A Recruiters Perspective on the Current CRO Market and How To Navigate It - Michael Campagna

Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO.

Of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank.

And freeform conversation with top experts in.

The revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed.

Thanks for listening.

Now let's go mix it up. Welcome to this episode of this CRO Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zen. I'm the founder of CRO Collective. I'm really excited today because I talk so much about interviewing for the CRO role. It's like a big part of my offering and it's a big topic of conversation with my, with my clients. And for a lot of reasons, aside from a general issue, which is people just want to interview better, there's a lot of specifics related to the CRO role that are unique to getting that job, that are so unique actually that there's a specific way in which that role needs to be approached. My view a lot differently than most roles that are an executive level in an organization for a lot of reasons, which we're going to get into today with my guest who's Mike Campagna. Mike is a recruiter and we, we met because, you know, I just, I talked to a lot of people and sometimes I have great conversations with people. I'm like, wow, this would make a really good conversation. I haven't had the perspective of a recruiter who's on the other side of this. As you know. You've seen how many videos I created over the last, let's say, six months or so related specifically to people I talked to about the job search. It's just funny. So anyway, I really wanted to have this conversation with Mike because this is a really important perspective for those whom are hiring CROs and CROs who are looking for the job. So, Mike, welcome. I'm really glad you're here today.

Yeah, glad to be here too, Warren. Excited to have this conversation with you and continue kind of our first conversation just to briefly introduce myself and talk about my background a little bit. I've worked in Executive search for a little over a decade now, focusing exclusively on sales leadership roles within Enterprise SaaS and of course, B2B. I've really focused on North America, but the U.S. specifically. And look, it's been an interesting time through upmarkets, through a little bit of a down market we just went through. And as we were just talking about a little bit of an uptick, we're seeing here too. So excited to be here today.

Yeah, let me talk about that beginning because as early as like yesterday afternoon, I had a conversation with somebody about this. So I talked to a lot of CEOs and one of the people who I speak to frequently was talking to me about his perception that there's a softness in the market. Like he was at a number of executive events and he said his sort of sense of things from listening to everybody is that a lot of people are looking for jobs and there's not a lot out there. I hear that too. I mean, a lot more people are reaching out to me today or now, recently, in the last months or so saying, hey, anything that's open, let me know. So I don't know if I'm. It's a false signal, but I'd be curious to know a little bit more about that because you're indicating the opposite. What, what, what do you think? What do you make of that?

So it sounds like it's a CEO perspective. Is that, did I hear you correctly in his case?

Yes, he's a CEO. Right. So I don't know if he's necessarily talking to CEOs that are looking for jobs, but executives and senior level people who are looking for jobs.

Yeah, the CROs that I speak with, everyone has an ear to the ground right now. At the very least, if not openly looking from for something new.

Why is that you think there's been.

A shift in the market over the past year from growth at all costs, high cash burn, to all of a sudden cutting costs, cutting headcount, cutting budgets, but doubling quotas. And that has caused a lot of folks to say, oh, right, is the grass greener somewhere else? In most cases, it's actually not right. But a lot of folks are considering right now, is there something else that's better out there? But a lot of folks, and of course the best folks too, are figuring it out. Figure out a way to manage through this.

Okay, let's talk about this a bit because I obviously every, you know, in touch with the issue, the shift in the market. I was writing a little piece yesterday, I haven't finished it. I was sort of saying like 2024. It's almost as if the maybe I'm wrong here, but correct me if you think so. It's sort of a combination of the financial collapse of 2008 and happening at the same time is the invention of the Internet. Like there's two things happening at the same time. And so on one hand you've got this incredible amount of optimism about AI and it's just ridiculous how much this is. It's insane. All the promise, all the money that's flowing into that sector right now and how every single product has that little diamond shape next to it now. And you press the button and it does something that doesn't make any sense. And Google is completely revamping its entire business and you know, every day there's a new update and chat, GPT and other platforms. It's insane. And money is flowing into that stuff. In fact, I'm hearing most of my clients telling me that if they don't even like hang the word AI on their offering, they won't even get an investment now. You know, it's. If they're not in that space, it's like, just get out of the room. We don't want to talk to you. And it's maybe ridiculous. So in that respect, there's this exuberance about, wow, this future and all this possibility and all that stuff at the same time too. You know, we're in a recession, let's face it. I know people don't say that we're not. I think people want to say that they're not because they hope if they say it'll be true, but we are. I think it's not going to get any better. So I think people are feeling that. And then coupled with that is what you just said, which is there was all this money flowing for many years and VCs were handing out cash with zero interest rates and people could afford to just throw as much money as they possibly could into Outbound created all these crazy software platforms over the last 15 years that designed to do it and now they're saying, okay, well, I think we sort of, you know, destroyed our own marketplace, so let's stop doing that stuff. Which I think is great. So you're right. So now they're cutting corners, they're cutting people, they're leaning up, which is good too. I think it's a bad thing. But the problem, what you just said is that in spite of that, they're doubling their quotas. So to me, it's like there's still some weird psychosis going on that. I love your point of view on this. Like, why do you think it is that that would be the case, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you Think that companies would sober up completely and realize that you can't cut people and want double. You should cut people, cut people and want what you had before. Right. I mean, it just seems to make sense to me. I don't know, maybe something I'm missing here.

