Warren Zenna: Redesigning Revenue Teams for Long-Term Growth

Business. Business. Business. Business.

Welcome to Go to Market, a podcast for RevOps, sales, and marketing leaders to dive deep into industry insights and best practices. Go to Market is sponsored by Fulcast and Silicon Slopes. My name is Amy Cook, and I am so excited to introduce Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of The CRO Collective. How are you, Warren?

Great, Amy. Thank you so much.

Great.

Yeah.

Oh, thank you so much for coming on today. You know, your reputation precedes you, and I have known about you for years and all of the amazing work you're doing. So I'm really excited you're here today and we can talk about some of that and some of the changing tides in being a CRO and in go-to-market today.

Great. Well, let's get going. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. Well, first I would love to understand a little bit about your background. How did you get into this? Oh boy.

It's a long story. But like, I, I'll, I'll condense it so it doesn't bore everybody, but I did, I started out selling sort of accidentally. I was, I was asked by a very close friend a long time ago to sell media and I did and I was good at it. And so I found a career. And that led me into the creative services. I was selling mostly creative services in the agency space, mostly marketing and, and creative services. And that led into, you know, the internet then came out. I'm older than you think. And the internet was invented and then it became really kind of crazy how everything took off. And I just had a good career where I was at the beginning of all these innovations. So when the internet came out and online advertising, and then the mobile devices came out and mobile marketing, and then search and social. And now AI, it's kind of crazy. So I just rose in the ranks in the agency space. And what ended up happening was I was working at one of the holding companies as an executive and I was involved in the ad tech space, the advertising space. And there was a big startup community in the ad tech space, a lot of money pouring into that. So I was on the board of a lot of these different companies because I had a budget. So I was being sold to now. I was now, now I'm the buyer. And so I was observing a lot of these ad tech firms and how they were going to market. And having been a seller and having known, you know, probably as much about marketing and sales equally, I started realizing that one of the things I was noticing about being sold to as a customer was that the misalignment issues taking place in most of these companies was just pervasive. Like, you know, you had like almost like 3 different organizations, you know, sales organization, marketing organization, customer success organization, not working in lockstep at all. And so it occurred to me that this role, this CRO role, is this kind of unlocks the power of alignment and that the CRO role is not defined clearly.

Yeah.

People don't know what CROs really do. CROs are not really being hired to do the right job. CROs are not given the right level of authority to do the job they're supposed to, and companies don't know what to do with them when they have them. And I thought, you know, there's no CRO organization, there's no CRO training, there's no CRO association, so I'm gonna create one. So I built the CRO Collective. To basically bring more precision to the definition of the role, develop the competencies for CROs, and then also help companies become ready for CROs as a CRO readiness program. That's, that's what prompted this whole thing. So thanks for indulging in that long answer.

No, that's actually such an interesting background. And you and I both have marketing and sales in our background, and I think it does broaden our perspective a little bit on what works and what doesn't work as the, you know, in the customer journey. One of the things I'm curious about is what do you think is commonly misunderstood about the job of being a CRO?

Well, I know when I first started this business over 5 years ago, almost every single CRO ran sales.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And that's what they came in for. They had this title, Chief Revenue Officer, but they really oversaw the sales organization. And the misperception is that what the CRO is a, you know, revenue is different than sales. It's not the same thing. They're related, right? But revenue is a much larger way a company grows in ways I'm sure you understand very intimately, right? There's profitability, right? There's margin, you know, there's ICP, there's this whole pricing. I mean, everything goes into revenue and there's also the costs, right? And it, it's a much, much larger idea than selling, which is acquisition of customers, right? And so it's a different skillset. And I think that what happened was the CRO was sort of communicated to the marketplace as this place that sales leaders aspired to. That was their C-suite, you know, uh, destination. So as a result, companies had this muscle memory where they would fill the C-suite executive on the sales side with a chief revenue officer. And the mistake that they make is they're only creating a much more, another silo. So the confusion I think is that the competencies are not necessarily weren't being accurately analyzed in terms of what a CRO should do. So they're bringing in people whom are competent in only one function of the revenue operation, not the whole thing. And I think that's, that's been the problem. So that, I think that's the main misperception.

