Enterprise CRO Insights and Strategic Career Growth with James Roth

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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. I'd love to, if you could just share a little bit about when you and I spoke. We did a preliminary setup for this. You gave me a lot of really good insights about, like, just how you got to where you are. And I asked this question from the context that, you know, a lot of people listening to my program are people who want to become Chief Revenue Officers and are really curious just how people get there and maybe even your thoughts on the role so that we can kind of set the stage.

Sure, yeah. I mean, I think on the CRO role itself, you know, it, it means a lot of different things in a lot of different orgs in terms of, you know, what the remit is and sort of what functions it runs. And you have some great sales leaders as CROs, some more operational minded CROs. And I think, you know, in terms of the role itself, irrespective of what that particular purview is, I think the foundational aspects that kind of get you through to those respective, you know, milestones, I think, you know, kind of starting from the beginning, I grew up as a salesperson and so I would definitely fall under the more sales leader style CRO, but, you know, I definitely didn't want that to limit me. And so throughout my career, you know, one of the core foundational elements is I always just wanted to be really good at the thing that I was doing at that point in time. And so if I was an individual contributor, I think one of the things that was really helpful is that I was never focused on what was next. I always figured that if I did a great job in that thing that I was doing at that point in time, then people would probably ask me if I wanted to go try something else or do more or take on a team or whatever it may be. And I think so often, and you know, especially now with social media and LinkedIn and Instagram, I think it's created this pervasive like, oh, Billy's, a V.P. now, Billy might be a V.P. at a four person company where he's an individual contributor. But there's this like competitive, almost fugazi if you will. And I think it creates this environment where people lose focus on what's most important. Where if you're a great IC month in, month out, quarter in quarter out, year in year out, I guarantee you people will kick down your door to ask you to take on a team lead role or a leadership role, or move up market or move into the enterprise. And so I think, you know, throughout my career that was definitely kind of a North Star. And so I sometimes think that I'm, I'm an outlier in the sense that I stayed at companies for a long time. You know, you look at some backgrounds and they're, they're jumping every six months, every nine months. And I think there's a lot of content out there that says like, oh, you know, you can do that. Like this isn't 1990. Like you don't need to stay at a company for 40 years. And I think that's fine and it's good advice. And I would never implore somebody to stay at a bad company for too long if it wasn't great for them. But I do think just the ability to learn and the ability to develop and grow is really hard if you're constantly new and you have to re establish sort of personal brand and personal capital and you got to make sure that you have room to operate. And so, you know, I stayed at my first company almost six years and that's where I really grew up, from an IC through a bunch of different leadership roles. And then we sold that company. And the acquiring company I stayed on with for a period of time after that. And when I went to the next company, I did an eight year run. You know, we were there, we grew it, we sold it. I stayed with the acquiring company for almost seven years after that. And it's not to say that you have to stay at companies for a long period of time, but I do think in that like get really good at the thing that you're doing and then use that as a springboard to learn from other groups, other areas and really figure out what it is you want to do. But more importantly like build up the, the efficacy around the particular things that you're doing. You know, that that would be my biggest piece of advice is like don't, don't get so caught up in getting to a certain role that you forget that to get there you got to be really good at your current role. And I, I tell reps, I tell leaders, I tell managers. Like anyone that I'm talking to, I will always articulate that. 80% of what that, you know, whether you're in an interview process or you're being thought of for a particular role, 80% of it is going to be your results in your current role. And I think people lose sight of that and they want to go do a bunch of ancillary stuff or show that, hey, I'm doing this thing over here, but then they lose sight of the fact that if they, they don't have the results at that thing, I, the way I articulate it is like, if you're great as an individual contributor, I'm going to trust that what you do as an individual, you could probably teach others to do. And then if you're a manager, frontline manager, and you're great at developing a team, you're going to have a much better shot at somebody giving you a chance to go run teams of teams. But if you lose sight of I'm running a really good team because you want to go jump into a bunch of stuff that people aren't asking you to jump into, and you, you kind of lose the results in that current role, it's going to be a very difficult Runway for you to go prove out that you should give me more opportunities. So, you know, again, I think in a nutshell, just summarizing that, like, the core principles for me were just whether it was, you know, there's no time horizon. And even with a career where I've moved through ranks within companies, like, I was a manager for multiple years, I was a director for multiple years, I was a VP for multiple years, I was an SVP for multiple years. There is no shortcut. And I think that in every day of those three, four or five year runs in those particular roles, you learn something new and you see something where you're like, oh, I got that. That's happened to me now. Now I figured that out. And the people that want to compress this timeframe to be like, oh, it's a good manager for three months. Make me a director now, because I want to change my title, they lose that ability to have seen the things or to have witnessed those things, or the ability to learn from those opportunities. And so again, those are the things that I would typically start a conversation with this on. But yeah, to go deeper in any of those.

