Most executives walk into a first CMO conversation with a deck. I walked in with a diagnostic. Here's why that difference matters more than it sounds.
Every hiring conversation for a CMO or VP of Marketing role eventually arrives at the same question, asked in a dozen different phrasings: what would you actually do in the first 90 days? Most candidates answer it with a framework slide. I built a tool instead, because a framework slide is a claim and a tool is proof.
The problem I kept seeing
Across every company I've worked with, from Series A startups to pre-IPO scale-ups, the same failure pattern shows up under different names. Marketing and sales agree on almost nothing that actually matters: what counts as a qualified lead, who owns the number, which accounts are even in play. Everyone nods in the all-hands. Nobody can point to a shared definition when you ask them separately.
That gap doesn't show up on a dashboard. It shows up three quarters later, as missed pipeline and a CEO asking why marketing and sales keep blaming each other. By the time it's visible in the numbers, it's expensive to fix.
Observe, Analyze, Execute, applied to alignment
I built the GTM Alignment Diagnostic around the same methodology I use to run go-to-market for a company: observe what's actually happening before you touch strategy, analyze where the gaps sit and how much they're costing, then execute a sequenced plan rather than a wish list.
The free Quick Scan takes about seven minutes and scores the fundamentals: ICP agreement, pipeline definitions, revenue accountability, the basics that either hold or don't. The Full Diagnostic goes deeper: eighty questions across thirteen dimensions, covering everything from product-and-marketing alignment to whether the CEO and marketing leader are quietly optimizing for two different north star metrics without realizing it.
Both versions end the same way: not a score for its own sake, but a 30-60-90 plan that names what to fix first and why.
The detail that actually matters
The part I'm most particular about isn't the questions. It's what the tool does with a dimension that scores well. Most diagnostics treat a strong score as a green checkmark and move on. Mine treats it as a decision: this is healthy enough to deliberately sit out this quarter, and here's the one-line reason why. That distinction, between neglect and deliberate sequencing, is the difference between a junior operator and someone who's actually run a GTM org through a scaling phase. You don't fix thirteen things at once. You fix the two or three that are bleeding pipeline, and you say out loud why the rest can wait.
That's not a tooling choice. It's a judgment call I make on every team I've run, encoded into software so you can see how I think before you ever get me in a room.
Why give it away
The honest answer is that a diagnostic only proves something if it's real enough to use. A gated PDF with generic advice doesn't tell you anything about how I'd operate inside your company. A tool that asks the specific, occasionally uncomfortable questions, and gives you a specific, sequenced answer, tells you exactly what you'd get if you hired me.
Pipeline is a leading indicator, not a guarantee. So is a diagnostic score. But it's a far better leading indicator than a resume bullet, and it's the fastest way I know to show a CEO or a board what the first quarter would actually look like.
The free Quick Scan is live now. If your results point to something worth a longer conversation, the Full Diagnostic is next: $395 self-serve, or $695 as a 90-minute workshop I facilitate directly with your leadership team.