PE-backed home services
Marketing your board can read.
You answer to a board that measures the business in revenue, margin and the plan. Marketing should answer the same way. I've sat in the CMO seat reporting to a PE-backed CEO, and I know what that board meeting needs from marketing.
What changes after the deal.
The plan gets a number and a date. Every dollar gets asked what it returned. And the company starts adding pieces: new markets, new partners, acquired brands with their own CRMs, their own agencies and their own names for the same lead source.
None of that is a problem on its own. Together it's the fog, and it compounds fastest right after a deal, when the board most wants a clear answer.
What the board starts asking
- What did marketing return last quarter?In approved work, not leads, clicks or impressions.
- Which markets do we feed, and which do we starve?Before the next budget cycle, not after it.
- Why don't the brands' numbers agree?Because each one counts differently, until someone puts them on one read.
Each question has an answer. It needs one structure to come from.
Where I help
Three ways in, each complete on its own.
Diagnose
Before the next budget cycle.
A clear read on spend, sources and partners across every brand, including whether your agencies fit what the plan now needs.
Start with a diagnostic →Lead
When the platform needs a CMO.
The fractional CMO seat, reporting to you and the board in revenue terms. Or alongside the marketing leader you already have.
Talk about the seat →Build
When the brands need one system.
Lead sources, CRM structure and reporting, including bringing acquired brands and the call center under one structure.
Talk through a build →Three brands, one list.
At one national PE-backed platform, three brands each had their own name for the same lead source, dozens of small one-off sources, and several sources that were really one. Attribution couldn't agree with itself.
Working with the platform CMO and call center leadership, I standardized the lead sources across all three brands into fewer than ten parent sources with accurate sub-sources, then carried the same structure into the call center's lead management system. Marketing, the call center and the sales floor finally worked from the same list.
At the next platform, I did it again: messy sources consolidated into five parent sources with trackable sub-sources. The details mattered, and they're what makes every board number after it trustworthy.
It's also the fastest way I know to earn the sales floor's trust. When reps see the same source names in the CRM that marketing reports on, they stop arguing with the numbers and start working the leads.
When a brand joins the platform.
An add-on brings a customer base, a reputation in its market and a team that knows it. It also brings its own CRM, its own agencies, its own names for lead sources and its own way of counting. Left alone, each acquisition makes the platform's marketing a little harder to read.
Bringing a brand under one structure lives inside a larger Build, alongside the brand's team and yours. It isn't a one-time cleanup. It's the structure every future add-on plugs into, so the second acquisition is easier than the first.
Bringing a brand under one structure
- Map its sources to the platform'sIts lead sources folded into the platform's parent sources, keeping the sub-source detail the local team relies on.
- Carry it into the call centerSo every brand's leads are set, tracked and counted the same way.
- Decide what the brand keepsIts name, its local agency, its sponsorships, each judged on what it returns.
- Report it on one readWith its own line, so the board sees the new brand clearly from the start.
The brand keeps what makes it local. The platform gets one read.
Reporting a board can use.
Board reporting on marketing goes wrong in predictable places, and none of them are anyone's fault. They're counting rules nobody set. I set them:
- Signed contract value by lead source, not "closed", which lags and misreads any recent month.
- Working spend kept separate from agency fees, tools and brand sponsorship.
- Marketing-created and marketing-assisted work reported side by side, never added together.
- A standing note on how recent months mature, so a young month isn't read as a weak one.
The result is a marketing line in the board deck that reads like every other line: what went in, what came out, and what changes next quarter.
Nearly double. Same window, same-year leads only.
Heading into a budget cycle, a board meeting or an add-on? Bring it to a working conversation.
Book a working conversation →Thirty minutes, and confidential.
Discretion is part of the work.
I never name sponsors, clients or their numbers in public. Every figure on this site describes a company by its scale, not its name. That's how I'll treat yours, in the room and after it.
Who this is for.
PE-backed CEOs and presidents of $20M to $100M home services platforms, and marketing leaders at $100M and up who want an experienced outside hand on agencies, partners and systems. What the fractional CMO seat covers.
The fog compounds fastest right after a deal.