I think you're right. So the CRO needs to have a broader understanding of the entire customer journey from beginning to end, needs to understand how every, like one of the critical nexus points where I think everything gets lost is in that marketing to sales handoff. Yes. Right? It's, you know, so people try to talk about, oh, well, are SDRs even needed? Should we do an AI SDR? Like everyone's trying to solve basically that point.

That's right.

Right.

That there's a lot of emphasis on that particular sec— point in the cycle because companies are measured by, and they have been traditionally, I think it's changing, but companies have been traditionally measured by how many deals they can close. Right. Which I think is fine. I understand why I'm not naive to understand why, but it's a false signal, right? Because if I build a sales organization that's really good at acquiring customers, certainly tells the marketplace that people are willing to buy, but it could be a lot of reasons. It's whether they're satisfied or not. It's whether they're actually growing and expanding. And also, if you go back further into the marketing and awareness side, is were they the right customers to begin with? Did you actually closing the right people? Are you just closing people who are willing to pay for something or are you closing people who are the right fit for what the offer is. And that, that's a, that's a different type of conversation.

So I think it absolutely is. It's not about the short-term growth. It's not about just booking the deals. It's about, are we finding people who— like, I like to think of myself as like the Chief Problem Solver Officer, you know, because I'm not trying to persuade somebody about something that they don't want to do. I'm not trying to sell somebody something that they don't need. I'm trying to solve somebody's problem for them and not make it a quick fix, but make it a long-term thing. And what you just described is like leaning into like the customer satisfaction and being what Amazon calls customer obsessed and being able to, you know, understand like, is your ICP right from the beginning? Are you solving their problem in sales? Are they happy in long-term? That is, that revenue perspective shift is so incredibly important. And I think you're absolutely right. People get stuck there.

Yep. Yeah, they do. And it's changing and you know, it changed for not the right reasons, but it changed, I think two reasons. One was the ZIRP, you know, zero interest rates was easy money. So it was just easy for companies just to get more dollars and then buy more customers and, you know, it created a bad cycle. Right. And then, you know, companies were evaluated through PE and VC that way. Like how many customers can you acquire? And if we could see you could do it repeatedly enough, that's what built the whole SaaS model was just get more customers and acquire more companies.

Yeah.

But what happened was, I think two things. It was COVID was a big problem, right? Because it, it changed the way people purchased and it shifted the entire world of business in a lot of respects. And the second one was interest rates went up. And so now money's not free, you know, customers are buying differently and it forced a lot of the companies' investment organizations to evaluate companies, not much on their acquisition capabilities, but on their customer retention. Capabilities, because that signals a better business, which we all know. And so now I think we're seeing a shift in the way companies are managed because of these things. So, you know, it's good. I tend to think like maybe if we went back to zero interest rates, would people just go back to doing the same thing again? Maybe, you know, or it's sort of, we don't learn very well. But I think that there's some new models that are being created now that I think will stick. I don't think anyone would argue That if I can keep a customer and also make that customer not just renew, but if I could make that customer an advocate and become a new sales force for me, that becomes a much better business model because no one's better to sell your business than other, than happy customers.

Absolutely right.

If I'm a chief revenue officer and I'm running the business with that context, I'm gonna have a much different way I'm gonna go to market than if I'm running it like, how many customers can we acquire this month? It's, it's a different way of running a business. And I think that A CRO needs to think that way and the organization, this is an important part, the organization needs to set itself up that way for a CRO to be able to do that. You just can't bring somebody in that thinks that way if the organization isn't going to provide them with the environment in which to execute that way. So these are the two parts of this is the right person in the right environment and how do you create both so that there's a ripe marketplace with competent CROs and organizations that know what to do with them. That's basically the whole model is what we're trying to do here.

Absolutely right. You can't be a modern CRO and be stuck in a company where they tell you to keep like, just close, just close, just close, stay in your lane, stay in your lane. And then the rest of the, the revenue cycle just gets uncared for, right? You can't, you, there's not going to be a whole lot to close. In the end if you don't take, pay attention to the whole thing.