Warren, what you just said makes too much sense. Maybe that's what folks are saying.

There still has to be some reason behind it. I'm kind of curious from a recruiting perspective, like what do you think you're hearing out there that's having those two things happen at the same time.

So starting from the top down, so at the very high level is this. You're right. There's definitely an exuberance in the market around AI in general. And you're seeing everything popping up in AI right now. I don't want to over index on cybersecurity. I just happen to do a lot of work in that space.

There is still a lot there. I see a lot of that, a lot of consolidation going on in that space too.

There's been about a dozen companies that have launched for Gen AI cybersecurity over the past 12 months. Like just as an example of like an over exuberance in one area. But then also taking a step back and looking at the market broadly, look at Martech right now we're not seeing a lot of investment there.

True, Right.

If you look at Fintech, they had a very tough year this past year and that seems to be picking up a little bit. And then within cybersecurity specifically, again, there's different pockets of the market. What we're seeing right now is a lot of consolidation, lots and lots of acquisitions, especially in hot spaces and, and competitive acquisitions. You'll see every time that Palo Alto Networks makes an acquisition, crowdstrike is and vice versa. So it isn't a one size fits all for all markets. But then going back to your question as it relates to the CRO role and alignment with a CEO, which I think is so key for anyone to be successful, where those expectations come a lot of times, especially around budget cutting, really is just from the board.

Right.

And it allows that CEO. That CEO, excuse me, needs to be working with their board to make sure that those expectations are correct. But a lot of times that conversation has to happen with the CRO first.

Right.

Of what is really achievable if we are going to cut headcount. I'm not saying folks aren't doing it and being successful at doing it, but a lot of times that's where that's Coming from is from above. So hopefully that's helpful. Just.

It's great. There's so much to unpack I want to go into with that.

So.

So let's. First, let's. Let's take into bits and pieces here. So the first thing you said is you mentioned about, you know, this relationship with the CEO and the CRO and the board, which I think is this sort of triumvirate of leadership that it's so vitally important that it's on same page. And I'm seeing that the main reason why Sierra's don't succeed is because it's not. That's what I see happening. But I would say it's back it up more. And so let's make sure you and I are on the same page. I know we talked about this already, but I want to make sure for the purpose of this conversation, we are, and that is that we're in agreement on what the CRO role is. Because I know the first reason you and I spoke in the first place was you're up against this problem of having to fulfill on the demand of the client. Even if they're not right about what they're looking for, you're sort of like an agent for them. You have to mirror their demand, right? So if they come to you and they say, mike, I'm looking for a CRO, and here's what I want this CRO to do, and you look at that job description, you know, it's a loser. You still have to go satisfy that description, because that's what they're looking for, you know, So I just kind of want to talk a bit about that, because what you and I originally talked about was our agreement that a CRO really has much more expanded role in an organization that has a oversight over the entire revenue operation. But most. Not most. I'd say most. I'd say most. I will say that founders are looking for CROs to run sales and that this is sort of the big misstep. And my question to you originally was, what do you do about that? Like, when you know that you're being asked to go to the marketplace to retrofit somebody into a role that you, as a recruiter, know may not work, but you sort of have this weird devil's condition where on one hand you have to say yes and do what the client asked for. On the other hand, you know, it might not be working? I mean, how do you navigate that? And, you know, what's your perspective on this, this relationship you have with with someone who's looking for a Chief Revenue officer.