And I do know it's a good point, it brings up an anecdote you know, so I interviewed for a job a long time ago when I was still working for companies. And I am one of those people that bounced around a lot. So it's actually a really good topic. I guess the first thing that comes to mind on that, because I think you're right, is that human beings have the, an uncanny ability to rationalize anything, right? So, you know, being what you know. And I would say this somewhat humbly, being what would probably be characterized if you looked at my background as sort of like one of those job hopper types. I'm a little gray now, so I can look back with a little more wisdom than I had at the time. It was really, because frankly I just wasn't like built like you. I wasn't the kind of person that really wanted to be part of a company and grow. It just, it just. I think people have different characteristics, different natures and I, I think that's when you're getting into now the characteristics and qualities of certain people that are just make better, better leaders are, are ones whom I think have certain type of different way that they look at, at their commitments in that respect. And I think for me it was a combination of things. But I bring this up because I went and I had a job interview out in Silicon Valley. It was funny, it was a company, they're not around anymore, but they were based in Mountain View. So it was like that real right in that nucleus time when Google was really growing and big and all the energy was coming out of there in a way that was really sort of captivating the world. And it was an interesting culture that is probably become embedded across the organizations across the world now. But at the time, you know, Silicon Valley was the epicenter of building companies and building businesses. And I went out and I interviewed with this company. It was a tech company. Fascinating experience just interviewing for this company. The way they walk me through their interviewing process and the things I learned listening to where they spoke. And one thing happened that is the reason why I bring this up is that one of the guys who was one of the senior level people there is probably about one step away from the CEO. First thing he says to me, we sit down at his office. He says, let's go take a walk. I like to interview people when I walk. So we go outside to like this sort of like, you know, one of those corporate California corporate parks. We start walking around the building and they were talking or just hanging out, you know, and he's asking me all these questions and he said something to me That I never forgot. He said, you know, we won't hire people here that have been in a company for more than five years. We look at people who've had a lot of jobs as being more valuable because they come with a lot more experiences and they come with an eclectic understanding of different cultures and things, and they pick up all sorts of different nuances from working at different companies. So when they come here, they bring a larger collection of ideas than having worked at one place for a really long time where they only know that one thing. And we tend to look at people that way because we think in today's marketplace it's moving so fast that the amount of data that one human being consumes, two years on a job in like 1999 or 2010, is a lot different than someone did a long time ago in that if you stay too long, you miss out the speed of what's happening in the marketplace. And I thought, wow, that's fascinating. They won't even speak to somebody that's worked at a company for too long. Whereas you just articulated, which I think everybody would probably agree with that, you know, you can't have any stability or anything unless you stay at a company long enough to sustain it, particularly if you want to be a leader at that company. And I think it rings to me almost like a marriage. I mean, the reason why you can look back and have sort of an interesting relationship with your spouse is because you've been through so much together and you stuck it out together. And, you know, it might seem like drudgery at times, but 15, 20 years in, you look back and you realize it like your, your relationship is a hell of a lot deeper and you know a lot more about things than you ever would have known if you quit half the times that you probably thought you wanted to. And I think that goes with your kids. I mean, you're not going to like, you know, have like seven families. I mean, you're going to raise your kids until they're grown ups, you know, so if you look at any meaningful commitment, it takes time and it takes commitment and it takes that sort of going through stages. And I would agree that. I don't think that even though I think he probably was speaking to a certain culture, that may be true. I would say if you look at human nature, if you want to, if you have aspiration, my opinion, if you have aspirations to become someone who's going to lead things and be in charge of things, you not only need to have a breadth and scope of knowledge, but you need to show and demonstrate you have the ability to sustain a commitment for a long period of times on something. And I agree. So I would ask you this question because it's an interesting topic. I didn't think about, we talk about this is do you think that would make the best CRO? I mean like for example, it's an opinion. I'd like your opinion on it. There's no right answer. But let's say for example, someone had a really great eclectic experience. They job hopped a lot, but they were that demonstrated a really good understanding of a strategic understanding of business models. They knew how to run a sales organization, they really understood a marketing organization. They had the sort of competencies. I mean, how would you then maybe the point, the question I'm asking you is what's your point of view on what the ideal profile of a chief revenue officer is?

Yeah, so. And I love that we've, we've gotten here because it is such a hot topic and I think one, one piece, not to caveat, but again, I think a lot of it too is the company that you're at.

