The 12 questions buyers ask a fractional CMO, and how to answer them

Buyers arrive with the same twelve questions, and the candidates who win are the ones who could answer every question in the first hour and raised several before the buyer did. Each question below names what the buyer is testing and what a good answer contains.

1. Can you press the buttons, or are you doing strategy?

The buyer is testing whether you know your own job. A good answer names what you will decide, what you will not do with your own hands, and who will. The guide “Can you press the buttons? The question buyers ask every CMO” gives the full answer.

2. What have you done for a company that looked like mine before you arrived?

The buyer means your stage, revenue, team size and channel maturity, which differ from your industry. Buyers also ask for previous clients to talk to and for the risks you see in the way of success. Plenty of senior experience can still be the wrong fit when the person is used to a large team and budget. A good answer names one comparable company, what was in place when you started, and what changed.

3. Show me the results in numbers, not adjectives.

This line comes from a 2026 LinkedIn discussion on fractional hiring, and it works because it cannot be dodged gracefully. A good answer gives three numbers from three engagements, each with a starting point and a period, such as pipeline up 40 per cent in two quarters at a company turning over A$6 million. A phrase like transformed the brand tells the buyer nothing.

4. What would make you tell me not to hire you?

A Sydney fractional CMO recommends this question because it shows whether you turn away a bad fit, this one included. A good answer is ready and specific, usually about stage or execution capacity, and it comes straight from the checklist in the playbook “Is the company ready for you? A checklist to run before you accept a CMO role.”

5. What exactly will you own, and what will you refuse to own?

Buyers have met the fractional CMO with no contracted deliverables who called the work high level strategy. A good answer names decision rights over budget, channel mix, agencies and priorities, then a short list of numbers you will answer for. If you cannot name the numbers before seeing the dashboard, say what you need to see and how long it takes.

6. How many clients do you carry at once?

A senior person spread across too many businesses is unavailable at the moment a decision cannot wait, and buyers know it. A good answer gives the number and the days each client gets, and the arithmetic holds up.

7. How many days a week, which days, and where?

Buyers often ask for two to three days a week with on site preferred, and the specificity matters, because a part time leader who is never around when something breaks costs a company more than the fee saved. A good answer fixes the days, says whether you will be in the room, and says what happens when something breaks on a Thursday.

8. What will be different after ninety days?

The buyer wants what will be different, which is shorter and harder than what you will have done. A good answer lists outputs the founder can check: a positioning the sales team uses, a channel plan with budgets, a dashboard that reports pipeline weekly, agencies re-briefed or removed, and a brief for the first marketing hire. The playbook “Your first 90 days as a CMO: a 30/60/90 day operating sequence” sets out the full sequence. Process words such as discovery and alignment tell the buyer you have not treated the ninety days as a deliverable.

9. How will we know it is working, and when?

Expectations break on timelines. One fractional provider admitted that delivering $60,000 of value across a six month engagement at about $10,000 a month almost never happened. A good answer gives leading indicators at thirty, sixty and ninety days, a lagging indicator such as pipeline or revenue at six months, and a plan for flat numbers at day sixty that includes the option to stop.

10. What are the terms if it is not working?

The buyer looks at notice period, exit fee and what they keep. At least one Sydney provider publishes month to month terms with thirty days’ notice, and a six month minimum with a termination fee reads as a provider protecting revenue. A good answer states the notice period and puts in writing that the client owns the strategy documents, dashboards, agency relationships and ad accounts when the engagement ends.

11. What do you think of our current agencies, and what would you do about them?

You have seen the website and the ads by now, and the buyer wants to hear whether you will simplify the structure or sit on top of it. A good answer offers an opinion with care, then asks what each agency is measured on, because that tells you more than the creative does.

12. Will you help us hire the person who replaces you?

Some buyers ask a fractional CMO to lay the foundations for a permanent CMO, and the usual trigger for handover is several channels running at real scale. A good answer treats your replacement as a deliverable: you build the function, write the brief, sit on the panel and hand over. A candidate who hears a threat in the question tells the buyer something about the engagement.

Scoring your answers

Score each answer from zero to two: two is specific and checkable, one is reasonable without evidence, zero is a brochure. Eighteen or more means you are ready for the room. Twelve to seventeen means you know most of the material and lack evidence for some of it, and the gap shows which engagements to seek next. Below twelve means the questions have shown you what to build, which beats finding out in front of a buyer.

Practise this week

Answer three of these aloud and record yourself, including question 3. Write down the three numbers you gave with their starting points and periods, and note which you could not produce.