In this Early Stage Marketer Podcast episode, the host and a marketing expert discuss how marketers should adapt their performance reports for different senior stakeholders—CEO, CFO, and head of sales. The conversation emphasizes that each role cares about distinct outcomes: CEOs want evidence of overall business growth, CFOs look for financial impact and ROI, and sales leaders focus on the quality and relevance of leads. The expert advises translating traditional marketing metrics (impressions, engagements) into concrete business results such as pipeline contribution, sign‑ups, and qualified leads. Practical tactics include tracing the downstream impact of viral posts, collaborating with sales to obtain call transcripts for content creation, and framing reports to highlight how marketing activities make the stakeholder’s job easier and showcase their contribution. The overall message is that effective reporting is a form of stakeholder management that aligns marketing data with the specific goals of each audience.
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So how can someone report numbers to maybe the CEO versus the head of sales if they have that? Or even their head of marketing. So let's say this is all the activities I did this quarter, and then I have to tell this to my head of marketing. I have to share the same information to my CEO and then to my CFO, probably the head of sales. So how can I tailor each of these to these different people?
So I would say like every, um, everyone in a company, depending on what role they have, they have what they care about. They care about either what's going to make their job easier or what's going to look like— what's going to help them look like they are doing a better job, you know, at their job, right? They are doing their work, right?
That's true.
So a CEO, I would say, cares about like general business growth, right? So it's like I said, the CEO doesn't want to hear impressions, engagement rates, the things that like a any social media manager would think are like big achievements— oh my God, we had a viral post, 10 million impressions, blah blah blah, engagements— a CEO probably doesn't care. Or a CEO will tell you, nice, well done, but—
Yeah.
But how did that lead to, you know, what's— what's— how did that contribute to, like I said, pipeline? How many leads did we get from that? Or how many, how many signups You know, like, if you're a B2C company, nobody wants to hear this.
They are like straight up sign up.
How many, how many signups? How much business did we get from that? Or how did we, you know, retain any, any user or whatever from that? That's really what they want to hear. So you kind of just have to report by— like I said, you can still mention your whole viral post, 10 million impressions, this, this, this. And by the time I did the, you know, I traced— by the time I did the tracking and the tracing, I realized that this post gave us 10 signups, 20 signups, 50 signups, whatever. That is like a complete picture of the impact that you gave. And it's like, okay, nice, you did well in the regular social media metrics, the regular marketing metrics, but you also contributed to the business's growth with your viral posts. And like I said, every CEO wants to hear that. Um, a head of sales, for example, that one cares about whether you are bringing in— whether the leads you are bringing in are qualified enough for his people to work with. Yeah, you can't just say like a head of sales, you could tell the head of sales like, oh yeah, I brought in 15 leads. But then a really good head of sales is probably going to be more concerned with how relevant those leads are to your ICP. Yes, the quality of the leads or not. So those are kind of things you want to hear.
Yeah.
Or they want to hear like, if you're talking about your strategy, for example, a head of sales is probably going to ask you how you're going to make sure that we're not just getting anyhow leads and we're getting leads that are actually quality leads or leads that are actually qualified or leads that are actually our ICP. And then you can now start to say things like explaining your process, like, oh yes, I've looked at, you know, I've looked at, you can, you can even ask your head of sales for things like, oh, please, can you give me transcripts of our last how many sales calls? Or, you know, if you can think of like 5 sales calls that closed on the spot, do you mind sharing the transcript with me? Um, I want to use it to create social media content that can give us more leads like this person that closed on these spots. That person will be like— that person will love you when they hear things like that, because they're like, oh, this person is actually trying to make my job easier.
Easier.
They're just asking me for information. And then when you're reporting your, your, um, your metrics, you can say, oh, head of sales helped me with 5 transcripts, you know, that closed on these spots. I used it to create this content. We got these impressions, this engagement, this, this, this. And by the time I tracked, I found out that, you know, 5 of the people— 5 people that viewed this post booked sales calls or something. You've made that person look good because the person helps you do your job.
Yeah.
And then the sales calls that you booked are probably also qualified leads. So they've like— just, that's pretty much the whole thing. This is like stakeholder management plus trying to report or Tell, talk about your metrics in a way that that person cares about.
Thank you for listening to the Early Stage Marketer Podcast. I hope today's story gave you something to reflect on or even something to try in your own work. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, leave a comment, and share it with someone who might find this helpful. See you next time.
