Revenue Diaries Entry 26

Happy Sunday! We have plenty to talk about in this edition:

• New benchmark data reveals that marketing budgets are actually increasing and why the most astute CMOs are earning that right with financial acumen, not fluff. 

• I’m also sharing a leadership lesson I wish I’d learned sooner: You don’t have to fix everything to lead effectively. 

• Plus, a practical framework for hiring great marketing leaders without wasting time (yours or theirs). I’m searching for the next VP of Product Marketing! 

Let’s start with an update! Damn, it was a good week with a great lesson in relationship building and why it matters. 

I had the pleasure of visiting our Athens, GA office for the first time, meeting many members of the Docebo Atlanta team, and attending and speaking at the Pavilion CMO Summit. 

On the surface, it is a fully booked calendar with numerous meetings. But underneath? It was more about connection than anything else. 

At the Pavilion CMO Summit, the most valuable moments weren’t during the panels or presentations (even though they were great). It was the conversations between sessions, the real talk about building teams, navigating board meetings, using genAI, personal communication skills, and just trying to stay sane in the midst of it all.

And in Athens, it was the same. Sitting with teammates. Hearing what’s working, what’s not, and how they’re thinking about the business. You just can’t replace those moments with Slack threads or Zoom calls.

Honestly, I often feel isolated in this job. But my cure is simple: make time for people. Peers, teammates, friends. That’s where the real work happens.

❤️ kyle

On Marketing Budgets Are Increasing. Really?

There are two kinds of CMOs. The ones who wait for the CFO to ask, “Can you justify this budget?”

And the ones who walk in already armed with benchmarks, a financial model, and a clear narrative about where the money’s going and why.

This week at the Pavilion CMO Summit, I sat in a room with the latter. The session was centered on new marketing benchmark data, real budgets from 323 companies, collected in late 2024 with a focus on 2025.

Let’s look at the takeaways.

1. Budgets are going up.

Despite all the “do more with less” rhetoric, marketing budgets are increasing. Not dramatically but meaningfully:

• +1% as a percentage of revenue

• ~+10% in absolute dollars

In a market that’s been leaning defensive for the last 18 months, this matters. Great marketing leaders are earning the right to invest again backed by proof.

2. Growth earns you budget.

The faster you grow, the more marketing budget you get. Seems obvious—but here’s the data:

• Companies growing <10% are investing ~7% of revenue into marketing

• Companies growing >30% are spending closer to 15%

Is that because high-growth companies spend more? Or does higher spending help drive the growth?

Yes. Either way, the takeaway is clear: if you’re growing, invest. If you want to grow, invest.

3. AI is becoming headcount.

In 2024, AI accounted for about 4% of marketing budgets. That number is expected to double in 2025. This isn’t experimental anymore. It’s a formal budget category and in some cases, a direct headcount trade-off.

As Jon Miller said: “We’re not scaling people linearly with revenue anymore. The people we are hiring look very different—and they’re empowered by AI to do the work of five.”

If your team isn’t adapting to that shift, you’re behind.

4. Events are on the rise. Demand gen is dipping. Brand is still hard to measure.

As ACV increases, demand gen spend decreases, and event spend increases. The math may not always add up on paper, but confidence in brand investment is returning.

Still, attribution remains a mess. Multi-touch models have evolved into learning tools rather than reporting crutches. And the CMOs winning these budget conversations? They’re fluent in both the financial model and the buyer journey.

And Allison Munro, CMO at Vena, dropped a great nugget: “I use single-touch to model the budget. I use multi-touch to improve the work.”

That’s the balance.

5. Efficiency earns permission.

“If we drive efficiency in the attributable, we earn the right to experiment in the un-attributable.”

It’s a perfect articulation of how to protect brand investment. Nail your cost-per-op. Source pipeline effectively. Build financial models that scale. Then (only then) can you defend the bet that doesn’t have a spreadsheet behind it.

You don’t need to win every argument with attribution. You just need to win the important ones.

Benchmarks aren’t just guardrails. They’re storytelling tools. They help CMOs make the case for growth. They give credibility to creative bets. And they shift the narrative from “cost center” to “revenue engine.”

If you want to scale marketing in 2025, learn how to build the business case, before someone asks for it.

The best CMOs already are.

On How I Learned to Lead Without Fixing Everything

Early in my career, I assumed my job as a leader was to be the fastest problem-solver in the room.

See something broken? Fix it.
See someone upset? Smooth it over.
See a metric trending the wrong way? Panic internally, then fix it.