Of course there's no question there's nuances to this, but. Yes.

Yeah, because I, I don't think, I think this is where the, you know, again to your point, that Silicon Valley person that I don't look at anybody with more than five years and you know, there are companies that have not innovated. There are companies that, you know, have been doing the same thing for a long period of time. And I get that. You know, it's funny, I actually had a conversation after we sold that company that I've been at for a long time and I was going through interview processes because I did want to make a change after that period of time and they said, hey, you know, and there was a big earn out and there was like all these compelling reasons to stick around for at least a couple years. And there was a, there was a gentleman, he was at Carlisle and we were talking through these opportunities and Carlisle, a private equity firm. And he was like, hey, you want to watch out with that like 10 year mark because you get a little crusty, you get a crusty. And that was it. And it was kind of just like irrespective of, you know, where you are, there is that. So I don't know if there's a right answer.

I don't either.

This is it 10 years. And I think, you know, the key for me at least on that because there are plenty of people that have had really successful Careers that have gone to these different companies. And to your point, if you go from a company that's more product led and then you go to a company that's heavily sales led, like there are different vantage points that you get from seeing the way different go to markets operate. And you know, at the company that I spent the longest run at, you know, we acquired 15 companies in five years. One was a heavy SaaS business, one was more of a product led tech company. And we brought them all into this portfolio. And so again, for me personally, it was really helpful because I got to learn we were a heavy enterprise kind of field, sales motion. And then when we acquired one of these companies that was like a heavy BDR, SDR, SAS LED motion, traditional B2B set up and then this really heavily product led kind of land and expand via plg, I was lucky that I got to learn and tinker and take on opportunities across all of those. But I think, you know, ultimately what it comes down to in that ideal characteristic, I think regardless of if it's at five companies or at one company for five years, you can have the same setup if you will. But it is that innate curiosity to learn like, hey, we buy this company. I've seen this many companies, I've been it have been acquisitive. You buy this company. What I see 80% of the time is that everybody from the other company is like, oh, we bought this company. Like, oh, these idiots, like they don't wear suit and tie or like, oh, those idiots do wear suit and tie. And it is to your point on human nature, Human nature is to like kind of stick with your crew or whatever.

Tribes.

Your tribe. Yes, thank you. And you don't take the opportunity to say, you know what, like, we just bought their company for $1 billion. Probably pretty smart, pretty good at what they do. We bought it for a reason. And there's probably a bunch of people over there that look like me that know things that I don't.

Yep.

And I think the characteristic that I would say has helped me most and one of the big differentiators from people that that sort of hit certain points or don't is if you have that humility to say, you know what, Warren's a smart guy and I want to like learn because I look at the gaps that I don't have knowledge gaps, whether it's fpa, whether it's, you know, rev ops, like things that I haven't had. What most people will do is they'll go into that and be like, well, I got to pretend I know this. And so I'm, I'm the, I'm the smart guy and I'm going to close off and I'm going to try to prove that I understand this even if I don't. I've never had a problem throughout my career being like, I might be the dumbest person in this room, so please help me. And I think that for me, and from a characteristic standpoint, again, whether it's learning from five different companies or whether it's, you know, being at the same company and learning there, I could walk into, I remember this well. I had this moment like five or six years into my career. I was like, I'm a sales leader, I run sales teams, but I have no idea how the business runs. The difference between a contribution margin versus a gross margin. Like, I didn't know that. And so I walked into our headquarters in New Jersey and I sat down with this guy who's our head of fpa and I said, hey, I've done enough homework beforehand. I have a good understanding. But there's a lot of stuff that I have no idea. When you talk about these things, I don't know what they mean. I always use this example. When I started at Zoom Info, I didn't come from the, you know, B2B data, go to market world. There's a gentleman, Amit Rai, who is our head of data and he's this really, really smart. He was the founder of a company that we acquired and I basically took an hour with him every day for my first two weeks. And I said, my goal in this is to make me a little less dumb every day because whenever I hear you talk, all I can think of is I want to be close to as smart as that guy. And I would take pages of notes on the acronyms and all of these different nuances around data that he would talk about. And in my first couple of weeks I was like, I'm not coming in as an expert from a competitor. And I've got to build the credibility by learning from people like this. And I think so often, especially if you come in at a more senior level, that proclivity or that human nature is to be like, well, they brought me into a senior level so I need to show these people that I'm boss and that's going to be through talking about high level things that are applicable to all companies and blah, blah, blah, versus, like, I'm going to take that critical 90 to 120 days where it's okay for me to not know what I'm talking about, about certain things and make sure I take advantage of that every moment. So back to the characteristic. Yeah, I think that ability to truly understand what you know and what you don't know and then lean into what you don't know and then everybody, I don't care who they are, if you get them in the right space, they're going to want to help. They're going to want to talk about what they do. So if you go talk to a head of FP&A, they love to articulate what they do. If you want to talk to somebody in marketing, if you want to talk about MQL to demo conversion, like you get somebody on their home turf with that mindset of like, hey, you're smart, I'm not. Can you teach me about this? And I've just throughout the years and I think you can get that if you jump from company to company 100% because it's more smart people doing more things. But I think the key is that person who's going from company to company, in many cases at least what I've seen is they're still thinking about or talking about what they did at their first company, who's here. And these guys are dumb because they're doing this. And it's like that closed mindset of whether it's acquiring a company or whether it's going to a different company. That is what I see probably prohibits so many.

