A Fractional CMO sets strategy and runs the engagement. Next Best Action runs the workflow underneath. Status, Ask, Approve. The product carries the cadence so the operator can focus on judgment calls.
Two layers, one engagement
Most Fractional CMO firms ship a person. We ship a person AND the product layer that runs the work. The CMO sets strategy; NBA carries the operating cadence.
Human layer
Operator-led seat · Chris Salazar & 8 active mandates
AI workflow layer
Product-led layer · runs alongside the operator
How the engagement runs
Five stages. Same shape across engagement sizes. The human runs strategy and judgment; the product carries the cadence between meetings.
01 · Diagnose
Week one. The operator meets the team and the data. NBA aggregates pipeline, campaigns, content, and ad spend into Status. The diagnostic is built on the actual numbers, not the dashboard the team meant to update.
02 · Scope
Engagement model and tier matched to the bottleneck. NBA configures around the agreed-upon scope: which signals trigger the Ask layer, which decisions hit the Approval queue, who sees what.
03 · Ship
The operator is embedded. The IG bench moves with the engagement. NBA carries day-to-day client visibility so the operator does not lose time to status updates. Autonomix runs agents on the workflows the playbook calls for.
04 · Measure
Weekly working sessions. Quarterly outcome reviews. Every Approve action is logged against named accounts. The audit trail builds itself.
05 · Hand off
When the engagement winds down, NBA stays. The client team inherits the cadence, the dashboards, the agent workflows. The operating model survives the operator's exit.
The math
Most operator-only firms route execution out to agencies. The bench is whoever happens to be available. NBA closes the gap between strategy and execution with a product the operator can trust.
An operator-only seat at $10,000/mo gets you a CMO and a deck. The CMO spends 40% of their hours on status updates, vendor coordination, and recap emails. The remaining 60% goes to strategy.
An operator-plus-NBA seat at the same effective rate gets you a CMO whose 40% status overhead is now product-carried. The 60% strategy budget becomes 90%. That gap is what NBA closes.
For venture-backed pre-raise companies on Innovative Group's $2,500/mo Advisory tier (the All Voice AI shape), the product layer is the difference between an advisory seat that ships work and an advisory seat that writes memos.
30 minutes. Bring the bottleneck. We tell you whether the engagement fits, which tier, and which parts of the NBA stack run alongside the CMO seat.
Frequently asked
Most NBA deployments today run inside a Fractional CMO engagement from Innovative Group. NBA is the product layer the CMO uses to give the client real-time visibility, ask the data anything, and approve work in a tap. The seat is human; the workflow is product.
Yes. NBA is a standalone product. Agencies use it to run their own client books and marketing leaders use it to see across their agency engagement. The Fractional CMO from Innovative Group is one path to a deployment; not the only one.
NBA gives the CMO real-time pipeline and project visibility, an Ask layer for any question the leader has, and an Approve queue for tap-decisions on the work shipping. The CMO sets strategy; NBA carries the operating cadence.
Three named products: NBA for status/ask/approve workflows, Beat for client operating dashboards, and Autonomix for AI agents shipping real work. See the full AI stack.
The Fractional CMO is priced separately at $2,500 / $7,500 / $15,000+ per month across three published tiers (see Innovative Group's pricing page). NBA is included on the Embedded and Operating Partner tiers; available as an add-on at Advisory.