From Chaos to Clarity: Fractional CMO Andy Culligan on Strategic Execution, SDR Teams and Company Growth (Ep. 26)

In this episode of The Marketing Share, hosts Alec and Barb sit down with seasoned fractional CMO, Andy Culligan, to explore the complexities of modern marketing leadership. 

Andy breaks down why building an effective marketing team is more challenging than ever. With specialties like paid ads, content creation, and marketing ops under the marketing umbrella, it’s unrealistic to expect one person to handle everything—a mistake many companies make.

Andy shares his experience helping companies avoid burnout and underperformance by focusing on execution over constant rebranding or restructuring. He emphasizes working with existing resources to deliver quick wins that impress CEOs and accelerate growth. 

Drawing from his work with companies of all sizes, Andy offers actionable advice on assessing teams, identifying gaps, and strategically filling roles, whether by hiring or optimizing talent. He also stresses the importance of assembling the right team of specialists to avoid overloading marketers with unrealistic expectations.

Listeners will hear Andy’s stories of success, from quadrupling revenue for a U.S. company by shifting to a high-ticket model to building an SDR team that doubled pipeline generation. 

His practical approach to marketing leadership, focused on sales enablement and execution, offers a fresh perspective for CMOs looking to enhance their teams and drive real business results.

This episode is packed with insights on how to navigate the challenges of modern marketing leadership, execute effectively, and build sustainable teams that perform at their best.

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Transcript

Alec (00:01.986)
Hey Andy, thanks for joining us here on the Marketing Share podcast. It's kind cool because you're our, I think, technically our first international guest, Ireland, but based out of Austria. So welcome to the show. Glad to have you

Andy (00:16.281)
Thanks very much, happy to be here.

Alec (00:17.9)
Yeah. Can you just start out? Give us a little bit of background on how you got into marketing, what's your marketing background. I think you actually have some sales background as well. And then now you've been doing fractional, so fractional CMO work for a few years. So just tell us a little bit about

Andy (00:33.679)
Sure. my background when it comes to marketing is we have to go back way back, So I started working when I was like 14 years old, right? A very classic Irish thing, know, get to work. But no, like it was always very important from my parents' side that I understood like the, like had a good work ethic and understood what it meant to be in the workforce and so on.

My old man had got me placed across some of his friends' businesses during the summertime and I was doing things, I was doing office jobs, but I was doing things like merchandising as well, which was super interesting. I was involved in putting promotions in stores. So I got that first taste of marketing experience from the age of maybe 14 onwards. Highly illegal, by the way, but it's still, man, we won't get into that, right? I think the time on that has probably canceled it out, so I think we're fine, right?

So it's 25 years ago, whatever it was. So, yeah. then I actually, funnily enough, when I left school, when I was younger, I actually wanted to, I didn't want to go into business. I wanted to be a physio. And I might, again, like people were saying, your talent be wasted there. You need to go into something creative. So I then went into marketing. I studied marketing management in Dublin. And then following that, I started a role when I finished

I started a role at an organization doing SDR work. So cold calling. then quickly enough got promoted into an account management role where it was more like account executive, where you were closing deals, right? So full cycle sales. And then I decided I wanted to earn less money. So I went into marketing. I then wanted to go back into the marketing side because I enjoyed the marketing piece.

started working in a multinational, which then got me into technology as well. So this is maybe 2009 and I started maybe 2010 even and started working with Marketo, which is a marketing automation platform, but very early days of Marketo, And understood then like from a global level and a multinational, how CRM and marketing automation could be used together. So I was working together with Salesforce and Marketo.

Andy (02:55.727)
And then very quickly became the global champion of that particular product within the organization. People were coming to me, how do we use it, blah, blah, blah. And very quickly, or after a number of years working there, I was then approached by another organization which was in the tech space in B2B SaaS. And that's over 10 years ago now. And I started working there and very quickly rose up to the ranks there very quickly. Company itself had received a huge amount of funding when I first joined going to the US market. didn't have any experience in the US market.

But our core focus then became the US market. I very quickly began to understand how the US market functions and so on. had a team out there and I ended up building a global team there. Worked there for a number years and then went to a direct competitor, which was everybody was delighted about, as you can imagine. And in Ireland, we'd say it went down like a cup of cold sick. So.