Yeah.

Versus I look at even, you know, I look outside and I got 50, you know, sales folks. They, there's things that they get that I don't get. And I sit with them. I'll go behind them and say, show me how you use this particular tech stack. What do you like? What don't you like? And their efficacy within these different things. I get to learn from every single person day in and day out. And what I'll finish with my anecdote is that a lot of at least what I've seen when folks will try to jump to the next thing is there's, especially when you look at tech from 2015 through 22 is there's this like, I'm going to go catch this thing. I'm going to go get to the ipo. I'm going to go, you know, have this big liquidity event. And the one thing that has always been like, I've never wanted to have to be lucky. Good market, bad market, product market fit, no product market fit. Having to be lucky or betting on the luck that you're going to join Zoom info as a $30 million company, and then in four years, it's going to be a $30 billion market cap company. Great for those involved. But to have to go do that again or to have to, like, pick the next one is damn near impossible, especially in a more difficult macro environment. And so I've always just looked at it as I'd rather take luck out of the equation and whether it's a more challenging macro, whether there's difficulties in certain industries, whether product market fit gets better or worse. I still feel really confident in, like, the. The skill sets that have been put together over the years so that I don't need to rely as much on luck. And I'll always be able to feed my family, I'll always be able to provide a life for my kids, and I don't need to go catch that next lightning in a bottle. And so, you know, that's, I think, that characteristic of irrespective of where your companies jump or how long you've been in certain places, you can go into it with a beginner's mindset and take advantage of all of the smart people around you and start to build different skill sets outside of maybe what your superpower is. And just being more well rounded. I think that is what differentiates, you know, certain people from others.

Yeah, it's great. You, you kind of helped me there with that explanation to maybe crack a code on something maybe in real time here. So I'm going to share it with you. It's pretty interesting. So, you know, I was wrestling with this idea that we're talking about, which is, is it the traveler, the journeyman that is the guy you want to deal with, or is it the stable, you know, person? And, you know, they both have probably very equally interesting characteristics, different ones. And I think you helped me understand something that was staring me in the face, which is, you know, it's not how many jobs you had or didn't have, it's your knowledge, stickiness, or are you. Are you like flypaper? Because, like, if I roll around in a lot of muck and I get out of that muck and it's a lot of it stuck to me, that means that I'm going to bring all that muck with me or go good and bad, but if I have nothing sticks to me, no matter where I go, then I'm not bringing anything with me. So it doesn't matter how many jobs I have, because I didn't capture anything from those opportunities that I can bring Forward to the next one. So it's, it's really the curiosity and the knowledge gathering aspect of the person that's going to really be more important than how many jobs you have. Because I could see if somebody is like you who's really interested in asking a lot of questions. Well, then if I go to a lot of places, that's going to give me a lot of more different types of answers, right?

Yep.

Because you're more of a philosopher that way. Whereas if you're someone who just jumps from place to place and doesn't bring anything with them, I think that, yeah, it probably is a detriment. So you've pinpointed the quality that I think we both would agree with. It's someone whom is a. Has the ability, the curiosity, the humility and the maturity to extrapolate from their circumstances, to improve themselves no matter where they are. And if you could do that, you're probably going to be okay. You know, the other thing I would say is you bring up something that I hear a lot. This is actually a big issue that I'm facing with the people I work with is definitely title chasing. There's no doubt about the fact that the CRO is a lot of shine on that title. It's almost looked at almost like a crown that can put on my head. And it's really incredible how many people I speak to because I'm really involved in this conversation a lot. And I get into this very quickly with people. It's like, well, why do you want this job? Because it's kind of a nasty job in a lot of ways. You're about to jump into a bunch of alligators. Like what? Why would anybody want that job? Now you and I both know why, but I ask it provocatively because I really want to know. And most of the time it's like, well, you know, I've kind of always wanted to be a CRO. You know, there was this sort of aspirational, you know, shiny thing on the hill, which is with someone, like why, like why do you want to be a CRO? And it's because there is, like you said, our social construct attaches incredible amount of cultural value to titles and what they mean. And while it's true, because if our current organizations and our structure and our society rewards titles, it makes sense for us to go for them because there's the reward that comes with it. But the trappings of those things, like you said, don't provide much for the in between parts, which is just doing the work. And Being good at what you do, which is an irrefutably bulletproof strategy to anything. So, you know, I think the, the key is like how to find. If I'm interviewing for a Chief revenue officer, I'm looking for one. Let's say, having done this for a while, I should have a little bit more of a codex for this because of that. But I'm looking for people who in a way kind of don't want it, but clearly deserve it. You know, it's always like the movie where you see the guy who says, you know, even, you know, Maximus in Gladiator, he didn't want to be emperor, you know, he didn't want the job. And they were like, that's exactly what you should be. Right?