Yeah. So two sides of the coin there.

Right?

So first side of the coin is this. And this happens before a search kicks off. And this is where a CEO and a board should understand, okay, who are we?

Right.

Are we a $3 million company that's trying to achieve product market fit and we need to get new logos and bookings are the most important thing right now? Okay, that's great. Then we need someone who's focused on bookings, even if we want to call them a CRO, and that's lead salesperson, as you were talking about right there. Or are we a $50 million business and we have a great install base and we have an opportunity to really grow that install base to 3x or continue to grow bookings at the same time? Well, that's obviously a Chief Revenue Officer, but we also need someone to oversee CS in that case. And then going back to the first case too, if we're really looking for new logos and bookings, well, maybe this person should oversee demand gen and the SDR function too. So it really starts with understanding where the business is today and where we want it to go. And then based on that, okay, what are the qualities that we're looking for in this CRO that can help us get there, whatever the title is? We talked about this a little bit. Sort of that tongue in cheek joke for all CROs is, is this actually a CRO role? Because a lot of times it's an SVP of sales.

It's. Most of the time it is.

Yeah.

I see it's changing, but yes, for the most part that's the case.

Yeah. And again, that just typically comes from. Look, sometimes folks want to get better candidates for an SVP of sales role, so they call it a CRO role. That happens.

Right.

But the other side of that coin too is that, you know, that role can change over time and that's very organic and natural and healthy too, right?

Yep.

Maybe this person comes in as an SVP of sales with the CRO title focused on bookings. Over time, they take on CS and really own revenue.

It could. There's no question about it. Okay, but I get it. I agree. Right. I think that you and I both are completely aligned on the fact that this all starts at the top, with a company having to have some. A sophisticated understanding of sort of what stage they're at, what they really need right now.

Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have, and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free please to share the CRO Spot, like podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And your, your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer Board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Master's Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own Board of Directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other Chief Revenue Officers you can talk to and say, hey, I, I'm working on this. Or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with Chief Revenue Officers. Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job, and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DME masters or master's Council, and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there.

And thank you. And they know, I mean, if it's a company that's five or three or whatever million in revenues, then you're right, they need to go get more acquisitions and get more customers. There's no doubt about that. Anybody they hire should be focused on that. I think when you're at the 25, 30 million, and then this isn't science, it's just a general feeling. That's when your organization's got some ICP identification. Now you know you got a business. And now you need to manage the complexity that you've created in a CRO in the way that you and I do. That's called the modern CRO or the CRO 2.0 is the right hire at that point. Right. So I think, if I may, your role, they say, mike, here's the job Description. We're a $5 million business and we want a chief revenue officer. And you know, you and I discussed this, so you know what's going on and you understand all these things. How much leverage do you have consultatively to push back a bit on the way that they're looking for something to help them make a better decision? Or how much are you just sort of, because of the competitiveness of your business, sort of have to just do what they ask or else you might get tossed to the side. Like, how do you navigate that? Because I being a bit more of a provocateur, you know, I can imagine if I was in your position, and maybe I'm wrong because I'm not in your position. So that's what I'm saying. You're in your position. But if I was in your position, somebody came to me and said, hey, I'm looking for a chief revenue officer and we're a $5 million company. The first thing I'd say is, that's not what you need. You need a sales leader. You know, and let's. Why are you. I'm not going to go out and find this person for you because it's not the right fit for you. So I would want to engender myself as someone whom can consultatively help these companies make better decisions. But they might say, ah, screw you.

I didn't ask you for your opinion.

I just asked you to find me this person and I'm going to go get somebody else that's going to say yes to me. How do you navigate that?

That's the fun of this job a lot. And I mean that in a positive way, of course. Hey, look, I'm challenging myself to go get the right person for this role.

Right.

I mean, if you think about Chris Degnan at Snowflake, right, when he first came in, it was him and a phone and that was it.

Right?

And now they're a multi billion dollar valuation company. It can be somebody who has a skill set that the company has not grown into yet, but that you have to show the vision for this company and the partnership between the recruiter in this case and the CEO is really what can be a competitive advantage here of understanding, okay, what is a CEO's vision for this business? Where could this company go? How can we tell that story in an Educated way, and maybe the board steps in there too, to do so. But then in addition to that, just understanding, hey, look, this is what we're seeing in the market. This is the feedback that we're getting. And you know, also going back to what are the KPIs that we're looking for this person to achieve now, a year from now, two years from now, beyond that. So it really is a partnership, and that partnership is based on market data and what you're seeing in the market. But over time, you usually get to the right answer through finding the right people.