So we, so I was dead. went and built a marketing team at another organization, built that from five people up to 50 people. And we quadrupled the revenue in a number of years. Then they did another CMO role in an organization, Rapid Growth. And that was my last CMO role. And that was bringing me into 2021. And after Rapid, Rapid Growth during the COVID years, as you know, with tech, tech exploded during COVID, right? And we were

definitely not an exception to that rule. So we had seen massive, massive growth at the same time as lowering our budgets and playing it very safe. we had like playing it safe, we needed to come up with a number of ideas that were very creative in order to not spend money, right? But we still managed to grow MRR, so monthly recurring revenue by 5 % month on month, which is over a year big, right? And so we, yeah, like at the end of that journey, I was just wrecked.

You know, like I had a young family at home and we'd seen a number of lockdowns and all that type of stuff. And I was just like, I can't keep going at this pace. It's going to kill me. Right. So I, I stepped away and just wanted to break. And then people started reaching out. As soon as they found out I'd left the CMO role, I was at a company called Leadfeeder. Great company, great product. And, and as soon as I stepped away, people said, Hey, I heard you left Leadfeeder. Would you be interested in full -time work? And I just said, no, but I can help.

Andy (05:13.955)
And then from there on in, was like more of those things just started coming up. You know, I like I always sort of joke about it, but I started the business by accident. It's not that I was looking to do that. I was just lucky enough that I had spent a lot of time building my network over the number of years that I was that I was in full time roles and had a somewhat of a name for myself in the B2B tech space or SAS space. And people just seen that and wanted my expertise. Right. And

That was three years ago and it's still booming. I'm now looking to start a new venture, which is placing more marketing teams rather than just me, because I want to create something that goes beyond my time, right? The only thing that you can't scale is time. And I want to make sure that we build something scalable, but I'm still very much doing the fractal CMO business across a number of brands at the moment as well. And I'm very aware that was a really long intro for myself and you probably didn't want that long, but there you

Alec (05:55.202)
Mm -hmm.

Alec (06:12.384)
That's good though. That's a great background and I love how it does happen that way. Sometimes it's not what you plan but it's kind what comes and then you realize, hey, this is actually working really well and there's actually more to do. So I love hearing about that experience.

Barb VanSomeren (06:27.9)
really love the fact that you started in sales. Okay, because I'm a big believer that carrying a bag at the beginning of your career is a really great way to get very practical from a marketing standpoint, right? You're not necessarily that marketing person in the corporate office away from it all when you've carried a bag for you understand what the purpose of driving sales and revenue for the organization is. So I think that's really important.

So you spoke a little bit about Andy, how your motivation for getting into this, what's a company's motivation other than they wanted your expertise? Are there other ways that companies really kind of dip their toe into this? My experience is sometimes a growing organization is small enough so they can't really afford a full -time CMO, but they're looking for somebody that's at a senior level.

at some limited scale so they can provide themselves with some sort of leadership in that role with others that execute. But what's your experience?

Andy (07:30.031)
There's that. And then there's also speed. Right. So you can basically be placed overnight. Like that's one of my USPs, let's say, would be that I can, you know, I can start in the morning. You know, there's no, there's, I don't need to hand in notice anywhere. That's less of an issue in the States because you've got like 36 hour, 36 hour cancellation windows or whatever. But in that was, or what you call it, notice periods, right?

But I joke a little bit, it's normally the state is two weeks, right? Which is not so much of an issue, but here in Europe, you can get up to three months, right? So that can be a big deal. Also, recruitment costs is another factor, right? So if you're hiring a full -time CMO and you're hitting this barb around costs,

when you're hiring a full -time CMO and you go through an executive recruiter, you could be paying up to 20 to 22 % of what the annual salary of that CMO is, right? So if you're paying a CMO 200K a year, 250K a year, you can be very quickly paying 50 grand just to get that person in through the door. And they may not even be the right fit, you know? And that brings me to my next point around risk. So for me, like you're saving the cost early on.

I, the way that I work with businesses is that if you're not happy, then I don't want to be there. You know, that's, that's, that's how I typically work. Like there's plenty of business to go around and it doesn't make sense for me to lock myself within an organization, which again is, is less of an issue maybe in the States where the laws are not as strict when it comes to letting people go, et cetera. But here in Europe, you need to build a case against somebody for, for dismissal, right? It's very, very hard to get rid of people.

Right. So if you bring in a CMO and you realize after a year, this person's not quite what we were looking for. We weren't ready as a business for a CMO or whatever. Then that's a very costly exercise when you think about recruitment. And then you also probably need to give some sort of handshake at the end, regardless of where you're based. It's the same in the States and in Europe. Right. So from a risk perspective, you can get rid of me in the morning and there'll be no tears. You know, there won't be any love lost, let's say. Right.