It's true.

You know, you're the most capable and you don't want the job. That's, that's the right person for the job in a weird way, you know.

Yeah. And listen, I mean, I have this conversation all the time because I'll use an example. We've got an individual as a VP here, runs almost a $400 million business and probably 250 to 300 people in the organization and constantly, you know, getting solicitations on LinkedIn. You know, come be a CRO at a 25 million dollar company. And you know, I have the relationship with this gentleman where I can say, is it comp. Because it's, you know, it's going to be less.

Yeah.

Is it, is it remit? Like it's, it's. You run a 400 million dollar business and that to your point, that title chase of just like whatever it's going to unlock. Like to your point, this crown doesn't feel like a crown.

No, no, it doesn't. You get it. You're like, what was I thinking about? Right?

No, the crown. And you know, this like doors are going to open up and all the music's going to play like it's, it is like everything else. And if you talk to CEOs, they have a very similar thing where it's like you get to CEO now you've got, and you've got shareholders and you've got like, there is no role until you've basically made it through all of that. And then you just sit on boards. I think life is pretty good. I've thought about this.

Me too.

The point where you can be like, all right, I sit on 12 boards and I don't have any real, you know, I just have to make sure the board goes well but you talk to CEOs, same thing where they're like chasing that their entire careers. And you get there and it's like, I'm still under the same amount of pressure, if not more. I've got all of the world's problems, I've got shareholders, I've got board. Like, I, I don't think that getting to that. And you think this, like, oh, I'm going to change my LinkedIn and everybody's going to congratulate me and all these things. And you find that most people that congratulate you just want to sell you stuff. And it's like the same people that are trying to sell you stuff before. And it's not this like, oh my God moment. And so to this conversation I have with this gentleman is, it's like if it's not compensation and it's not a bigger remit where you can go learn more on how to do things. Like right now, you enjoy the role, you're doing a great job, you've got great reputational capital, your, your ceiling is very high. And what I, what I tell them, and I think this is for, for your listeners, is that like when you go into interview for these roles with a board or with, you know, sort of key firms or if it's private equity backed or venture backed and you go into like the real interview for that, they're not going to ask you what your title is at your current company because titles, I think people have taken advantage of the fact that it is a very low cost way to make people feel happy.

No question about, is an asset that is offered in lieu of compensation. No question about it. And the reason it is is because people accept it, they say yes. So it works, it's effective.

And so, you know, one of my favorite things is like you go to workday or you go into your HR software and it's like, here's the title that's in the email signature and here' real title in terms of real company hierarchy. And obviously that's something that Zoom Info sells in terms of trying to find out who's who. And so, you know, certain industries are way worse at it. Commercial real estate's one of my favorite. You know, commercial real estate's a big vertical for us. Everybody in commercial real estate's a managing director, a chairman, a senior partner. And they're all just brokers, they're ICs. And so it's this like this title game. And I, I think in that conversation when you go into that, the first question is going to be, you know, what is the revenue org look like? What do you have remit over? Like, do you have sex? Do you have onboarding, do you have this, do you have that? How much revenue do you actually manage? Like, those are the questions that matter. Not like, oh, this guy's a CRO, better hire him as a CRO here because that CRO could. And again, there's nothing against being a CRO to no, but I think it's as long as it's for the right reasons. If, and this is where I'll always finish with this individual is if it is a product that you are obsessed with, if it is something that you see the product market fit is outstanding and you see this company going to the moon, you've used the product, you've talked to people that use the product and you have an opportunity to get in there as a CRO and learn and get through that and you're going about it the right reasons, I will give that person a handshake and I'll say, best of luck. I'm going to root you on from the sidelines. Call me if you ever need anything. But if the reason is because like I want those three letters on my LinkedIn so that like my high school buddies think I'm cool, it's the wrong reason. And it's like if, you know, especially when that individual just two years ago had 100 million dollar remit, now they have a 400 million dollar remit. Like if they are still building that skill set and building that thing out, like, wait for the next opportunity. And I think more importantly is find out internally what is that real opportunity. Right. I mean like, is it for the three letters? If it is for that, we've got plenty of people that we've actually hired from those roles that will take a lesser title to come. Have like a real business unit opportunity.

