Sheryl Pattek

VP, Executive Partner Serving CMO Professionals

Read Sheryl's blog posts

Sheryl serves as Forrester’s CMO executive partner, working with CMOs, senior-level marketing executives, and their teams to advance their major initiatives, with a special focus on creating customer-obsessed strategies that drive business growth. As a strategic advisor, she plays the role of “on-call expert,” providing her clients with an objective, external viewpoint to tackle their toughest challenges and capitalize on market opportunities as quickly as possible.

Sheryl works across all of Forrester, bringing research, advisory, consulting, events, and data services together with her marketing expertise to provide the insights CMOs need to successfully navigate and win in the age of the customer. Key challenge areas she helps CMOs confront include developing and implementing a customer-obsessed operating model; driving digital transformation and innovation; and constructing go-to-market digital and offline strategies based on customer insights.

Sheryl has been named "CMO Whisperer" and "One of 18 People in Marketing You May Not Know . . . but Should," as well as “one of the thirty most influential women in marketing technology.” She is also a recipient of a PRTech Award honoring leading minds of PR, marketing, technology, and media. She is a well-regarded speaker and moderator at venues including Forbes CMO Summit, Ad Age MarTec, The CMO Club, CMO Exchange, Argyle CMO, Direct Marketing Association, Dell World, and Marketing Operations Executive Summit.

Previous Work Experience

Sheryl formerly served as vice president, principal analyst on Forrester's CMO research team. In this role, she helped Forrester clients become customer obsessed by developing customer-insight-based go-to-market strategies that span both digital and traditional channels.

Sheryl has over 30 years of experience leading global marketing organizations for both Fortune 500 and early-stage companies in the logistics, transportation, software, software-as-a-service (SaaS), technology, and telecommunications industries.

Education

Sheryl received her B.A. and M.S. in communications from the University of New Mexico.

Print Bio

Sheryl Pattek

VP, Executive Partner Serving CMO Professionals

Read Sheryl's blog posts

Previous Work Experience

Education

Sheryl received her B.A. and M.S. in communications from the University of New Mexico.

Research Coverage

Sheryl Pattek's Research

Most RecentMost Popular

For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Brand Management For A New Age: Experience And Resonance Transform Brand Leadership

Vision: The Brand Experience Playbook

November 3, 2017 Dipanjan Chatterjee, Sheryl Pattek

In the age of the customer, CMOs battle to build their brands with distracted, technology-empowered consumers who have as much to say about what the brand stands for as the company does. CMOs must lead an enterprisewide shift from a company-centric, top-down branding mindset to a customer-centric view that creates an emotionally resonant brand experience that transcends product and service transactions. This report establishes a vision for CMOs to lead brand development and management. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Predictions 2017: The Post-Digital CMO Appears

How CMOs Will Develop Their Brands, Practices, And Skill Sets Toward Customer Obsession Next Year

October 31, 2016 Shar VanBoskirk, James L. McQuivey, Dipanjan Chatterjee, Sheryl Pattek, Laura Ramos

The arrival of 2017 will bring with it a post-digital climate in which customers feel disenfranchised and more interested in product usage than in ownership. In response to these trends, we expect CMOs to invest in building emotional, one-to-moment connections with their customers. This brief highlights the specific changes that CMOs will make next year to their brand and customer experience strategy as well as to their teams' skill sets and processes.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: The Evolved CMO In 2016

CMOs Broaden Their Influence And Leadership

July 6, 2016 Sheryl Pattek, Michelle Moorehead

Forrester and Heidrick & Struggles fielded a global survey of 275 CMOs in Q4 2015 to better understand the role's evolution and the keys for future success. Collaborating closely with John M. Abele, managing partner of Heidrick & Struggles' Marketing, Sales & Strategy Officers Practice, we learned that CMOs must now articulate exactly how marketing creates business value and master an increasingly broad skillset. Evolved CMOs who are committed to understanding customers and to driving that philosophy throughout the organization are those who will take charge in the C-suite.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: A Customer-Obsessed Operating Model Demands A Close Partnership With Your CIO