You know, I'd say though, interestingly, what you and I are talking about is somewhat situational because you, the, the conversation we're having is predicated on the, maybe an assumption that we're talking about companies whom have a long-term vision, right? They want to be like the number one in their market or they want to expand or whatever. You know, this is where I think what you and I are talking about is, is, is, is immediately applicable because it's gonna require that. But there's still, still a lot of shenanigans going on where companies are being bought to be flipped in 3 years where what we're talking about is a lot more difficult to implement because a company that needs to be flipped in 3 years is likely gonna still be evaluated based on how many customers they can acquire. So, you know, when I have clients who are going into a job, I ask them, you know, find out what their goals are. You know, if they tell you, yeah, we want you to come in and turn this company into something that could acquisition exit, you know, event in 3 years, you're on a much different track than the company that says, we want you to build this thing into the number 1 in our category. It's not, not the same thing. And so I think how do you, how do you apply the principles you and I are talking about to a more short-term goal? And that's the trick is there still is a lot of real estate flipping. You know, you buy the lot, you make it pretty, and then you'd sell it to somebody else. So, you're gonna use cheaper materials, you're gonna put a nice face on it because you just want somebody to drive by and say, I wanna buy this place. As opposed to, I want this to be the number one, you know, dry cleaner place in the, in the country. You're gonna make it a much, much better place. So I, I think these are kind of still factors that you can't ignore, but I'm really speaking to the, the idea that even in a short term, I think maybe I'm naive, you still gotta have happy customers. I mean, they still have to be satisfied. They have to show value. And, and I think there's a lot more emphasis on even in a short-term business goal, which might be a 2 or 3-year window, acquisition should still be, I probably emphasized, but that the customers stick around longer so that you're not trying to win your business by trying to keep on replacing lost customers with new ones. But it, this is, this is a very interesting part of the market that we're seeing and it's kind of hard to implement what we're doing in those places, but I, I think it's, it's necessary.

Well, I think that's absolutely right. And then it also depends on like, are we selling widgets? Are we selling to SMB? 100%. Right? So, so much.

All, all these things are, it's fascinating, right? I mean, I have some companies that do combination of products and services. Some are just services. Services business tend to be more longer term. But you know, if you're selling a product, like particularly if you're a, a, a product-led growth company, PLG, it's really hard for them to do this. I mean, they just basically just want to get credit cards, you know, docked and they want to remove people from the equation, have it done automatically. That's, that's a, you know, that's a different animal, you know? So, so there's a lot of ways in which this particular program offering gets implemented in the company based on the way their commercial model is. But this, the principles still remain, which is you need to have alignment. It's more efficient. You need to have a better understanding of the way the customers are educated and informed about the solution that you're offering so that when they come into you that they're already ready to have a conversation. And you have to know how to do that handoff properly and how to build a customer value. And I think those things apply regardless of the cycle, but it's just an interesting, you know, kind of a distinction to make there about different types of businesses.

Absolutely right. And I think you go into this in quite a lot of depth. Don't you have a training program for CROs specifically?

That's right. So we built a, we were the first company to create a CRO executive development program called, we call it CRO Accelerator Course. And it was built for the purposes of, I said originally was First, let's figure out what is a good CRO? How do you know that one exists in the marketplace? So we had to kind of like do some analysis of the competencies and that's been done a lot more now. So there's a lot more knowledge about this now. And we've kind of grabbed a lot of that from the experts, but then, okay, so then how do you teach that? How do you get somebody to know that, okay, so like in, in initially we were doing this was most of the people that were looking for chief revenue officer roles were in sales and they were running sales teams, almost all of them. And then when they, when they wanted this CRO role, they wanted the role for different reasons than they would maybe want it now. So initially when we started doing this, the enticement of the chief revenue officer position was to have a C-suite title, right? It was like an ascendancy, you know, it was like, that's what I deserve. Doing this crap for so long.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, it's time for me to become an executive and I want the chief title and I get it. I, I'm not, I, I'm, I'm maybe saying a little bit, you know, negative about it, but I understand the way that the organizational culture has created a lot of pull towards people wanting to become chiefs. Right. It's a, it's a very, you know, there's a lot of reasons why, a lot of which aren't legitimate. I mean, if I have a C-suite name or title, then it's gonna increase my profile in the marketplace, make me more valuable. People are gonna perceive that as, well, someone trusted you to be a chief, so that means you must be one. And it just gets me other opportunities. Not to mention the fact it's not bad to walk around and tell people you're a chief something. But those are very superficial pursuits, right? The, the real reason that people want to be, have this role once they're more clear about what it is, is they don't want those things. What they want is I've been in a functional position for more than a decade, maybe 15, 20 years. And I'm tired of being at the effect of organizational decisions that I don't have any control over. Yeah. I look at the marketing organization, I look at the company and I see there's a lot of ways in which we can run this business, but I don't have the authority to make those changes. So I'm at the effect of these things that I would like to have some control over. I've reached the point in my career where I kind of know what to do. And the CRO role represents an opportunity for me to have that kind of cross-functional control, and I want to execute it. It would be great. It'd be very satisfying for me to be able to do that. And so we're, we're trying to help people make that leap into, you know, you've, you've, you've got to this point. What ways in which do you need to construct your, your, your, your thinking, your assess your competencies, uh, know your strengths and your weaknesses and understand what is required of you to be a CRO. And then how do you understand the ways in which a CRO would start, like from day one, so that you know from day one what to do, what to look at, what to think about. What does a CRO, what does a CRO do from day one? If you're not gonna be running a sales organization, then you're doing other things. What are those things? And so we sort of run through all this with our, our group, and that's been quite fun. We've been doing it for now 5 years.

