Data Capture and AI-Driven Revenue Intelligence with Janis Zech

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. 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 the CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. So, hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zen. I'm the CEO of the CRO Collective and real excited today. This gentleman that posts some really awesome shit on LinkedIn and I download it all the time and I read a lot of Janice's posts and I thought, this is a very smart person who has a lot of very similar perspectives on things than I do. And so I thought I'd like to talk to him. So we never spoke before Janice, but I thought it would be a great way to introduce ourselves and just talk here. So welcome. Welcome to the, to the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Really excited to be here and glad to meet you as well.

Yeah, man, all good. So some of you might know, right, you've seen Janice, he produces these incredible graphics of CRO frameworks and things, and they're just really well produced and very well thought out. And obviously, Janice, you're a very smart marketer because, you know, that sort of stuff is very sticky and everybody asks for it. And I, I get that. I. We do, we do very similar things in some respects, and so I appreciate that. So we can talk a bit about that because obviously you've got a good mind for how to build audiences and create awareness. But then also too, your content is great because you're talking about a lot of very important things which specifically related to operational excellence with Chief Revenue Officers and growth. So I'd love to hear a bit, maybe on your background, you know, a bit where you're from. I know you mentioned that you made a couple of exits and you built some companies to some good growth and scale, and these are really important things to the audience. So what's up with you? And how did you end up where you are? And tell us a little about what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I'm basically, probably the best description is like a repeat founder. So I started my first company with 21 that didn't work out. Then I started my second company with 24. My mom was freaking out because she wanted me to get a real job. And then I basically stayed with that company for eight and a half years. We started around one table with two other folks and then when I left we were around 350 people, you know, 76 million ARR sold. The company on the way actually was public. It was later resold the second time and was a company called Fiber. And I mean this is basically where I, you know, got in touch with a CRO title the first time. The interesting thing is, you know, I've always been on the interception of product and go to market. And so in 2010 I think I just basically called myself a chief revenue officer. And I remember everybody was like, what is this? Like what are you talking about? And you know, actually it was a very simple definition. Like back then I was basically responsible for all things go to market. Marketing, sales, CS support, and that back then also included product. So yeah, I think in the end whatever drives revenue outside of the R D function. But I know that, you know, product is kind of a bit of a weird mix in here. So that's not the typical definition, I would say. Yeah, but yeah, I mean that's basically the first time I got in touch with the CRO title.

Yeah, I understand so obviously from your accent, you're not from Brooklyn. So like you're, you're from Germany, right? You're in Germany?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm in Berlin. I've got two kids, I'm 40 years old now. After my, you know, kind of second company, I, I started investing. So I invested in a bunch of companies actually for a long time already. And then I also started another company which we sold to a company called Personio. And now I started basically my third company called WeFlow and we are in the revenue intelligence space. So we currently offer four products. Activity capture, conversational intelligence, pipeline management, forecasting. And yeah, we, I mean we are building out, you know, a suite of products that ideally and I think, you know, the core focus has been on like do you automate data capture? Because that has been a key challenge throughout my life to then have better insights throughout the deal pipeline and forecast management process. Right. So we typically talk with CROs, CSOs, VP of Sales, but then also spend a lot of time with revenue operation folks and sales up folks. So yeah, I mean that's, you know, how one of the reasons why I'm posting about this stuff on LinkedIn. Right. Like for us it's is obviously marketing, and I can share a bit like, you know, our evolution on marketing and why we went down to trying to create really valuable stuff instead of, you know, the typical SEO stuff that, you know, I think nobody really enjoys reading. But. Yeah, let me stop here.

No, it's okay. I love it. I mean, it's great. So. So I guess one thing I want to ask about. It's interesting you mentioned before, this reaction that people had to this CRO position. And like, what is that? It's interesting, as you can appreciate for me, because, you know, in the US there's certainly a, let's say, a greater familiarity with the title because it was sort of invented here. But that doesn't mean that just because everybody heard of it, knows what it is. That's sort of what I'm trying to solve here is that there's an incredible amount of ambiguity about the role and how it's implemented, and it's changing all the time. And so I want to make sure we're sort of just on the same. On the same, but we're just clear about just what we're talking about. Right? Because when I think of a CRO, and the whole reason I began this business is because of what you bring up, which is there's a lack of familiarity with the role. And as a result, unfortunately, it can be utilized improperly all too often. And as a result, it causes all sorts of problems for the company and for the Croat. I was just on the phone with a colleague before, right before this call who told me that their CRO just got fired. And I hear this a lot, and they got fired. When I dig into it, you know, the story is always very superficial where the CEO is sort of disappointed with the CRO. It didn't go the way they expected, it didn't get the results they wanted or whatever, and they let the person go. And when they fire a Croat, you know, it's obvious from that sort of dynamic that there is some disappointment in the candidate or the person and they let them go. But I can tell you, in my experience, 98% of the time, it was actually the company that made the mistake, not the person they hired. And the reason is this. Certainly there are people you're going to hire that aren't great, and there are all sorts of variables of talent and skill. But I know this because I produce CROs. I create, you know, a program to help get them ready, and I tell them that even the greatest CRO in the world is going to Be at the mercy of the organization that hires them. And if the company that hires you doesn't know what a CRO is or what a CRO really does, you know, you're sort of screwed, you know, and if you don't fix that in the beginning, you're going to end up with a job that you didn't want and that is sort of different than what was expected. And when it's out of whack like that in a job of that importance, it's going to go south pre pretty quickly. So my definition, or the, I would say the definition of I'll go so far as to say of a CRO is someone who oversees the entire, let's call it go to market or whole revenue operation, from soup to nuts from all the sales, the marketing, the customer renewals and success and maybe Even in a SaaS business, probably a little bit of focus on market insights and stuff for the product group. And all too often, and I'd love to get your perspective on this, particularly in Europe, that CROs are all too frequently hired as heads of sales, not a real true leader of a revenue operation. So what are your thoughts on that and you know, just what your reaction to that sort of opening is?