I get it. I guess my question is I'm looking at it from the other side because I'm in a situation where I'm seeing people. And I get these calls all the time from people who call me and say, man, I just had this call with this recruiter about this CRO role. And they introduced me to the person who was hiring and it was. And they tell me these stories. It's insane. You know, like, the whole thing is all. It's a mess. You know, they clearly are not really know what they want to do. And it sort of seems the pervasive thing, and I like reason why I wanted to talk to you is because you seem to be a bit of an outlier in this respect, is that most of the people that are dealing with these are just sort of, you know, they're order takers. You know, they take the. They take the job description, they just go to market and they try and fulfill it because, you know, HR departments. So I was a P and L owner at an agency, had a pretty big business there, and I had an HR organization assigned to me. Like, they would get me. They would get me the people that I needed. So I would give them a job scripting because I know that I have to give them something to target. I can't just. Just find me somebody. I have to give them a blueprint of what to look for. But I'm hoping, and I realized I was wrong, that the people in the human resources department had a little creativity and they could kind of like, you know, kind of beheld nuance when they look for people and they can say, all right, this person is an exact fit. But they have certain things that would make it interesting. I'd like to show them to Warren, but they never did. And I'd wonder, like, why is it. Give me. I went. I had this conversation with one of my HR people. They were recruiters, basically internal recruiters. And I said, show me some of the resumes that you didn't show me. And I was like, this person would have been fine. Like, why didn't you show this to me? And they had this muscle memory which was like, yeah, you know, there were a couple of key things in your job description that didn't fit this person. So he reject them. I go, yeah, but look at this one. This one compensates for that. Like, they didn't seem to have, like, the ability to, like, nuance these things. And here's why.

It wasn't necessarily because they weren't smart enough.

It was because that's the way they were trained. So the whole company operated this way. And so, you know, the fear they had was that if they put candidates in front of their bosses that weren't right, they'd get fired or they get castigated. So they were just like, you know what? I'm just going to give them exactly what they want, not deal with any of this crap. And I start seeing the same thing with people who are not in HR departments but are just recruiters. And this is no disrespect to you and your profession. I'm seeing. I see a lot of really amazing people in your profession, but a lot of them just sort of just seem to like they're worried about losing the accounts. They just say yes to whatever they're given. How does this work? Like, I asked this question. I almost like I'm beating a dead horse. But, you know, this role as a Chief Revenue officer is a really important role. Just a salesperson. We could just hire five of them and two of them work out. Three of them don't. Just like, you hire somebody whom is going to be making maybe upwards of a half a million bucks, maybe more, have a probably an equity stake and frankly, if they're hired properly, should be running your whole business. So I would think that incredible amount of thought would be put into how this works, but I don't see that happening. What. What's your view on that and why do you think that is?

I think the biggest disconnect. So this is speaking of the early stage. I can talk to later stage as well, too. So at the early stage, you typically have technical founders who don't have a deep enough understanding of what the CRO role actually is. And quite frankly, how could they?

Right?

It's just a very different side of the seesaw.

Right.

If you will. But at the end of the day, you have folks who just don't have that context that can be helpful. And here's the thing. When you Work with a specialist recruiter who understands not just the CRO market, but what the right CRO looks like for this company at this stage of business. And as we talked about before. Yeah, this is looking to go 100. That education can take place through showing them different archetypes, candidates who have been there and done that, candidates who are step up candidates for this role and understanding folks from different areas of the market too, if that's applicable. It might not be right. This role might be so specialized within the domain that we need to stick to, I don't know, IT infrastructure.

Right.

Whatever it might be.

Yeah. What you said is really important. I'm sorry I interrupt. I just want to make sure I hit on this one because this is the big problem I see is these founder led companies who are, you're right, they're product builders. They're brilliant product builders. They make an amazing piece of software or something like that. And they don't have a lot of commercial expertise. And so, you know, they're, you're correct, they don't have like the sort of, let's say business acumen to understand these things. And so they're looking at it from a different angle. And I could hugely see that that's a big issue. But I would think that many of the companies, most of the companies I'm dealing with are companies whom also are being funded by smart organizations that have management teams that help these people know, run their businesses and that they would step in and compensate for those things. Do you see that happening?

