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Why Hire a CRO?

Focus on your Buyer’s Journey

Many businesses struggle to achieve sustainable growth as they try to adapt to an evolving landscape where:

  • B2B buyer’s journey is less predictable than ever
  • 70% of the buyer’s journey now happens before a buyer even reaches out to sales
  • SaaS or subscription-based revenue models require companies to focus on metrics like recurring revenue, churn, upselling, and retention

The only way to overcome these challenges is to share “traditional” sales responsibilities across all revenue-generating teams: marketing, sales, enablement and customer success. Doing so can create a seamless buyer’s journey that accelerates the company’s growth.

— A Chief Revenue Officer’s Guide to Growth [Drift]

How a Chief Revenue Officer Helps

A Chief Revenue Officer is responsible for driving revenue growth, by aligning revenue-generating teams and resources to ensure all processes deliver an effective end-to-end buyer’s journey. They help:

  • Remove siloes and identify strategic levers to pull that will grow a company’s revenue
  • Align company resources, define differentiated go-to-market strategies, and deliver on revenue goals
  • Responsible for customer retention, customer growth, and new customer acquisition

“If a department has anything to do with generating revenue, it’s the Chief Revenue Officer’s job to ensure they’re working together and that all the revenue streams across the company are optimized for growth.” — What Does a CRO Do? [Outfunnel]

Signs You Need a Chief Revenue Officer

At the beginning, a CEO is responsible for revenue generation. As companies grow though, many leaders need to focus on other strategic initiatives like funding. This leads to hiring or outsourcing a Chief Revenue Officer to overcome problems that can prohibit growth like:

  • Marketing generating poor quality leads that sales can’t close
  • For every new sale, you churn multiple customers at the same time
  • Finger pointing between growth departments
  • Departments making hiring, technology, and strategic decisions in isolation

“Alignment across Sales, Marketing and Customer Success is essential for sustained growth. Without it, communication between departments breaks down and messages become mixed: your Sales team say one thing, Marketing another, and Customer Success another still.” — Should Your Startup Hire a Chief Revenue Officer [Cobloom]

More Chief Revenue Officer Resources

In the past few years, the title Chief Revenue Officer is finally getting a seat at the c-suite table. Here are some of my favorite resources to learn more about this role and its impact on achieving sustainable growth.

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