Oh, that's very cool. And what an awesome education For you leading it, I'm sure you have seen everything there is to see pretty much in terms of the way businesses are run, how they perceive CROs, how people get trained up into it. I know we're running short on time, but one more question. Sure. Could you give us some tips on— let's say somebody is a VP of sales and they want to get to the CRO level. What are some of the things you talk about in the training program and like, what do it, what advice do you have to have somebody like leapfrog from a VP to a C-suite?

Yeah. So this is a very important question. I get this question every day from somebody. And yeah, the first thing is understand what the role is, right? So sometimes people just don't really know what they're asking for. Like they wanna have this job and I wanna know why. Do you want that job? And I'm very intent on wanting to know. So if you want the job for the reasons I described earlier, which is, you know, because I'm looking for a little bit more authority to run things, then good. That's a good reason. And then the second question I'd say is, well, you know, can you, like, do you know how to do that? And if the answer is, I think so, it's like, well, you should be sure.

Yeah.

Because, you know, you need to go get, compete with people who might already know how or be weirdly they've had the CRO title and they're going to be considered, but they might not have had the role either, but they can say they did because they had the title. It's a really strange situation that they're in. So I would suggest, and I'm not trying to be, you know, kind of self-serving here, but, you know, whether it's me or the 3 or 4 other educational programs out there, go learn about the role a bit more before you go pursue it. But more importantly, I would say, and this is an important part of what we do is understand what it is that the company's looking for, understand the way that the company would manage you as a CRO. Like, do they even know what, what they want? Do they understand how that role would be operationalized? Are they gonna give you what you need to succeed there? It's not enough to be good at it. You have to be in a place that that's possible and you need to know how to find that out. So you need to know how to vet the opportunities appropriately to see if the environment is one that you can succeed in. That's really important. So I think these are the things I tend to ask, uh, tell people mostly is you gotta be doing a lot of first internal searching about your competencies. And the second is the environment you're going into. Is it gonna be one that you're gonna succeed in?

Well said. And again, back to our discussion of what kind of a CRO are you? Are you a services CRO? Yeah. Product CRO?

Like for me, and what kind of, what kind of CRO do they need? Like sometimes it's like, it's our first CRO. Sometimes it's our second CRO. That's a different thing. And the other one is, You know, we're in a turnaround situation or we're in a builder situation or we're in an acquisition. Like you're gonna have different stages and different things that the company's gonna need and it's gonna require a different type of leader to manage that outcome. And you need to know what, how you fit with that. It's, it's important. Those are really important things.

Absolutely. Also, I feel like, uh, stage and size of the business is also so important and, you know, for, for some of us, we're really good in one stage. Some of us are great in early stage. Some of us are great in later stage. Some people can go all the way through. People are great in a large company. So I find that to be another big factor because in a smaller company, you have to be more flexible, agile, be able to do more of the work yourself. But I think one thing that I've had to learn in a later stage company that doesn't come naturally to me is how to respect process and consistency and training. And instead of like relying on your ingenuity and creativity and—