Yep.

But if it is for like, hey, I've always been at big companies, I want to get the smaller company experience one day. I want to be a CEO and I think this is a better way for me to get there because I'll get to see all these like, if it's for the right reasons, fine. If it's for title chasing, a lot of people go down the wrong path and then, you know, from a career trajectory standpoint because they are so obsessed with chasing titles and same thing on that luck aspect where they're obsessed with catching that next one. And I've had, you know, at our last company before I joined Zoom Info, there were Guys, and we were six months away from an acquisition that, you know, we were trading at, you know, we basically sold for seven times what we were trading at just six to nine months before. And there were people that left and this was 2021 where you could go anywhere and it was going to be the next 10 billion dollar IPO. And people left and missed out on significant financial gain because they were trying to go catch another quick one. And I think it was like the recruiters talk track of like, hey, they just raised $200 million. They're going to be the next $10 billion company, better come. And people left in search of that. A lot of those companies don't even exist today. And that's where you get to that. Like, if you're doing it for the right reason, great. And I've had many people that have gone on to great companies to do great things because they left for the right reasons and they went in with the right reasons in mind. And then there were people that really are now in like a bit of a spin cycle because they chased a title or they chased what they thought was going to be a get rich quick scheme.

Yep, that's, I see it a lot. I mean, I see a lot of people are without question. And I, I, I've had again another whole perspective on this, which is, I know you're familiar with this, is there's a lot of fanfare, an over emphasis, in my opinion, on seed rounds and funding. Right. I mean, you see on LinkedIn, once or twice a week someone announces, we just got our funding round, you know, everyone claps. Congratulations, you know, and I'm not saying I, I, I would besm the value of doing that. It's not easy to get money from people. Like, so it's fine and it's great when people get funding. Why wouldn't someone celebrate it? But what's not celebrated enough are things like, you know, we just got this customer retention number in, or, you know, we, we just were able to help this one customer go from this to this. And I think that either an exit, right, A liquidity event, as you stated, a funding round. I mean, these are the things that get celebrated in the marketplace and there's so much emphasis on them. It attracts people to want to go, like you said, go play the lottery and see if they can get involved in a company that hits one of those milestones and become, you know, get an exit and leave and go. And, and I know enough people, I'm sure you do, that have had the benefit of having hit that lottery. But it is a lottery, like you said, you can't predict it. It's not possible, you know, and in fact, you and I both know that there's probably a large majority of the companies that went to, got funded or bought that shouldn't be in business in the first place. They're horrible businesses. They're not even Good. Look at WeWork. I'm sitting in one right now. I can't believe this place still is even in business, you know, and, you know, I think what I'm saying is it's fascinating to me the companies that end up getting and the people that get wealthy from these things. It absolutely has created a distorted or it's even a distortion field in the way in which executives approach hitting the marketplace. And I think it affects, like you said, you have a very, very sober and frankly mature way of looking at things, which is just be good at what you do, you know, and like that should solve a lot of problems. And I think that, you know, if I'm again in the interviewing process, I'm looking for people that come to the table with that. So if you don't mind, I'd like to kind of switch gears a bit because you bring up something else that I wanted to talk about with you. So you're at an enterprise company, you're a CRO at an enterprise company. Now, this is a different animal than a CRO at like a growth stage company, right? Because most of my clients are growth stage companies whom in many cases are looking for their first chief revenue officer. They're sort of putting on the first pair of pants or they're getting the bicycle, their training wheels off and they're going to really get a leader because the first CRO they get could be a critical hire for them. And if they don't get it right, it can. It'd be a big difference for them. And I'm really trying to fix that. I don't work with a lot of enterprise companies mainly because the complexity and the maturity of an enterprise organization is much different than where it is. I'm trying to help people. It's just, it's just not a market fit for me. But that doesn't mean that someone who is in your position at a large enterprise organization at a CRO is informative to someone whom is trying to become a chief revenue officer at a smaller company. So I'd be interested in your perspective on like when you look at an executive or an enterprise chief revenue officer, what might some of the distinctions and be the way that your job is qualified. Different than like, let's say someone who's running a 50 or $100 million company as a CRO.

