Every week a founder asks me the same thing on a discovery call: "How do I know if a fractional CMO is any good?"
It is the right question. And almost nobody asks it before signing a contract.
Most fractional CMO hires fail in the first 90 days. Not because the person was bad. Because the founder did not stress-test the fit. The questions below are the ones I would ask if I were on the other side of the table. They are the same questions a few of my best clients asked me, before I started.
I am a Fractional CMO with 18 years of experience and 200+ companies behind me. I have seen this hire go right. I have seen it go very wrong. The difference is almost always in the conversation that happens before the contract.
1. "What does your first 30 days actually look like?"
If the answer is "a strategy deck," walk away.
A strategy deck is the easiest deliverable in marketing. Anybody can produce one. What separates an operator from a consultant is what happens in week three, week four, week six. By day 30 you should be able to point to something concrete: a campaign in market, a positioning rewrite live on the site, a hiring decision reversed, an agency call that did not happen because the budget was reallocated.
Ask for a real example. Not a framework. A specific company, a specific week, a specific change.
If the answer stays abstract, the work will too.
2. "Show me a campaign you killed. And why."
This is the question that flushes out the operators.
Anyone can talk about wins. The interesting answer is the kill. A good fractional CMO has stopped a campaign that was running, fired an agency that was billing, declined a budget request from the founder. Killing things is harder than starting them. It requires reading the data and being willing to disappoint someone.
When I ask candidates this question and they pause, I know they have not actually run anything. They have advised on things. There is a difference.
Killing things is harder than starting them.
3. "What is the smallest engagement you have ever taken? Why did it work or not work?"
The answer reveals their pricing logic.
Some fractional CMOs only take retainers above a certain size. That is fine. But ask why. Is it because anything smaller does not have enough operating room? Or is it because they only know how to run the same playbook and need volume to make their hours work?
The honest answer sounds like this: "Two days a month works for early stage. Below that I cannot move the needle, and I will not take your money to pretend I can."
I tell scale-up founders the same thing. My monthly tiers run from €3,500 for two days a month up to €11,000 for eight days. Below that scope, you do not need a Fractional CMO. You need a marketing manager and a clear brief. More on that here.
4. "Who runs execution when you are not in the room?"
The honest answer separates the modern operator from the traditional consultant.
A traditional fractional CMO answers: "Your team. I set strategy, they execute." That sounds reasonable. In practice it means: nothing happens between meetings, your team is overloaded, and you pay senior rates for someone who only thinks.
A modern answer sounds different. Mine sounds like this: "I run an Autonomous Growth System. An 18-agent AI marketing team that handles content, outreach research, competitive monitoring, and reporting overnight. Your team executes the high-judgment work. The system handles the volume."
You do not have to hire someone who runs an AI team. But you should ask what their leverage is. If the answer is "my hours," you are buying hours. That math does not work for a scale-up.
5. "What is the first thing you would change about my marketing?"
Most candidates will hedge here. They have not seen the data, they want to be respectful, they need to do an audit first.
That is the wrong answer.
A good Fractional CMO has spent ten minutes on your site before the call. They have an opinion. It might be wrong. But it should be specific. "Your homepage hero is targeting the wrong buyer." "You are running paid on keywords your sales team cannot close." "Your pricing page is doing your competition's job for them."
If they cannot give you a concrete observation in 30 minutes of conversation, they are not pattern-matching fast enough to be useful. The first 30 days will be slow.
6. "Show me a client who fired you. What happened?"
This question rules out everyone with fewer than ten clients of experience.
Every senior operator has been fired. By a founder who got cold feet, a board that wanted to bring marketing in-house, a sales leader who needed someone to blame. The honest ones will tell you the story. They will tell you what they would do differently. They will not tell you the client was the problem.
If a candidate has never been fired, they have either not done the work long enough or they will not tell you the truth. Both are problems.
I have been fired. Twice in 18 years. Once because the founder hired a full-time CMO three months in, which was always the plan. Once because I told a Series B founder his ICP was wrong and he did not want to hear it. I was right on the second one. I should have said it differently.
7. "What would make you walk away from this engagement?"
The strongest signal in the entire interview.
A Fractional CMO who has nothing they would walk away from is not a partner. They are a vendor. A vendor will keep billing as long as the invoice clears. A partner has a line.
My line is simple. I walk if the founder will not put in the time for weekly decisions. I walk if the team I am supposed to support is being protected from accountability. I walk if I am being asked to make a number look good for a board meeting that the underlying data does not support.
Ask the question. Listen for whether they have ever actually walked. If the answer is "I would never walk away from a client," that is not a virtue. That is a salesperson talking.
What you are really asking
These seven questions are not really seven questions. They are one question in seven different shapes: does this person actually run marketing, or do they advise on running marketing?
The advisor will give you decks, frameworks, quarterly reviews. They will be polite about your team. They will not kill anything. They will not get fired. They will leave when the contract ends and you will not be sure what changed.
The operator will get into the system. Things will move. Some will break. Your team will feel the difference in week two, not week eight.
The price difference between the two is maybe €1,000 a month. The outcome difference is whether your pipeline doubles or stays flat.
You get to choose. Most founders choose by accident, on first impressions and a referral. The seven questions above are how you choose on purpose.
If you want to test this in a real conversation, the 30-minute scan is the place. We will go through your site, your stack, your last quarter of marketing data. You ask the seven questions. I answer. No deck. No pitch. If we are not a fit, you leave with a roadmap you can hand to whoever you do hire.
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