Every new CMO inherits the same pressure to fix the pipeline, prove ROI, and align with sales fast to prevent anyone from questioning why they were hired. Most executives respond by moving quickly and looking decisive out of the gate, but Michelle Randall, CMO at Onspring, leads with better questions instead of quick answers. 

She brings a unique approach to deliberate conversations focused on establishing trust with customers, sales, and her own team. It’s the throughline of everything she shares with Gayle Kalvert on the latest episode of Marketing in Progress.

Real market knowledge starts with the customer

Michelle's first move in any new role is to stay quiet, ask far more questions than she answers, and resist the pull to run someone else's old playbook on a brand new business. Her method: 30 customer interviews in her first 30 days before she makes a single call on strategy.

Michelle's 30-in-30 includes direct conversations with customers, plus real time spent listening in on sales calls, support calls, and demos, all in service of understanding a business through evidence instead of inherited assumptions. She's learned the hard way that even companies with near-identical size and industry can behave differently once you're inside them, which is exactly why she never walks in assuming she already knows the answer.

For leaders under pressure to show quick wins in the first 90 days, that's a useful gut check. Confidence isn't about speed. It's about understanding what you're actually leading before you try to fix it.

Trust with sales is the operating system

Nearly every CMO says sales and marketing alignment matters, but Michelle can actually explain what that requires day-to-day, especially in the moments when a campaign gets torn apart in a room full of people.

Some of that comes from her own background. Michelle spent seven years in sales before she ever held a marketing title, and it still shapes how she leads. She calls demand generation the most satisfying part of the job, because the pipeline never lies, and that firsthand empathy for sales is a big part of why the partnership works.

Her approach comes down to a belief she holds herself to without exception: Your word is everything. As she puts it, you never, ever, ever throw sales under the bus, even in the room where it would be easiest to, and if you break a commitment once, you start to erode the trust the entire GTM motion runs on.

That discipline shows up most clearly in how she runs her CRO partnership. The two don't always agree, but the respect never wavers, and that's what turns alignment from a talking point into an actual growth engine.

Leadership is a practice, not a promotion

That same standard of trust doesn't stop at the sales team. Michelle holds herself to it with her own team, as well. 

The most candid part of the conversation had nothing to do with dashboards, and everything to do with the sharp line Michelle draws between managing and leading, built on rituals like protected one-on-ones that exist for the other person's agenda, not hers.

She also shared with us a moment of real self-reflection, describing how she found out she'd let someone on her team down and went straight to that person to make it right.

That same instinct drives her approach to mentorship, especially for women in leadership. Her goal isn't just to help individuals get promoted. It's to build a chain reaction, where every woman she mentors goes on to mentor the next one, and the next. She told Gayle that one of her proudest moments as a leader might still be ahead of her: the day she gets to work for a woman she once mentored.

It's that type of leadership that outlasts any one role.

What this means for marketing leaders

Boards and CEOs expect more pipeline accountability, tighter GTM alignment, and real leadership development from their marketing organizations than ever, and the leaders who handle that well aren't the ones with the flashiest frameworks. They lead with customer obsession, treat trust as non-negotiable, and treat marketing leadership as a daily practice, not just a title.

Technical skill gets you in the room. How you listen and show up for people determines whether you last in it.

There's more we couldn't fit here, including Michelle's take on AI as a multiplier rather than a replacement, and how she's building real fluency with the CISO audience her team markets to through groups like She Leads Tech.

If you're a marketing leader working to build the sales and marketing alignment Michelle describes, Creo helps GTM teams put that trust into practice through the strategy, systems, and execution that turn alignment into real pipeline and revenue. Learn more.