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost I think it's one of the most difficult roles to hire for and then also one of the most difficult roles to fill. And I think it's always in the context of the go to market. Right. Like there's different types of go to market, whether you have, you know, a high velocity, low touch model, product led, right. Like open source, high touch enterprise. Right. So like I think there's so many different aspects and I think if you think about the entire bow tie or funnel, right, however you want to call it, you know, from marketing to sales to CS and sometimes professional services or so depending on your go to market strategy. You need a different profile of a CRO. Right. So from my point of view, the challenges you have to similar with a ideal rep profile that you need to develop over time to repeatedly hire great folks. You need to really get a good understanding before you make that higher and before you join an organization. Is this a good match? Right. Is my skill set aligned to what the company needs and am I set up for success? Right. I think we've all seen the stat that the average tenure is like 18 months, something like that. I think that's like, you know, whether.

That'S a good run in a way. Right.

You know, yeah, but like it's, I think if you think about it, right, like typically you need three to six months to really get started, right? And then like I mean to change something, right? And then I mean you're basically out, you know, 12 months later. I think that's actually extremely costly for organizations, right? And, and so, so, so I think my, my point being, right, like, so I fully agree like in an ideal state you need to own, you know, the whole, go to market end to end. And I also think it's extremely important to work very closely with finance, very closely with product, right? But I think you know, when you dive then like a level deeper, it's like the key question is really like okay, what makes a great CRO at this specific company? And you know, I've seen, so I talk to basically revenue organizations every week, you know, probably like 10 to 20 times, right. And it's so interesting because you see the same thing on the revenue operations side, right? They have revenue operations titles, but actually they do sales ops. The same with CRO. You have a CRO and then you have a CMO and a cco, right? That's actually a cso, right. In that sense. And, and so, and then more often than not actually the CEO is the croat, but usually they're not a well qualified CRO, you know. And I think, you know, I think the, like there's always the kind of the theory and then there's the reality and the reality deviates a lot from the theory and I think that's kind of the harsh reality. But I would say this, right? So my earlier point on like what, what make what is a good match, right? If you, if you have a product led high velocity business where a lot of pipeline is driven by basically demand gen programs and demand capture programs, right? Probably you need a CRO that is, you know, well versed in marketing and is very good at creating top of funnel pipeline that is probably different to the enterprise, right? And I think there's a bit like, right, like what is a good match? So that when you join the company you're set up for success and then the other piece is the product side, right? Like is the company actually. Right. I think we've seen this now in the last couple of years. So many companies have fallen out of product market fit. Product market fit is always as a 0:1 definition. I don't, I fully disagree with that. I think it's a scale, right? So you have a scale from 0 to 10 and so many companies in the last years basically fall out of you know like an 8 and at a 4. And so that's very hard to see before you join a company, but it's so important, right? So I think, I think my point being like, you know, from both sides, right? The company side and this usually the executive layer and the, the board, but also from a CRO, like joining a company, right? Like really spending a lot of time together before you start working together to figure out whether it checks all the boxes and you're actually set up for success so you can stay together ideally for, you know, three, four, five years because I think then great things often happen for everybody being involved.