Andy (09:43.447)
Not that I'm promoting to do that necessarily, but you know, it happens, right? Chemistry may not be there, whatever, right? And like there are some of the things. And then also I've got experience in certain industries as well where I can bring the expertise in to some of the companies I've been working with before in the past that are quasi competitors, you know, and the competition clause, my contract is outrun, for example, and I can go work with those organizations and help them grow, right? So,

I think there's a mix of like risk -free, the cost as well as a fraction of what you'd be paying a full -time CMO on a monthly basis, but also generally to get somebody on board. And then as well, the expertise is important. And then the speed being another thing, but typically you'll have like a team existing already internally that need to be led that don't know which way they're going, right? So it brings a certain level of efficiency in

a founder or CEO that's currently maybe running the marketing team or have seen it sometimes a CEO or chief revenue officer might be running the marketing team. They're not really getting the most out of those employees because they don't really know how to run a marketing team themselves. And they'll admit that, but they don't have any other option. And it's then getting the team more efficient as well, right? Quicker and you get more efficiency out of the people that you currently

Alec (10:50.168)
Mm

Alec (11:00.962)
Yeah. Do you have a contract length then you sign or is it you just go month to month that you can quit at any

Andy (11:08.505)
So people ask me, hey, like what's the what's the quickest that will start to see value? You know, I mean, it goes from immediate to like normally you'll start to see impact after three months. Like I can't come in and say by next week our numbers are going to turn around. Right. But three months is normally the period that I would suggest as a beginning. And any company that I've had that three months where they're normal. Like so you get some companies that are hesitant. Right. So I don't know. And so, well, let's sign a three month contract and see after the three months.

Are you still happy or not? Every single company that I've worked with, I've done that three month contract with have extended. And four of those companies I'm still working with. And like I've been working with a number of companies now for a number of years, right? So, and some of them have taken me out of the marketing position and put me into other positions, which is managing SDR teams, helping get the rev ops function up and running. So they see me a bit like a Swiss army knife. Like in Ireland, you'd say, you know, what is it?

the jack of all trades master and none, right? But I'm not a master and I'm a master review, but yeah. basically what I'm trying to say is my main focus is try to find value as quick as possible. And normally it takes maybe three months.

Alec (12:21.688)
Yeah.

Barb VanSomeren (12:23.08)
too different from any other CMO, right? You you're trying to find some quick wins in the business no matter what you must, right? Is there a certain size company that is right for this kind of engagement? Do you think? mean, I've worked in anything from startups to scale ups. And then we also, Alec and I know people that are doing fractionals in really large companies as well. What's your experience with the size of the company? Is there a sweet spot there?

Andy (12:51.641)
There's there. So I'm still trying to find that sweet spot a little bit. Like what I can tell you is where there's definitely not a sweet spot. Right. So so too early stage. So pre -seed early stage startups, that type of thing is they don't have product market fit yet. They can't afford to do marketing. They don't have the people on the ground. They expect me to do all the execution. I just don't have the time to do that. Right. And but however, what I'm finding with those ones, which is interesting, I'm still working together with their founders on the strategy.

So to actually grow the business, because I think of it from a growth perspective, let's not think about just marketing, but growth. And I've had a number of advisor roles with early stage startups, but just purely working with the founders and having weeklies with them and saying, hey, have you thought about doing this maybe? And they're like, no, I haven't. Maybe let's do that. So just before this call, I had one of those. But to go back to your question around the suites, but I think for me personally, it's the scale up business.

That can be, that can mean a lot of things for a lot of people, but I'd say somewhere in the ring, if they have a, if they have an established marketing team, the marketing team is maybe let's say 10 to 15 people. and they, they have some established function within marketing. They just maybe are a bit messy and don't have much of a plan. And that's where I can come in and create that plan and get people focused on delivering on the plan. it will be good if they have like a BDR and SDR team, right? If they're in that, that high ticket.

Right. So a large deal sizes. And yeah, like that's that's probably where I enjoy the most. You know, it's not that I can't do the other like there would be larger organizations, as you mentioned, Barb, like that would have large marketing teams and so on. They're less looking for like a fractional marketer or more like a part time marketer, which is slightly different. Part time is like we demand like 30 hours a week, you know.

rather than you get less than that for me, but I can tell you that we're going to move in the right direction, you know? And for me personally, I just prefer to move quicker and those larger organizations are can be very, very slow to move, which just drives me nuts personally.

Barb VanSomeren (15:02.332)
Yeah, you know, I've also seen to it's interesting you call it a part time marketer. We have colleagues that they'll they'll move into an advisory role, right? For a company for a period of time, you know, to maybe get things kind of level set and that and that was one of the things I was going to ask you about too is do you do advisory roles or do you really stick in this quick kind of turn? And if that's the case, if you're in a quick turn.

