimize subject lines. They'll be the ones who build trust, one email at a time. Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