Yeah, you need training, you need mentors, you need to read a lot of books. And you know, here's another thing. If you're in a sales role, you, in your scenario, are you already curious about the way the other organizations work with you? Like, do you have a relationship with marketing? What's your point of view on it? Are you one of these sort of like siloed VPs where you just run sales and you don't really give a crap about anything else around around you, because you're probably not— either A, that's not the right approach, or B, I would, I would sort of make the assumption based on that, that that person is not innately curious. Someone who comes to the role is someone who loves the whole business. They're not sales leaders, they're business people, you know, and they think about the business. It's a different mindset. So someone who's a good CRO is someone who's not just running a sales organization, but they're curious about the marketing organization and how that works, and they're curious about the customer, and they know know all these things because they're, they're more curious about the bigger picture. Those are people who are going to be really good at this sort of job because that curiosity is going to lead to behaviors that are going to expand their knowledge and involvement, and they're going to come out of that role with a lot more of a well-rounded view of a business than someone who's just really good at running a sales organization, which, by the way, is an incredibly good thing, and we need people like that. But the CRO is someone who has to look at the entire thing, you know, and I just want to make sure I emphasize something else too. And that is important that I say this, and that is that, you know, it— the, the, the company that's hiring a CRO has to be as diligent about the CRO role as the person who's going to get the CRO role. Too often I'm seeing— what I see mainly is the biggest problem is that the hiring organizations that are looking for a chief revenue officer, they don't know what they're looking for, and they don't have clarity about what they're looking for either. And so they end up hiring someone and they're then later disappointed because they sort of like bought something that they didn't know how to use.

Mm-hmm.

And then they're like, I bought this complicated thing and I didn't know how to use it. So I'm like, this thing sucks. I don't know why I bought it, but it wasn't, it was an amazing thing you bought, but you just didn't know how to use it properly.

Mm-hmm.

And you're blaming the product as opposed to your own preparation for it. So I think, you know, before you acquire a CRO, you need to know what one does and how one needs to be supported and used effectively to get the most out of it. And we do that too. That's a big part of our business.

Well said. Well said. It's about putting the right people in the right places on the bus, right? Yeah. Like you said, a VP of sales role, or someone, or a chief sales officer that just manages sales. Incredibly important. We have to have vitally important. Yeah. But the CRO is a different function and one is becoming increasingly important in SGA businesses. So, well, Oren, thank you so much. This was so insightful. I learned a bunch of new things about the CRO and how we should approach it. And I'm excited everyone who is aspiring to be a CRO, check out Warren's training program. I'm excited to register myself for it. And I've, I've heard, you know, friends of mine who have gone through the program have found great value. Last question for you, Warren, how do you stay at the top of your game?

Well, you know, honestly, I'm not like one of these sort of like, you know, morning ice plunge types, you know, you know, I'd like to say some cool thing, you know, I climb a mountain in the morning or, you know, I lift 17 weights or something. I'm, I'm really more like, honestly, honestly, I get most of my energy from, from people. You know, I'm, I'm really like involved a lot with helping people and, and talking to people. I like to get the emphasis off myself. So the way I keep on top of my game is, is by making sure that I'm connected to great people whom are both in need of support and whom I can get support from. I think it's my, my relationships in my community is probably the biggest asset that I have. And I also have a really great family. So Those are my, those are my things, you know, kind of keeping myself on top of my game with that. That's, that's my, that's my shtick.

I love it. I think that's such a superpower to be able to draw energy from the people around you and the relationships you have and, and use it to serve everyone. So that, that's incredible. Warren, I also understand you have a new book that has just come out. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, that's correct. So I spent a couple years thinking about this and I, wrote a book called What Chief Revenue Officers Actually Do and How to Build a CRO-Ready Organization. So it really, like everything I just shared with you just now, which I encapsulated, is in this book. It really talks about the CRO role and what it really is and what they really do. And then also how, as I shared with you here, how companies need to build what I, what I call CRO-ready organizations, which is a company that's ready for this particular CRO. And it gets into a lot of detail about that whole process. And, you know, it's my first book, so I hope it's good, but I'm pretty proud of it. And it's on Amazon. You can buy it. And I appreciate you asking me about it.

Oh, absolutely. I'm excited to dive in. Is it on an ebook as well, or right now just print?

You know, I think it is. I have to say, I think yes, Kindle. You can get on Kindle or hardcover. And then I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'm going to be recording an audio version of it. So I just have to do it. I have to sit down and just read this thing into a microphone for a weekend or something like that.

That'll be great.

Yeah. So, so anyway, thank you for asking. Appreciate that.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Warren. It was absolute pleasure to have you on the show and best of luck at the CRO Collective. And I'm excited to take the training program.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me today.

Is that business?

Business? Is that business?