You said some of your engagements are three months, but what's the longest that you've

Andy (15:36.537)
So yeah, the advisory stuff, like that would normally be, I go in as like managing the marketing piece and then step into the advisory thing afterwards if we maybe place a marketer and then I'd work together with the CEO, right? Or if like, for example, the use case there would be if they're looking to secure around, then I can help them come up with their pitch, et cetera, make sure that we're focused on the right things around that.

If they're hiring new sales leadership, et cetera, I can come in and maybe just give some advice there, maybe run some interviews, pull people through the gauntlet a little bit to see if they really get it and things like that. But to answer the question, the three month thing is not, like that's not a, like the three months have always turned into longer engagements. So it's actually not that it's shorter. Like I've never had it only a three month.

The shortest I think I've had is probably like nine months. And the longest that I've had is I'm currently working with one customer that I've been working with since the very beginning. Customer number one are still a customer and I'm still a fractional CMO at that organization. So I run the marketing team there. And then there is another one which I started with in, it's funny.

Alec (16:51.202)
Mm -hmm.

Andy (17:02.829)
Like I actually I'm looking over here because I have it written down here. So they it's a company called Extreme Push and they put like a this is this is what we in Europe, right? This is what we call a first cap. OK, so when you when you play, you guys might be familiar with the sport rugby. Do you know rugby? So rugby is huge in Ireland, right? They're an Irish company and the CEO and co -founder or the CEO and co -founder is an ex professional rugby player. So when you when you play for your country for the first time, you get a

Alec (17:18.466)
Yeah.

Andy (17:31.663)
That's what it's called. You got a cap for your country and they hand you one of them, but the Ireland colors and whatever and the number player you were for the country and the date. And they did the same thing in extreme push. I'm looking here. I started extreme push the 10th of the first. So so the 10th of January, 2022 is when I first started there. And I'm still working there. And I'm in there now as the Swiss Army knife. You know, they always find something new for me. They have a new CMO on board, etc. Like they don't need me in the marketing side anymore. But I'm currently running the SDRs and doing

Alec (17:46.684)
nice.

Andy (18:00.141)
rev -ups and a couple of other different bits and pieces.

Alec (18:03.074)
That's great. So you mentioned SDRs a few times. Let's dig into that a little bit, because a lot of times as a marketer, you end up relying on SDRs. You don't always control them, but sometimes you do get the opportunity to control them, and they actually report into you. Tell me a little bit about that. What do you look for if you are inheriting an SDR ops, or if you were going to start one? What advice do you have in terms of running SDRs?

Andy (18:32.515)
Okay, first and foremost, you should know what you're getting into, right? Like the SDR team is the kindergarten of the organization, you know? They will misbehave. Like it is inevitable. Like you need to be sitting on top of that team. So it can be really challenging if you're a full -time CMO and you're also running the SDR team. So if you are doing that as a full -time CMO,

My advice to you is make sure that you get a really good SDR leader. That by far of any other team within the organization that needs leadership, the SDR team needs leadership. I try to keep it as simple as possible with SDRs. People are always saying, no, you need to go quality over quantity and blah, blah, You do at a certain point, but think about it this way. An SDR is somebody super junior normally when they're first coming into the organization.

There are some exceptions to that rule, but generally the SDR is early 20s, just left uni, first sales job or first job sometime, right? And it's very green, doesn't know the product, doesn't know anybody in the space, has no contacts, right? And you expect that person to be fully ramped within three months and start booking meetings and start like getting stuff through the door without going volume. Like how? Like there's no way that they're going to be able

to create relationships, right? So the way that I approach it is I try to go as broad as possible with the number of organizations that an SDR is working when they first start. So I'll say, okay, let's go after a hundred organizations rather than what you'd hear from a lot of sales influence to say, no, you need to go after five and you need to go after them well. like, yeah, what happens if nobody gets back to you from those five organizations? What if you get no intent signals from those five organizations? You've just spent.

so much time personalizing stuff and nobody cares. So you go after 100, add six to 10 contacts in each of those 100 accounts. That then gives you 600 to a thousand people to go chase, goes around those 600 to a thousand people, right? And then let's look at the intent signals. Are people opening, clicking emails? Are you getting connections on LinkedIn? Is anybody responding to you on LinkedIn? And then once you start to get those little signals, that's when we personalize. Then we go and we look at those organizations and say, okay, something's happened. Like you'd see things.

