Navigating the board meeting

How was the board meeting? This is a question I've been asked a hundred times and here's the truth from board slides to reverse funnel

To best understand this topic, let’s start with the basics.

Board meetings usually run as follows:

1. CEO state of the union update

2. Business update

   1. GTM update (usually given by the CRO/CMO or both)

      1. Occasionally someone may pre-ask for a product roadmap update

   2. Finance update

3. Closed session - where just the CEO and board are present to talk about sensitive topics including feedback about executive leadership

Tell me the dirt!

After every board meeting, inevitably someone asks you, “So how did the board meeting go?” At first blush it might seem they actually care whether you were successful in presenting your GTM piece. But in reality, they want to know about sensitive topics such as: potential layoffs, raises, budget approvals, M&A, executive staff changes — none of which you can answer. Not because they are sensitive but because these are usually handled in the closed session part of a board meeting where only the CEO and the board are present.

Often, the CEO will give a summary back to the executive leadership team, but not all CEOs are good at packaging up the feedback. This can lead to disconnects later down the road.

Boards need to be reminded, hence the pre-read

Most boards come from a finance or sales background so they do not know that much about marketing, nor do they care. Most boards do not remember what you told them three months ago or even last month. Many sit on a lot of boards of similar types of companies, it’s easy to get confused. This is what the pre-read is for, and it’s also to avoid surprises. Boards don’t like surprises.

The pre-read is the deck which gets sent out usually 48-72 hours ahead of time. This is the story you are going to tell them.

GTM board slides

The #1 thing is you need to have GTM alignment. Marketing, Sales, CS, Product, all need to be on the same page when creating and presenting slides.

For GTM presentations it’s best to give a brief history of last quarter, but most of your talk and slides should be about the future — assuring the board they made a good investment and you know how to lead the company to successful outcomes.

It’s also best to limit your main slides and put the rest of your detail in an appendix for the pre-read. As a CMO, it seems like a lot to get on one or even a few slides, but remember the board does not care how the sausage was made.

Depending on the request from the board, sometimes you’re asked to focus on objectives and outcomes. Other times to focus on what’s working and what’s not and how to address it.

But no matter what, I always include an executive summary slide where I always talk about the state of the market (that’s our job to know it).