Look, here’s the truth even if you don’t want to hear it. Not every problem needs a fix.

I love the book, Do Better Work by Max Yoder. He wrote it while I was leading marketing at Lessonly and I’ve made it a habit to reread the book at least twice a year.

One of my favorite lines from the book: “If I look for opportunity, I’m more likely to find it. If I don’t, I probably won’t.”

That sounds obvious. But it’s not especially when you’re tired, under pressure, or in back-to-back meetings explaining why pipeline is down this quarter.

The default mode is defense.

When something goes sideways at work, most people respond in one of two ways:

1. Get defensive

2. Assign blame

That’s survival mode. And in survival mode, there’s not a lot of room for growth, only reaction.

Max’s idea of “looking for opportunity” isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about creating just enough space between the moment and your response to ask a better question:

• What’s this challenge trying to teach me?

• What’s the opportunity underneath the frustration?

• What can we do differently because of this moment?

It’s not toxic positivity. It’s pattern recognition.

When a team launches the wrong message to the wrong segment, you can point fingers.
Or you can ask: how did this happen, and what part of the system needs to change?

When a customer churns, you can spiral. Or you can use it as an excuse to fix onboarding. Or support. Or the product roadmap.

Looking for opportunity turns one loss into a dozen ways to get better.

Try this with your team.

Next time someone brings you a problem, resist the urge to solve it immediately. Try:

• “If this could make us better, how would it?”

• “What’s the opportunity here we wouldn’t have seen otherwise?”

At worst, you get a shrug (and then a performance plan). At best, you build a habit.

That’s leadership. And it’s not complicated.

I don’t have this figured out. But I’m working on it.

Because the truth is, leadership isn’t always about big visions or big moments. Sometimes it’s just about choosing curiosity when your gut tells you to react. 

And that choice? That’s the work.

On Making the Interview Count: Hiring Leaders Without Wasting Time

I’m going to be hiring for a VP of Product Marketing at Docebo. I thought it would be best to document my process, questions, and scorecards for hiring purposes. Look, I’ve conducted enough leadership interviews to know when one is going off the rails.

Too much resume regurgitation. Not enough signal. You end the call knowing what they’ve done, but not how they lead. The first conversation with a VP or Director candidate should focus on how they think, rather than just what they’ve done.

Here’s the structure I use, plus the questions and scorecard that help separate signal from noise.

The First Conversation Framework

This isn’t about evaluating every bullet point on someone’s LinkedIn profile. It’s about listening for how they think, how they lead, how they operate when no one’s telling them what to do.

Set the tone: “Appreciate you making time. I’m using these early convos to get a feel for leadership style, experience, and how you think. Less about resumes,  more about how you lead and operate. Sound good?”

6 Interview Questions Worth Asking

1. “Walk me through the team(s) you’ve led. What did they own, and how were they structured?” Why it matters: Scale, scope, and whether they understand org design and ownership.
   

2. “Tell me about a moment you had to drive change—strategy, process, culture—and how you brought people with you.” Why it matters: You want a change agent who can influence, not bulldoze.
   

3. “What’s something your last CEO or CMO leaned on you for that went beyond your job description?” Why it matters: Tests for strategic trust, lateral thinking, and executive instincts.
   

4. “You walk into this role… it’s Day 30. What are you focused on?”
   Why it matters: Helps you spot prioritization, pattern recognition, and early momentum planning.
   

5. “How do you build and scale a high-performing team? What’s your leadership philosophy?” Why it matters: You’ll see how they coach, scale, and shape team culture.
   

6. “What’s a hard piece of feedback you’ve received and how did you grow from it?” Why it matters: If they can’t reflect, they probably can’t evolve.

And now we keep score… 

You’ve got your questions. Now you need a way to evaluate the answers. This scorecard helps you gut-check what great looks like and spot red flags.

Here’s a simple way to keep yourself honest:

After the call, score each category on a 1–5 scale:

1 – Major red flag → You’d have serious concerns putting this person in the role.

2 – Weak → Some relevant experience, but key gaps or warning signs showed up.

3 – Decent → Solid, but nothing standout. Might be right for a different role.

4 – Strong → Confident answer with clear experience and strong alignment.

5 – Excellent → Best-in-class response. You’d hire this person tomorrow.

Having a consistent rubric helps maintain the bar, especially when other people are evaluating the role. 

Whether you’re a CMO hiring your next right-hand or a founder making your first marketing leadership hire, this framework will help you find leaders and not just operators.

And if you’re the one being interviewed, know that these are the questions coming your way.