Marketing And Technology Drive Growth Together

April 12, 2016 Sheryl Pattek, Nigel Fenwick

The new customer-obsessed operating model required to win in the age of the customer is a hallmark of successful digital transformation. But it requires changes across the executive team, most keenly felt by CMOs and CIOs. To learn how customer-obsessed CIOs and CMOs are leading the needed changes, we asked these executives at customer-obsessed companies about their best practices. This report explores the leadership initiatives adopted by successful CMO-CIO partnerships and offers recommendations for adopting a customer-obsessed operating model.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: A Customer-Obsessed Operating Model Demands A Close Partnership With Your CMO

April 12, 2016 Nigel Fenwick, Sheryl Pattek

The new customer-obsessed operating model required to win in the age of the customer is a hallmark of successful digital transformation. However, it requires changes across the executive team that are most keenly felt by CIOs and CMOs. To learn how customer-obsessed CIOs and CMOs are leading the needed changes, we asked these executives at customer-obsessed companies about their best practices. This report explores the leadership initiatives adopted by successful CIO-CMO partnerships and offers recommendations for adopting a customer-obsessed operating model.

For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Brand Management For A New Age: Experience And Resonance Transform Brand Leadership

Vision: The Brand Experience Playbook

November 3, 2017 Dipanjan Chatterjee, Sheryl Pattek

In the age of the customer, CMOs battle to build their brands with distracted, technology-empowered consumers who have as much to say about what the brand stands for as the company does. CMOs must lead an enterprisewide shift from a company-centric, top-down branding mindset to a customer-centric view that creates an emotionally resonant brand experience that transcends product and service transactions. This report establishes a vision for CMOs to lead brand development and management. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: The Operating Model For Customer Obsession

November 3, 2015 Sharyn Leaver, Michelle Moorehead, Sheryl Pattek

We know and have proven that a better customer experience correlates with higher revenue growth. But what does it take to succeed in your quest for the level of customer obsession needed to drive these results? To find out, we analyzed the practices of over 30 companies at various stages in their customer-obsessed transformations. Through in-depth discussions with C-level executives at each of these firms, we teased out the common core for success. This report details the fundamental reset of day-to-day operations required to drive customer obsession.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Chart A New Course For A Connected Brand Experience

August 17, 2015 Sheryl Pattek

As brand and customer experience become intertwined, brand building must move beyond the purview of just the marketing department to become an organizationwide effort. To respond, CMOs require a strategic plan to lead the brand experience that will 1) pinpoint the brand North Star; 2) navigate the brand experience with the brand compass to build a trusted, remarkable, unmistakable, and essential (TRUE) brand; and 3) create a new map of the brand experience that aligns messages, actions, and products or services (MAP). This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: The New Roles That Will Power Your Marketing Operating System

Align Jobs To Customer Touchpoints

February 8, 2016 Sheryl Pattek

As empowered customers take control of their relationship with brands, CMOs must redefine their organization in the form of a marketing operating system (MOS) that best supports the full customer life cycle. A MOS-based organizational design requires roles that don't exist in today's marketing structure. This report is an update of a previously published report and defines the new roles that CMOs need to turn marketing from a set of silos into a smooth-running operating machine. Forrester reviews and updates its research periodically to ensure continued relevance and accuracy. This revised edition includes additional supporting research.
For CMO Professionals

REPORT: Reboot Your Organization For Modern Marketing

Use A Marketing Operating System Approach To Reconstruct Your Marketing Organization

December 5, 2014 Sheryl Pattek

Hierarchical and channel-obsessed marketing organizational structures do not effectively support the customer-obsessed approach that Forrester believes will help firms win, serve, and retain empowered customers. CMOs must shift their organizational design from product-centric or channel-centric models to a structure crafted to best serve the whole customer, whether they define it at the account level or in service of individuals. This report is an update to "Reboot Your Organization For Modern Marketing," originally published on May 6, 2014, which introduced CMOs to the concept of a marketing operating system, an organizational framework that will permit CMOs to develop more flexible and more customer-aware marketing teams.