Andy (20:57.647)
an email will be opened like 10 times from one person. say, that person's forwarded that email. So now you need to go surround more people from that organization with more personalized stuff, right? And that to SDRs, when you get them thinking that way, my experience is that they're like, okay, I get it. I just need to push, push, push, push, push to a number of different people. And of course I'm working with them on their messaging and checking their sequences and cadences to make sure they're not saying any old nonsense, But.

like I would go through that with them. Then I'd also make sure that we're doing things like role plays. I'd also put them on the spot, but in a fun way. Right. Like I did think like last week where I said this was again for extreme push on the SDR team. They're like, OK, we're going to do a session whereby you're going to have to pretend I'm your grandmother and you're to have to sell me extreme push. Right. So just so I understand. So I know that they understand the full breadth of the platform, but also able to put it in layman's terms, because when you're able to put it in layman's terms, it means that you really understand what's happening. Right. So

They had a bit of fun with it and I'd always like pull them up on some stuff. like I have that type of rapport, cause I did it myself. It's a shitty job, excuse my French, right? So you need to have a bit of fun with it as well, right? So I try to bring in like a fun element and also like a bit of a strict thing with them as well, right? Because if you're not keeping them on a tight leash, they will just go do whatever.

Alec (21:56.13)
Yeah.

Alec (22:18.444)
Yeah. Where do you find a good SDR leader?

Andy (22:22.383)
So the best SDR leader I ever had came from HR, would you believe? Like he was a recruiter. So the thing with recruiters are that they make super sellers in my experience. And they understand that numbers game as well because they're trying to go out to as many applicants as possible. And they're always trying to close the applicants. Like their thing is, where's my pipeline of applicants? How can I get more pipeline of applicants in? Okay, I need to book meetings with all these people, get it into my thing.

Alec (22:28.302)
Hmm.

Andy (22:48.973)
and then we need to try to get them down through the funnel and get them closed and into positions, right? So I've actually found, and this happened to me twice, that somebody that's in that recruiting role has worked really well as an SDR lead, right? Or you might have somebody on the team, on the existing SDR team, if you have one, that would suit well as an SDR leader, because they understand all of the process and everything that's internal. And typically,

you're always going to be onboarding SDRs. Like if you're growing an SDR team, there's always going to be fluctuation in that team. So there's always people on board. So what you want to avoid is like somebody, you having to do the onboarding, right? So you want to have somebody you can trust on the team. And if there is a good SDR there, it's, you know, it's it's a little bump up for them because they're, nobody ever wants to be an SDR. They're always looking for their next position, right? So that gives them the choice. And then as well as that, you're, you're also

Taking it off your plate for onboarding of new SDRs then, right?

Alec (23:45.548)
Yeah, those are some great tips. Yeah, you're right. SDR role is hard because you find a good one, but you know they're not going to stay there, right? Because no one, like you said, you're not coming into being an SDR because that's your long -term career plan, right? It's a starting point. So even the best ones, maybe you get them for six months or nine months or something like

Andy (24:02.851)
Yeah. Yeah.

Barb VanSomeren (24:04.862)
I'm glad you talked about volume because I think a lot of people forget about volume today. It's kind of like everybody's so wrapped around ABM strategies and really, you know, honing in on these five or 10 accounts. I'm like, guys, if we do this forever, we are going to, you know, we're never going to have enough numbers on this to put on the board here. So it's kind of like, I, find myself in that balance as well. So let me ask you this

When you come into an organization, what's the biggest thing or the most prominent thing that you fix or you pathway

Andy (24:41.431)
And two things I think, it's one thing, but they're both connected to one or other. It's like targets. Like you'd be surprised how many marketing teams and even SDR teams don't have a target that they're chasing. They don't know what their target is. Nobody's delivered a target to them, so they have no idea what they're chasing. And what is it? what is that target? How is that target connected to the overall goals of the organization of the business? Right. So how do we connect whatever the marketing and SDR team are doing to the overarching goal of the business?

So what is our goal for the business? And I spoke with a founder about this in the past day. I asked a couple of team members, okay, what's your target? And they were like, I don't really have one sort of, there's no, it's not connected to a revenue goal. And I spoke to the founder, because he just asked some feedback, hey, what have you been hearing from the teams? Well, we need to get a revenue target in place, because it at least gives them a pointer in the right direction.

And also like he said as well, yeah, and actually we're aiming for this goal as an organization by the end of the year. I was like, do you, if you asked around the, in the internally, do you think people would know that? And he said, probably not. So like, that's what we need to change. We need to get a focus on like our North star, right? Where do we want to be as a business? And that's where we want to be. And especially for the go -to -market teams, like the commercial teams, need to understand that. Cause then they can go away and start creating plans themselves in terms of like, but also within a structure.