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times, whether it's private equity or vc, they'll bring in operating partners to help assist a CEO in this specific function. So that might be sales, marketing, something along those lines. Right. So that happens a lot. You know, more than anything, I think that the misalignment that we talked about before is most important to figure out early on in a search process. So that way you're not going to market figuring out, okay, what are we indexing on here? Because at the end of the day it's going to be looking at folks who are coming from the same similar logos. Excuse me, that are really going to resonate a lot of times. But at the end of the day, looking for the right person is more important than the logos they've worked at.

Yeah, no doubt.

Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the Podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening.

To this great stuff as possible.

A couple things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even a old salty CRO and you're looking to either become a Chief Revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a Chief Revenue officer, we offer the CRO accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring Chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader, or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. The serial Accelerator course, we kick off the next one in May, mid May 2025. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information, give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO accelerator course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it, it's been great and you'll see some more information about.

It on the website. Thanks. You know, look, that's obviously the case. I hope I'm not sounding so cynical here. I'm just saying my experience, I don't see this enough. I see a lot of times people literally are like, you said it already in earlier part of this conversation. Some people are looking for a CRO for a couple reasons. One is because they believe maybe it's true that by putting out the CRO title in the job description, they're going to get a better quality candidate. Right? So okay, I sort of see that. But I think there's a bait and switch there in a way for people who are not educated about the role and they want the CRO title. And if I may say that what they're doing is they're, they're targeting title chasers so you sort of get what you pay for. Because you know, if I'm, if I'm in the marketplace and I'm looking for a job and I see a CRO role. And I would say this if you're educated about this, right, because I'm trying to do this more. But if I'm in the marketplace, I'm looking for a CRO role. The first thing is like, what do I think a CRO role is? If I think the CRO role is me running a sales organization with a C suite title, then there's probably a lot of jobs out there for you're there, you know. But you know you're going to end up running a sales organization. You're not going to have the level of oversight as a C suite executive as you think you will. You're still going to have to have a partner that's a cmo, maybe even like a CS leader. And now you can have three people who are basically fighting for turf and stuff and it ends up becoming the same situation. If you were a mid level manager, you just happen to have a different title, you know. But that being said, I think there's a lot of superficial reasons why CROs are being hired not for the reasons that you and I discussed, which is we really need somebody at the right stage of this company to help us build a net revenue engine and build alignment in the organization. And so as a result, I think there is a looseness in the definition of the role which has resulted in some of the ways in which the jobs are being filled and it helps to exacerbate the problem. So I would be interested in knowing, okay, let's say that there's a bunch of founders listening to this right now who are in the process of considering their executive suite architecture for the business in the next three or four years and they're thinking about hiring a CRO. Let's say they're. In your, in your opinion? Let's say maybe it's too early for them. What would your counsel or advice be to them in terms of how they make these decisions from a recruiter's perspective?

So whether it's me or anyone else who is a specialist in CROs and in this stage of company, anytime that I'm meeting with a founder, what I'm focusing on or what I know, the CROs are going to want to know from me, right? Where's the company at today? Where are they funded? What's their Runway? What's their growth rate? What's their current headcount? What are they willing to pay for an enterprise rep? Like all these important things that I know that are questions that are going to be asked of me as CROs are evaluating businesses. And then in addition to that, any CRO has a couple of different filters as far as size and stage domain role that they're looking for moving forward. I'm talking about the candidate side, right. But the other filters that they're always going to be applying to any role is do de risking. Excuse me. So am I going to be asked to come in and be the savior of this business?

Right.

Am I going to be asked to come in and figure this out? How much support am I going to have? They're going to be looking to snuff out all the reasons why this could be a risk for them and their career. The average CRO tenure is about 18 months. And no CRO wants their next job to be 18 months. They want it to be four years and an exit. And that's what they're really hedging against with every single meeting. So going back to your question about advising founders as far as how to be prepared to meet with CROs, how to be prepared for a search, it's important to understand what are the best people in the market looking for. And I hit on a few of those things before we can dive deeper. There's. But then in addition to that, okay, what do I actually need this person to do and how can I be aligned? Here's the thing. If you're an early stage founder and you don't have product market fit and you don't have a ton of budget for this person to work with, if you tell them that from the beginning, but they're bought into the vision of the company and where it could possibly go, expectations are set and everyone's on the same page. Being transparent and honest with candidates from day one is what's going to allow you not only to have a great hiring process and a great hire, but more importantly, have a great reputation in the market, because everyone who's at the top of the market is networking and understands where everyone else is and what they're looking at. If they hear things about you misrepresenting something and they figure that out through an interview process or later on, yeah, that's stick with you for your career, it's great.

