Case study: How a Series A analytics company hired a fractional CMO in 72 hours and 3×'d pipeline in 90 days
A Series A B2B analytics company came to us in February with a six-month open CMO role, a flat pipeline, and a board asking questions. Ninety days later, their monthly qualified pipeline had tripled. Here's what actually happened — identifying details withheld while both companies remain in stealth.
CXOwork Editorial
Editorial
In February 2026, the founder and CEO of a Series A B2B analytics company serving logistics operators scheduled a 20-minute intro call with CXOwork. The backstory was familiar: their head of marketing had left in October. Two retained searches had each stretched past three months and surfaced candidates the board described as 'fine, not exceptional.' Meanwhile, pipeline had flattened, the Series B was 9 months out, and the founder was running marketing on top of a full CEO job.
This is a case study of what happened over the next 90 days. The numbers are real; identifying details have been withheld at the company's request while both we and the company remain in stealth.
The setup
- Stage: Series A, $6.2M ARR at the time of engagement
- Market: B2B analytics for mid-market logistics operators
- Team: 32 people, 4 in marketing (2 ICs + 2 agency managers)
- The problem: flat MQL → SQL conversion, no clear ICP prioritization, no outbound motion, deck narrative was slide-based product features rather than customer pain
What we did in the first 72 hours
The scoping call was on a Tuesday morning. By Wednesday evening, we'd surfaced three fractional CMOs who matched the thesis: B2B SaaS at $5–15M ARR, two prior tours of duty as a full-time CMO, demonstrated experience with logistics or operational buyers, and capacity to start within two weeks. Two of the three had relevant case study portfolios. All three took an intro call with the founder on Thursday or Friday.
By the following Monday — exactly 6 business days after the first scoping call — the founder had selected an advisor and signed a 6-month engagement. The retainer was $14k/month, 15 hours per week, with three explicit 90-day milestones: (1) clarified ICP with quantified prioritization, (2) functioning outbound motion producing at least $500k in pipeline, (3) new positioning narrative that the sales team could actually use.
The first 30 days
Days 1–10, the advisor ran customer interviews — twelve of them — across the company's top-20 customers and two recent churns. Days 11–20, she rebuilt the ICP using a quantified scoring framework (industry, company size, current tooling, stage of operational maturity) that produced a tight target list of 340 accounts for outbound. Days 21–30, she rewrote the home page, the one-pager, and the sales deck's top ten slides around the two pain points that customers had actually articulated: forecast accuracy under volume volatility, and integration complexity across legacy WMS systems.
The next 60 days
Day 31 was the kickoff of outbound. The advisor brought in a fractional SDR she'd worked with before and hired her on a month-to-month basis to run the sequences. By day 45, the first five meetings from outbound had landed. By day 60, outbound was producing ~$180k in monthly pipeline — already ahead of the milestone.
In parallel, the advisor rebuilt MQL scoring and reworked the paid search budget (35% of it was running against keywords their actual ICP didn't use). CAC on inbound dropped 40% between day 30 and day 60 — mostly because she stopped spending money on the wrong buyers.
The 90-day result
- Monthly qualified pipeline: $240k → $760k (3.2×)
- Inbound CAC: $18k → $11k (−39%)
- Sales cycle: 52 days → 38 days (−27%) — largely from sharper qualification
- Sales team win rate: 18% → 27% (+50% relative)
- Pipeline coverage for Series B: from 2.1× to 4.4×
“We were eight months into searching for a full-time CMO and we hadn't moved a number. Seventy-two hours after talking to CXOwork, we had a senior marketing operator in the building, and ninety days later our pipeline had tripled. I'd do this again in a heartbeat — and we probably will, for the next function that breaks.”
What happened next
The engagement was renewed for another 6 months at the end of Q2. The advisor now runs a two-day-per-week cadence with the company and has started shadow-interviewing candidates for the eventual full-time CMO hire — the one the founder will make when the company crosses $15M ARR and the workload genuinely requires a full-time leader. In the meantime, the company is closing their Series B in late Q3.
The lesson we take from this one: the speed of a fractional match doesn't trade off against quality. If anything, a pre-vetted bench of senior operators who've already done this specific job produces a better first 90 days than a nine-month search for a full-time unicorn. For the Series A–C companies reading this: your next CXO hire is probably fractional, whether you're ready for that or not.