Who Owns Commercial Decisions When the CMO or CRO Position Is Vacant?

·Jun 03, 2026 02:58 PM·

Question for founders and CEOs in here: when your CMO or CRO seat is empty, who actually owns the commercial decisions in the interim? Genuinely curious how companies manage the gap while the search runs.

8 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Pat H.
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What's the between the lines read here? What do you sell?
Hannah F.
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Pat H., Here is a clean answer to your question: I work in fractional GTM talent and AI deployment, and I'm genuinely curious how companies are navigating senior leadership gaps. The question was real, but yes, it's also relevant to what I do at GTM Bench.
Satchit S.
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All hands on deck - revenue will determine this, but we don't mind delegating when the time is right.
Pat H.
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Sounds like AI 🧐 “clean answer”. Bottoms like answer: the CEO. Bucks tops with them, starts with them.
Hannah F.
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Pat H. hahah I know, in times like this it's difficult to say if AI or a REAL HUMAN wrote it. And yes, the CEO. always the CEO. I've seen so many situations where marketing is doing everything right and it just doesn't move because the person at the top hasn't decided they actually want change yet.
Hannah F.
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Satchit S. Sounds like organised chaos with a plan. Curious, though, how long does that mode usually last before someone officially owns it? In my experience, the 'we'll delegate when ready' window stretches way longer than anyone expects...
Satchit S.
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Hannah F. true, but we did invest in getting some financial forecasting. By default, we prefer to do the jobs we are good at. No harm in learning something new, but once bottlenecks, we don't really have much of a choice than to delegate 🙂
Hannah F.
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Satchit S., that makes total sense. You stretch as far as you can, learn what you need to, and then at some point, the bottleneck just forces the decision anyway. What was the thing that finally tipped it for you?