You know, I think it's funny. You're right, 100%. I think the reason, I think why a lot of founders are not willing to be transparent despite that obvious logic is because they're afraid they're going to scare away good candidates. Do they want to sort of, you know, make it look better for Them, you know, almost sort of like. And this happens a lot. I can tell you how many people that work with me took the job and then six months in were like, this is nothing what they told me.

So nothing. I had a situation recently where we placed someone who the. The title ended up being gm. It was a CRO role focused on customer growth for an early stage company in the fintech space. The candidate came in, she was extremely accomplished in the space. She came into the role throughout the interview process, questioned the CEO on essentially stage of the business.

Right.

Also asked those same questions to the board in subsequent meetings too. Once she got into the seat, she found out that the CRO had not, excuse me, CEO had not. Had not only misrepresented things to her about deals that had been closed, but actually hadn't or maybe had been in process, things like that. But also the CEO had misled the board too. So she had no way of back channeling, for lack of a better term, where the state of the business was. If that CEO had just been honest from the very beginning, she could have worked with that, she could have figured things out and been able to succeed in the role. But if we're misrepresenting things from the very beginning, that trust is very, very difficult to be restored, if it can be.

Yeah, agreed. And that's probably the thing I hear most CROs that end up working with me are in situations where they're in the middle of the sort of come to Jesus moment where they're like, oh my God, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. And they look back and they sort of realize like there were like five questions they should have asked. They didn't. And the reason they didn't ask him is they were afraid to get the answer. You know, they sort of like blinded themselves because they just wanted to like, you know, believe in this thing and hope and pray. Right. And also at the same time too, they were probably told things that weren't true. And it's not, I wouldn't say it's necessarily lying as much as I think it's two entities who sort of have a similar pursuit. Like one is like, we need somebody to come in here and fulfill this role and I need a job. So let's collude together in this delusion and if I can figure it out, maybe down the road, as opposed to really sitting down at the table, table, like you said, opening up your kimonos and saying, this is what's really going on. This is really what I'M looking for. This is really what I can offer, blah, blah, blah, and do an exchange. And I think like the other element of this, if I may, and I've been. I haven't really, haven't really worked with recruiters much in the last 15 years, but my earlier part of my career I did whom were getting me jobs. And there was like a bunch of different types of recruiters. Like some were really consultative and they were amazingly good and at helping me navigate things. And then there are ones whom subsequently I saw that they wanted the commission. You know, there was a big paycheck for them at the end of getting somebody in this job. And they sold me on it, you know, because their own financial gain was attached to their motivation, which I understand. But it created also other aspects of it that weren't necessarily as clear because that person was not being motivated by making sure I was getting the best job, but just that I said yes to it, you know. And so, you know, there was some of that stuff too. So, you know, it's a, it's a strange profession you're in because there's, you know, I think in my opinion there's an opportunity in your profession for people to rise up and be real superstars because there's a lot of people who just, frankly, I think are just order takers, you know. And what attracted me when I was talking with you is like, you really seem like really great recruiter, like someone who really cares about this stuff a lot. And you're really looking to make it the right fit, bring a lot of intelligence to these searches. And I'm hoping that maybe the industry is forcing that to happen more because of these things. I think it. I don't know if it can be done as, as readily anymore. It's be a lot more thought going into this. I don't know if you agree with that or not. What do you think the state of the recruiting industry is today in general, Warren?

If there was only some consultancy you could advise CEOs and CROs on how to best launch a search like this, the world would be a better place.

I'm working on it. Yeah. So I want to ask some other questions here. So let's say now you're advising people who are looking for CRO roles. What's your way that you'd advise them on how to navigate that search?

Well, it actually starts with where they are from a timing perspective first.

Right.

So who is this person and why are they looking to make a move if at all? In most cases the Answer is I'm not looking to make a move, but open to things if the best thing that I'm looking for comes along.

Right.

