The CFO Whisperer

A couple of months ago, I was invited to help on a project exploring how brands create value as assets for a company. The team was called “the CFO whisperers.” The idea was to link brand strength to financial outcomes that matter to the CFO (Chief Financial Officer).

I was bringing the financial perspective while also understanding brand metrics and how marketing might affect financial performance. The others brought expertise in data science and brand strength. So we weren’t all foreigners in the same room, speaking different languages.

“The CFO whisperers” made it feel like we had a magical way of doing things, a talent for something… Let me be honest here: it felt good. But after the project, something still felt incomplete to me.

How do marketers without that financial background connect their own metrics to financial results? And why are we still asking this question in 2026?

I am curious—perhaps a bit nosy, but that’s another story :-). So, I asked.

In a group for CMOs and senior marketers, I asked what they do when they’re asked to connect brand metrics to financial performance. My question was essentially:

“When you have brand data but the CFO wants financial impact, how do you bridge that gap?”

The group had thousands of members. Five people replied. I don’t know how many people actually saw the post, but the answers surprised me.

One suggested a framework. Another recommended a long-term experiment with a carefully designed holdout group. Others proposed agreeing on an outcome with finance or connecting brand data to customer behavior, then connecting that behavior to financial results.

Wait a minute… why are they all different? I did not expect that. I had expected more people to say, “This is the way,” perhaps with a link to a complete guide. Or even the name of a company offering that service. Instead, I had several approaches, but I didn’t know which to choose, when, or why. I definitely had more questions.

One answer, in particular, was very detailed. The person suggested looking at unit economics throughout the customer journey. The example brought together cost per lead, the rate at which leads become customers, and a target payback period. For something like a conference, the idea was to discuss the additional leads and customers generated and how long it would take to recover the investment.

That sounds useful. But even with a financial background, I would have asked for more explanation.

How do I put those numbers together? What else do I need to calculate payback? How do I establish which customers were genuinely additional? And where do the brand data from my original question come in?

Of course, these were replies to a post, not complete guides. Five different answers don’t mean there is no answer. Different situations may call for different methods. But I still needed help understanding which method would fit which situation.

There is a financial reality that marketers can’t avoid. Sometimes, what’s needed is a dollar number: a campaign explained in financial terms, an estimate of the value it could create, or how long it could take to pay back.

For a marketer who doesn’t have a CFO whisperer, what would a useful answer look like? And how do they get there with the data they actually have?

I went looking for a guide or a product. I came back with useful ideas, but also a lot that still needed explaining (even to me).

So I’m going to keep asking questions, work through examples, and share what I learn: how the calculations work, what we have to assume, and how much confidence we can put in the result.

I liked being a CFO whisperer. But I came away with questions of my own. This is where I’ll try to answer them, in public, as I go.