And there's a how we reach that goal. Right. Like what I don't want to do is come in and kick over all the tables and say, here's my plan. Go implement it because everyone's going to be like, no. And so you you want to bring them on a journey. Right. But you want it. You want to put it in. It's a bit like, you know, when you go to a bowling alley and they put the things on the side that the gutters, you know, to stop kids throw the ball. You need to do it. Bumpers. Exactly. You need to be doing it that way. Right. And sometimes you need to be serving it on that thing where you roll the ball down, you know.

Alec (26:24.91)
Yeah.

Alec (26:33.27)
You

Andy (26:34.169)
So,

Barb VanSomeren (26:52.574)
Good, go

Alec (26:55.366)
I like how you just equated founders and CEOs to the kids at a bowling alley that you got to the bumper on. That's going to be the punchline for this episode.

Andy (27:05.365)
I did not say that. I did not say that. You are putting words into my mouth, Alec. I was referring to, let me... I was actually referring to the teams rather than the CEOs. The CEOs know which way the ball should be going, but the rest of the team don't.

Alec (27:19.318)
Okay, all right.

I mischaracterized Annie for the record, everyone. He did not say what I said. That was me. He's never coming back to this podcast again.

Barb VanSomeren (27:23.454)
That's right.

Andy (27:29.655)
It's a slander, absolute slander.

Barb VanSomeren (27:31.326)
Flandre at the marketing fair.

So Andy, talk to what some of the pros and cons are for being a fractional. I think you kind of alluded to it a minute ago and I've felt it too, which is scale. How do you scale

Andy (27:53.401)
can't. That's the problem. you can't. The issue is that like the thing that is in most demand as a fractional person is your time. Right. And there's only so many hours in a day. know, I purposely I'm based in Europe, as you know, and I only work with companies on the on the East Coast because otherwise the phone would never stop. Right. So I

I just think that's the hardest part of being fractional is that scalability thing. think the only way to scale and the way that I'm looking to scale now is to place fractional teams rather than just myself. And we maybe come up with some elements of the marketing piece. So for example, we'll come in and build a marketing plan for you, use your existing team to go execute. And then over time, then we can keep an eye on the team to make sure that they're moving in the right direction. But I have a team of people now working with me that

that are proven leaders in content and product marketing and digital and marketing ops and design and so on. So we have that backbone now. So I think there's probably some scalability in that and then bringing in others of the same ilk then to come and deliver on projects as well. And I think going forward, it might be eventually that I step more into a CEO position rather than the CMO.

and I just make sure that the teams are being placed correctly and making sure that CMOs are being placed at organizations and so on. That's really only way to scale the fractional business is to get more people on. It's an agency model to service, right?

Alec (29:31.8)
Yeah, that is the challenging part, It's like you said, it's your time and it's also but your knowledge. yeah, it's hard to replicate that. But if you build an agency, that's really how you do it, right? You find other really good fractional CMOs and you start to offer the service as a whole.

Andy (29:50.809)
Yep, absolutely.

Barb VanSomeren (29:52.498)
there's plenty of room for that because the traditional agency model is not so performance based, right? So I think it's a different kind of agency that you would have to build. you know, that's the challenge and how you describe that, I think, because it really is a different animal, I think, for clients.

Andy (30:14.051)
Yeah, it's not like that they're just looking after. The problem with an agency is they normally look after one discipline and that one discipline is not then connected to all of the other elements, right? So there's little alignment between maybe if you're using a paid marketing agency and a content agency, Both of those, you need to get both of those agencies talking to one other. There's always gonna be misalignments between both because it's two different disciplines, right?

Barb VanSomeren (30:42.782)
Yeah, and there's a competing agenda, right? I mean, the competing agenda, I think is the big challenge, especially. And I found it too, you know, actually being a fractional as well, right? I I actually identify more as a marketing lead in a company than I do as an agency owner. So it's a little bit of a agenda adjustment as well for people. Yeah.

Andy (30:45.741)
Yeah.

Andy (31:06.191)
Sure.

Barb VanSomeren (31:09.25)
Since we're talking about the nuts and bolts, how do you set up price for something like this? What do you do? A project? If you bring in a team, you have to bill for the team. What are some of those arrangements look

Andy (31:24.653)
Yeah, so the typical just for the fractional CMO is I have a standard price quite normally and it's based off of what I think my time is worth. That's how it started. Basically, it started what I think my time is worth and also with the value that I'm able to offer the organization. And that starts at a certain rate. Like I'd rather not talk about that here, exact rates, et cetera. But people, we can talk about that separately if people are interested.