Yeah. And it's a, it's a great question. And I think just, just going back into my background, back to the learning, the knowledge, stickiness, I like that. The company that I left, so the first company I was with, six years acquisition left, I wanted to go because again, I saw, I'm kind of drinking my own medicine here. I saw people that did very well financially because that company was public. And I came five, six years after they went public. And then we were taken private. And I was like, I want to get to a small company that was basically where they were in like 2000, in this 2014.

Yep.

So there was a competitor, they were local, kind of a regional player, about 250 employees. And I came there to lead sales. And so I, I have this great background of, you know, we were scrappy. We had CEO, we had most of the employees in kind of the same local office. We had a couple of branch locations. And so I got a great sense of that kind of like we're going to grow basically organically and we're going to go out there and do this the really hard way. And so I've, I've done that role and I frankly loved that role. And I, I wanted to get a good sense of exactly what you're talking about. You know, we had, I think when we sold the company, we were 400 employees. When I started, we were like 150. And so we were at that, you know, I think we were about 50, 60 million in revenue total when we sold. And so I think getting back to that, like full 360 of if that person wants to go to that CRO role of a 10 million or a $15 million company for the right reasons, hey, I've only worked at Microsoft and I want to go give this thing a chance because I want to see what it's like and I want to learn those things. I want to wear all those different hats because I think it's going to make me a better revenue leader overall is if I slot in at Google or Microsoft and I've got teams that do. You know, I got this rev Ops team. They do all this work and then somebody comes and serves me a forecast and it comes out of this thing and you know, yeah, you get, we, we call them poobas, where it's just like they've got all the infrastructure and they've got everything. Served up to them and I'm going to get like the Bill Belichick playbook every day and all I have to do is read this thing and I'm good at my job. That is a good reason to go into one of those companies to say, I want to learn from the ground up these things. And so that's where I just want to caveat. All of this feedback, slash advice, whatever it may be, is that for the right reasons, whether it's leaving a company, jumping, going into a different role for the right reasons, it is great. And that for me, in taking a company from 200 people to 400 people and getting it to an exit, and then the reason I stayed is because they had just refreshed. The acquiring company had just refreshed was all these Google executives and they started buying companies and I loved the vision. And so I stayed because I was like, hey, I can, you know, they had $0 in business revenues. They were acquiring enterprise software companies and they went from $0 in business revenues to over a billion. And so it was kind of like a nice startup feel. We acquired different companies and got to learn there. But to that revenue leader that isn't at the big call it enterprise company, I do think that is like the ability to see from the ground up, whether you're hiring a CRO or whether you are that CRO in that particular role, you're going to have to learn on the job a whole bunch of stuff that maybe you hadn't done before. Now, if you've done a couple of those successfully, then sure, you know what the 10 to 50 million dollars and there's people that have made great careers and going from 10 to getting that next round and then exiting it out and getting back to 10. There's all kinds of great, great, great stories and opportunities of people that just focus in there. Same as there's great opportunities for folks that just go in the billion plus and they make a lot of money. But irrespective of whatever that career path is, getting into that CRO role, you might be the first salesperson. You know, you look at Chris Dagnan from Snowflake and you listen to Frank Slootman talk about, or you listen to him talk about it, he was salesperson number one, understood the product market fit, understood how to sell that product, understood what the customers wanted, what they didn't want, then built a sales team so then he could start to get that sales team to understand what he understood. Then the sales team got bigger. The, you know, Snowflake grew Obviously, extraordinarily. But it is that like that same mindset of I'm going to come in, I know what I know I'm a great salesperson or I'm a great sales leader, but I also don't necessarily know what revops really means or like, what is, you know, sales planning, what is territory planning? Like, what is putting the best people in the best opportunities to be successful. How can I look at FPA and make sure that I'm actually like a good business? And I think in that smaller company or the smaller revenue company, it's a tremendous opportunity to learn in those. If that's the reason you're joining. And I think that the, the ability to know why you're in that role or what is the superpower. If I'm a great salesperson and I'm going to go sell the hell out of this product that I'm really, really excited about, or if I'm a great sales leader and maybe, you know, you come into these companies where they've got a great enterprise motion, but they've got nothing down market or vice versa. They've got a great down market motion, highly transactional. They've got nothing up market. Like, what is the thing I'm really good at? And then what is the thing that this particular company needs some help with? Then how can I get a playbook going? And whether that is starting a PLG motion down market or augmenting some of the transactional business and then really driving a real enterprise motion or vice versa. When you start with the foundation of I'm going to get good at the thing I do, if you're at an enterprise or if you're at a transactional, if you're at a field sales, door to door, whatever it may be, you have your thing that you know is your core competency and and then you collect all of those additional skill sets to say, okay, I know enough to be dangerous here. Now in this particular role, I can lean into it and see. But I think and this is going to sound weird, so caveat. One of the things I love about business is that like, you're kind of allowed to cheat a little bit in the sense that I can pick up the phone and call you and say, hey, when you were over here and you did this, like, give me your playbook. Call somebody at Salesforce and say, hey, when you guys were going from 100 million to 250 million, I just did this today.