Thank you so much again for listening to the Zero 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 to 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. I want to unpack a lot of that because you're bringing up very important things I Think there's a so much there. You know, I look at it, my brain, I'm very visual. Just why I like all the stuff you produce. You know, if I could see things, I can understand them. So the way I'm visualizing the elements you're talking about, you've got a number of different factors that go into the matrix of a CRO, right? And that is type of business, the commercial model, whether it be a product business or a SaaS business or a services business. And then the other vector is stage, like where are you at in your growth and how long into the business are you? And I would look at it like not just the number of customers that you have, but I actually look at it more. What is this size and complexity of the data, the look back data that you have with which to determine future outcomes. If you don't have enough of it, you're still in guessing mode as opposed to you could evaluate mode. And then the other part is the maturity of that company's awareness of them, their own reality and how they measure things so that they have a clear ability to define their reality with the right terminology and the right like metrics and measures. Because as you said, companies have humans. Humans have a bad perception of themselves, you know. You know, I think I'm like this super eloquent good dude, you know, I don't think most people would probably agree with that. So you know, it's like you got to get the feedback from the world to know what the truth is. And if you're talking to an organization that has a false understanding of their current state, then you're going into a situation with the wrong information. And then there's the other part of it too, which is the skill sets and the experience and the competencies of the incoming CRO and where those strengths fit into what's needed at the company at the time. Because you're correct that someone who's very like sales driven and knows how to drive metrics and build pipeline and close deals and you know, build revenue through a sales motion is a different person than someone who understands how to build awareness and drive demand. And then there's there's leaders that are much more metrics driven and data driven and financially driven. Then there are leaders who are really just really amazing at being able to create a future vision for things and know how to drive and motivate people to go towards something together and know how to communicate clearly. And there's no unicorns. You know, it's hard to find someone that can do all this stuff. So I think when I think about this role, which is so complicated, is the complexities of the role related to all the things I just said. And then it's also both sides of the equation, the company and the hire, getting a clear understanding of what each one of them brings to the table, really, and determine if there's the right fit for that. And then there's that little loose stuff on the outside that we're going to sort of figure it out together and whether or not there's enough cultural alignment to make that happen. Right. So. And then underneath all of it, I would say, like, it's sitting underneath it. If there's like a diagram here, there are, in my opinion, there are still core competencies that every CRO has to have anyway. Like, regardless of where they go, they need to have certain things that are, like, just going to be there wherever they go. So when do you think, given what I just said, in your opinion, you're a CEO of a company, what's the stage at your. In your opinion that you should be thinking about bringing a cheap revenue officer in?

Yeah, it's a, it's a. It's a very good question. I think, as a general rule, if you're not 100% convinced, just don't hire. Right. I think that's like super, super crucial. But I mean, so when I was investing a lot, right, like, there was this notion that at some point in time you need the VP of sales. And that was typically at a Series A stage, you hire a VP of sales. And, and what we basically saw in the data was like, that higher.

You.

Know, made or break that, you know, to a certain extent, you know, the company and the speed. And I think, you know, typically the CRO hire happens at the Series B, Series C stage. Right.

What's that? Like, would you say it's north of 20 or 30 million? Like, what, what, what's the, like the number. You know, I say the number being an indicator of a couple of things. I would say the number being an indicator of, like we said, sufficient backward data with which to determine future outcomes. And number two is, I would say, operational complexity, where a CRO's role is going to be most utilized.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say, like, on the, on the lower end, it's probably 10. On the high end, it's like, you know, 25 million that I would, like, look at right. As kind of the range I think I've most often seen. And the reason being that with the Series B stage, most Serious B investors put a lot of emphasis in the executive team being built properly. And I say this because in the Series A stage, I think it's more the operational layers that are being built properly. Right? So you want to have repeatability. You want to have like, repeatability in quota attainment and, you know, a lot of, like, repeatability and pipeline generation. And, you know, I think that is typically happening on the Series A stage. On the Series B stage, the executive layer becomes one of the core emphasis. And I would say, like, I mean, typically companies are somewhere on the very low end, maybe at 5, but then kind of 5 to 25 million series B, series C stage. Right. So I think that's like a good stage. And then the question is like, do you hire from within? Right. Like, do you hire externally? Right. I mean, that's another big question. And then I mean, obviously in context of what you do, your growth trajectory, how much you raised. So I think it has a lot of influencing factors. Right. And. But, but yeah, I'd say, like, that's. That's a good stage to. To think about that. You know, from my experience, like, we did this certainly too late, you know, at fiber. So I think we brought on a CRO when we were at around, I think 35 million in net revenue, so arrangement. And I think that was probably too late. But.

Yeah, so when you say too late, what were the. What was the negative impact of waiting too late? Like, why do you say that? What's the. I don't want to say regret, but what's the learning that you got out of it? And what was.

I mean, look, I. Yeah, I think the learning was like, I was basically responsible for the role. I was like 27, and I built an organization that was around like 100 people. You know, I think I tried my best. I probably did a good job. Like, we were growing super nicely. But, like, I do think that if we had someone who's done it before and is very, very high quality, right. We could have probably been more successful. You know, that said, I think it's extremely hard to find someone like that. Right. And I don't think it's just. Right. Like, I think the great croes. I think you talked about these, like, okay, what are the table stakes of skill set?

Yeah.

And I think, you know, for any executive, hiring and building an amazing organization and, you know, retaining the best people and making them very successful is the super skill for every executive. Right. It's like, this is what scales, and it comes with a variety of factors. Right. And you know?