And then the team thing is more tricky, right? So the issue with the team is as well, like you're reliant on customers also paying, right? So that's another issue that I've come across is people are, we're just not going to pay. you're, know, it's like the work is done, the team needs to be paid. I'm out of pocket then, you know, that's a challenge, but that's a small business challenge generally, right? That's just part.

powerful course when you run a small business. yeah, with the offering, the team services, it can be a challenge as well because you obviously then need to go with a larger figure and people go, God, that's very expensive. And then you need to say, well, it's not actually, if you compare it to you having all of those individuals as FTEs, full -time employees, you're saving like probably 70 % of what the cost would be.

But you need to look at it that way. don't just look at the number. Yeah, the number is big on a monthly basis. But if you want to have all the elements of the marketing mix and you want to get full time people in to do that, it's going to cost you 70 % more. yeah. But. And yes, yes and no. Like, it's not something that they get off the bat. You know, like I need to go and explain it like I'm our chief seller, you know, so I would then need to sit down and really show

Alec (32:59.308)
Yeah. Do they get that so far? What do you

Andy (33:15.747)
picture be like, that's, that's how much it costs. And that like, this is what you can be anticipating to spend on an FTE. Right. And they it's not that they don't always get it. I think it's more they're taking it back by the larger price number of me versus the team, you know, and they're like, Jesus, you know, it's like four times the price of what I cost, which is not that cheap anyway, you know. So, yeah, but there's you can explain it. And to go to your point, Alec, do they get it? They do. But it

take some convincing, let's

Alec (33:47.82)
Yeah, they probably don't, they usually don't think about it that way. So when you bring it up, you're, it's kind of a little bit jarring at first, right? But then, then they kind of settled into it. Yeah.

Andy (33:54.649)
Yep, yep,

Barb VanSomeren (33:57.738)
You know, I have found that most clients don't understand how many specialists you need, right? In marketing, because marketing is so broad now. You need somebody who understands paid. You need somebody who understands marketing ops. mean, you need somebody who's content writer and no, can't, you know, the content writer is not necessarily the SQL server person. So they don't realize that sometimes.

Andy (34:20.505)
Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. You get some founders as well that just think, we just hired a marketer. They can just go do everything. I was like, okay, well, that's going to end in a, that's definitely going to end in tears. You know, like I spoke with a company before where they wanted to have me on and I just sort of said, well, what was the current makeup of the marketing team? Well, we have one person that's doing X, Y, They're doing like events, they're doing product marketing, the content marketing, social marketing.

They're doing like everything, absolutely everything. And I was like, OK, well, what's going on? this person's leaving. Like, OK, I'm shocked. And, you know, and they say, I think I just don't get it, you know, because like we've had three other marketers leave in the past 18 months, you know, And I said it as I was because you're expecting them to do the job of like 10 people, you know, it's like, and you're not happy with the outcome because they're super stretched.

and they're not happy either because you're burning them out. So like, if you keep on doing this, you're just like, just gonna keep on having this problem, right? So yeah, so I think that's a big issue in marketing generally, right? it's marketing. We have a marketer, so marketing's covered.

Alec (35:37.88)
Right. In fact, that's the whole premise of our show, which is that when you become a marketing leader for the first time, you suddenly realize, well, it's not that you realize, but you're suddenly now responsible for everything in marketing, even though you probably only came up in one or two areas. And so it's also hard to lead for the first time when you're doing that. I think that's also why the fractional experience that you have or any fractional marketing leader gives you a ton of really solid experience because

probably some of the things that maybe you weren't so good at before, but now you've rapidly gotten better at those. It'd just me, right? Yeah. When you're looking at that, maybe just a following question there, when you're trying to figure out how to put together that team, how much do you, do you do an assessment first? Do you come in and say, look, give me 30 days or something like that to kind of, or I need to talk to you first to understand.

Andy (36:14.543)
100%. Yeah.

Alec (36:35.168)
what pieces of marketing you need. do you have more of a, hey, look, this is like the minimum or this is the standard marketing team that everyone's gonna need and it's minimum these three roles or whatever.

Andy (36:47.107)
yes and no, I would say that's not the answer you're looking for, but I, I, I think so. So normally, normally when I come in, they have some guts of a marketing team already existing. So Mike, my, my focus is always, let's try to get working with what we have. I don't like, like, I hate the CMO that comes into a business and is immediately like, we need to change the brand. That's what we need to do. Like let's, let's reposition the organization and the ultimate exactly.

Alec (37:03.694)
Mm -hmm.

Alec (37:13.314)
Yeah, redo the website.