So then defining what is that best best thing? What does that perfect situation look like?

What if it's just more money, which for many people frankly it is. You know, a lot of times I just want more money.

Well, here's the good news about the CRO specifically versus, I don't know, an HR role or something like that. The more money comes with the better opportunity, no doubt. So if you're finding a company that's a better fit for who you are and you know your skill set, but more importantly is on a better growth trajectory without you right now, well, that's a probably a better situation where you're going to make more money. I personally hesitate to talk about outcomes as far as an exit for any company, especially a VC backed business, just because it can be so variable. And if you're evaluating on a company just of, hey, look, hopefully we get to 10x, that's probably just not the best way to think about it. But it's always a factor. Um, so that's always important too as far as compensation goes, is figuring out where is the best situation and what company has the best tailwinds.

Okay, so I'm switch gears a bit and ask you some questions about the marketplace. Do you have any idea right now on generally how many Chief Revenue Officer roles are open right now?

I don't have that data in front of me, but it's.

Would you say it's like a hundred? Is it a thousand? You know, I'm just curious, you know, like what, what's the general neighborhood of how many opportunities are out there that have the title Chief Revenue Officer in your view, you think?

Yeah, I, I couldn't comment on this specific number. A thousand seems extremely high. I think so, yeah, absolutely. So at my previous firm we would do about 60 of these searches a.

Year, is that right? Yeah, because you know, I do, I'll go into LinkedIn sometimes I just bang out the in. In jobs. I'll look up CRO or Chief Revenue Officer. I did it yesterday and I don't know if LinkedIn's a good indicator. It's a decent one. It's about 538 was the number that came up. Now that could mean a lot of things. I look at a lot of these Chief Revenue Officer roles and they're not Chief Revenue Officer roles. Right, but that's the title that they're using or sometimes the way the LinkedIn search algorithm works is it finds the title Chief Revenue Officer somewhere in the job description. You know, that may not be the actual job. And it brings it up as being one. It's just the way it works. Not, it's not a perfect thing. But I asked the question because when I did that like two years ago there were like 3,000 and I'm sure.

Especially Q1 of 22 as well.

Yeah, yeah. So I think that I'm going to make an assumption that there may be less CRO roles available for a lot of reasons, probably economics, but I also think that the quality of them has gotten better. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing more job descriptions now that seem to indicate a better and more sophisticated understanding of what the role is than I've seen even two or three years ago, which were ridiculous. All of them were just sales roles. Are you seeing the same thing?

I will say this, is that companies that are getting funding now are going through a lot more vetting than what they've seen in the past.

Right.

And companies that are getting to that next round of funding and therefore able to bring on a CRO are in a place right now that's much more stronger. It's much stronger, excuse me, than they've ever been before. So I don't know if that speaks specifically the quality of the opportunity, but it also speaks to stability and potential long term growth for the role. Yeah, look, 21 in particular and early 22, a lot of things were getting funding and some of those companies aren't keeping those sales leaders.

I agree.

So, okay, so what type of searches.

Are you working on right now? Like what's on your dashboard today?

Yeah, everything is really 20 to 100 million.

Right.

As far as revenue, most companies are in the cyber security space and obviously all CRO searches, and here's what I would say too, is that, you know, there seems to be a big bifurcation in the market as far as what CROs are looking for. On one side of the market it's hey, Mike, I'm looking for something that's like super cutting edge, you know, sort of this new market type of company where they from day one they've been focused on profitability, not growth at all costs, but also like we talked about before, innovative and new or an established business, probably PE backed, where I can come in and just hit the ground running as opposed to having to sell set up systems and build things and really design how teams are set up as opposed to just scaling. So those are two completely different jobs. And that's what I'm seeing from a lot of folks is what they're looking for.

Well, great. So if someone's looking for people right now, how do they get a hold of you and what's the way that you work with them?

Yeah, so the best way to get a hold of me is either through email, which I'll put it in the show notes here, LinkedIn, or just calling me directly and one of those things works.

Okay, great. Well, look, as I expected, this is a great conversation. It's vitally important thing. You know, I, I think that the recruiting at part of this whole, let's call CRO misappointment issue is a critical element of it and it's good to finally get the perspective of someone who's sitting in that seat. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today about this and I'm sure we'll be talking more. So thank you and thanks for being here.

Thank you, Warren. It was great doing this conversation with you.

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