Marketing With Fearby Andrew Fear
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The Fear Score · 14 questions · about 3 minutes · no email

What's really stalling your pipeline?

Questions a CEO can answer without pulling a report. You get a score out of 100, the constraint holding growth back (strategy, systems, capacity or leadership), your three biggest gaps and what to do about each this week. Your answers stay in your browser.

Your company

Three quick facts. They shape the recommendation, not the score.

01What is your annual recurring revenue?
02How many people are on your marketing team?
03Do you have a senior marketing leader (VP or above) in place?

Strategy

Where pipeline should come from, and whether everyone agrees.

04Do marketing and sales use the same written definition of a qualified opportunity?
05Could you name the channel that produced the most qualified pipeline last quarter, and what each opportunity cost?
06Is your ideal customer defined from deal data, or from opinion?
07Would three people on your leadership team describe what you do, and why you win, in the same words?

Systems

Whether the machinery around the strategy holds or leaks.

08Do you know where your funnel loses the most qualified buyers?
09Does your tracking follow a lead from the ad all the way to closed-won?
10When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for options in your category, is your company named?
11Does your team's AI-assisted content ship without heavy rewriting?
12Is there a weekly meeting where marketing numbers lead to a decision that gets written down?
13If an investor or acquirer asked for 24 months of pipeline by source, with consistent definitions, could you send it this week?

Capacity

One last question about your team.

14If you knew exactly what to fix, could your current team ship it this quarter?

0 of 14 answered

How the score works

Ten questions scored. Four that shape the advice.

The score. Ten questions score 0, 1 or 2 points. Four cover strategy (pipeline definition, channel economics, ideal customer, positioning) and six cover systems (funnel leaks, tracking, AI search, AI output, operating rhythm, diligence-ready data). The total, times five, is your score out of 100.

The constraint. If strategy scores under 60%, that's the constraint, because fixing systems on top of an unsettled strategy wastes money. Otherwise, if systems score under 60%, systems is the constraint. If both hold, your team size, leadership and capacity decide whether you need a full-time leader, more hands, or nothing new at all.

The gaps. Your three lowest-scoring answers, each with why it matters, one thing to do this week, and where to read more.

What it isn't. A self-assessment is a starting point, not an audit. The Fear Audit checks the same areas against your real data and ranks every fix. For a deeper self-serve version, use the 39-point checklist.

Questions

About the Fear Score.

Is the Fear Score a substitute for a marketing audit?
No. It's a starting point built from 14 questions you can answer from memory. The Fear Audit checks the same areas against your actual data, interviews and funnel, and ranks every fix by value, effort and risk.
What happens to my answers?
They stay in your browser. There is no email gate and nothing is stored on a server. Site analytics record only that the assessment was completed, with the score and constraint, never your individual answers.
What is a good Fear Score?
65 or above means the basics are in place and the gaps are specific. Below 40 usually means pipeline decisions are being made without the data or definitions to back them. The constraint matters more than the number.
Why would it tell me not to hire you?
Because sometimes that's the right answer. If you're under about $3M ARR, need execution capacity, or need a full-time leader for a team of six, a fractional head of growth isn't the best next step, and I'd rather you know that before we talk.