Andy (37:16.111)
Exactly. And they ultimately end up spending then like 18 months trying to do this. And then a lot of the times they're getting fired in the process because they're not getting any output. Right. And it's normally the issue that if you have a disgruntled CEO because of marketing or they're out of sorts because of what's happening in the current marketing team, it's probably because they're not executing or they're not executing well. So my focus normally is like, how can we get executing if we're not?

Alec (37:24.472)
Great.

Andy (37:43.727)
And how do we get executing well then if we are? So what are the things we can do better, right? Instead of like all over the place. A lot of the times though, it's like they're not executing at all. There's no playbook, right? They don't know which way is up, right? So instead of like being like, okay, in order for this to work, we need to hire 10 people and then we need to have these positions, which is ultimately gonna give the CEO a heart attack, right? Because they're like, shoot, I just hired you because I wanted stuff to move quickly and now you're telling

now you're on board, that you need extra people, it's gonna take three or four months to get them on board again. This is, we're talking six months before we see anything. That's, yeah, counterproductive.

Alec (38:23.608)
Yep, yep. I love that great answer.

Barb VanSomeren (38:24.146)
Yeah. Yeah. So, let, this is where you, give you, you know, what are some of the biggest wins that you've had, in this role? mean, what would, what are some of most proud work that you've done and what are some of the lift that you've shown these customers and

Andy (38:44.687)
Sure, so I worked with a company a couple of years ago in the States and we like quadrupled the revenue from one quarter to another, which was good because we changed from a volume model to a high ticket model and it had an immediate impact. And we just put so much focus on sales and generating a pipeline and then closing that pipeline.

that I was ultimately almost in like a chief revenue officer position. And that was the first time that I was in that sort of chief revenue officer position, which was, you know, an achievement for me in terms of being able to, to be able to finish the year and the Q4 being like, wow, we're just after like turning this whole thing around, you know? So that, that was very cool. I mean, I've, I've at this point now I've been through, I don't know how many new website launches at this point, you know.

new brands, like things like pulling off events that like, it's always like, you know, if you work with a founder, he was also talking to be the CEO for them to have an event is an, is, is interesting. If you try to pull off your own event, I don't know if either of you guys have ever run your own event, but trying to get people in a room and deliver content plus networking, et cetera afterwards is an incredibly difficult

People always think, that'd be super simple. It's not. It's really, really tricky. And you're asking for people's time. And I've been, unfortunately, in a situation before years ago where we did one of these and nobody showed up. Right. And that's a very big threat. Right. That gives me like gives me a pain in my tummy. Let's say every time one of these things comes around. Right. But I've done a number of large events like for 500 people and

And we've had 500 people there over two or three days. And I was the lead for it and made sure that this was went from ideation stage to actually delivering it, right? Which was, I'm not a big fan of running events, but it just sort of happened. Like personally being the point of contact to do it. I'm not a big fan of being the person. I love events. think events are great, but to actually pull all the strings, it drives me nuts, but it has me doing right.

Andy (40:57.859)
So there's been things like that. And also when you see, when a founder comes to you after that and be like, my God, we have all of our customers in the room and they're giving us great feedback about X, Y, Z, like, thank you. know, it is unbelievable. That's the type of feeling you're like, okay, something, I've done something good here, Running SDR teams, like I've now created an SDR team from scratch at Extreme Push, for example. And we've managed to go from having zero.

quarters, you know, like not delivering anything back to the business to the guys now over reaching their targets every single quarter, which actually creates another problem for me. And then I need to keep on raising their targets and they're giving me a hard time about it. But we're actually I'm seeing the pipeline generated for the sales team like this year versus last year be double, you know, in comparison to what we were at last year, just because of the work that the guys are doing. Right. And it's been really cool to see that upwards curve. Right.

So like, yeah, there's been plenty of wins, right? So it's, it's, never, that's a hard question to answer, because you never focus on the wins as much, you know? You're always focused on what's not going right, so.

Alec (42:06.37)
Yeah, you have to. You have to. You have to keep your mind focused on the next thing, because it's always kind of, have you done for me lately? That is the role of a marketer, and especially a fractional. So Annie, it's been great having you on the show. We appreciate so much kind of your inputs and your experience and insights. If people are interested in working with you, where can they reach you? How can they find out more about

Andy (42:12.271)
Exactly.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Andy (42:29.741)
Yeah, sure. You can get me on LinkedIn, Andy Culligan, or you can go to andyculligan .com. Most likely gonna get me on LinkedIn, like I'm very active there. So yeah, just reach

Alec (42:40.216)
Terrific.

Barb VanSomeren (42:40.459)
Great having you, Andy.

Andy (42:42.169)
Yeah, thanks guys.