I called a guy I'm very close with. He's a genius. At this stuff, I said, here's the situation. Give me something. You did like this before, because why should I reinvent the wheel? I mean, I'll put my fingerprints on it, but the guy will get me to, like, the 10 yard line. I mean, that's a lot smarter. And if you have those resources, there's no question you should do that stuff. And I think that there's. I agree with you. It's. Once you expand your scope of your relationships with people who are accomplishing things, there's a lot of great opportunity to share knowledge. Not just knowledge, but also the work people have done, it can be extremely helpful. And I. I think that's sort of like a unspoken reality about a lot of executives.

I view this a lot, all of those additional skill sets to say, okay, I know enough to be dangerous here. Now in this particular role, I can lean into it and see. But I think. And this is going to sound weird, so. Caveat. One of the things I love about business is that, like, you're kind of allowed to cheat a little bit in the sense that I can pick up the phone and call you and say, hey, when you were.

And I encourage people to do it. So I'm glad you brought that up because I think that there are people I speak to who sort of feel like they have to invent everything. It's like, well, why? Why?

Yeah, well. And, you know, we're. We're starting down the journey on, like, a plg. Down market.

Yeah.

We've always been, you know, heavy sales. And so it's one of these things where it's like, we've got really smart, capable people. But I can also pick up the phone and whether I have a relationship or I don't like along the way and talking to customers, I've built these relationships. There's a great company who's a big customer of ours. Heavy enterprise. They brought on this gentleman, very, very smart, and took a PLG motion from zero to $100 million in, like, two years. Pick up the phone, called him. I said, would you mind connecting with our team? Because we're in the early stages of, like, a true PLG motion. He's like, up to that core theme that people love to talk about.

They most definitely do. You know, it's fun.

We're here. And you did this, like, give me your playbook. Yeah, Call somebody at Salesforce and say, hey, when you guys were going from 100 million to 250 million, I. I.

Just did this today. I called a guy. I'm very Close with. He's a genius at this stuff. I said, here's the situation, give me something. You did like this before because why should I reinvent the wheel? I mean, I'll put my fingerprints on it. But I got a funny story about this. So it's a long one, but I'll make it really short because it gets important. So I was in college. I was a junior in college. I was having an argument with my roommate in our, in our house. There we were arguing about the difference between dinner and supper. This is what we were talking about. And we had these, both had these theories about the differences. And I won't get into the details of it. And my, my, my definition was a bit different than this anyway, so what I did was I found at the time I was, I was at school, I was at college. I picked up the university handbook. It was like 9 o' clock at night. And I called the head of the linguistics department because I thought this guy would be the perfect person to solve this for us. Right. I needed like a third party expert to tell us who's right. The guy answers the phone, the head of the linguistics department answers the phone and I tell him that me and my roommate are arguing about the difference between dinner and supper. Could you help us solve this argument? And like to your point, he was thrilled. He, he couldn't stop talking about this. It was, this is his whole life. Get me to like the 10 yard line. I mean that's a lot smarter. And if you have those resources, there's no question you should do that stuff. And I think that there's, I agree with you. It's. Once you expand your scope of your relationships with people who are accomplishing things, there's a lot of great opportunity to share knowledge. Not just knowledge, but also the work people have done, it can be extremely helpful. Tell people make linguistical, you know, challenges. And I said to myself at the time, this is actually a moment that, a big epiphany for me. I won't get it some other time. What happened as a result of this exact thing? People that focus on things want to talk about it. So when you speak to people, talking to them about the thing that they're passionate about or that they do for a living, they'll tell you anything.

Yep.

And I think people lose the reality that you're not making, you're not doing a disservice to people. You're giving them a chance to articulate something that they spend all day thinking about. So you're 100% right. It's helpful and I, I think that's sort of like a unspoken reality about a lot of executives. I do this a lot and I encourage people to do it. So I'm glad you brought that up because I think that there are people I speak to who sort of feel like they have a pretty funny story. But anyway, that, that was a, the pinnacle thing. I made a realization about to invent everything. I said, well, why? Why?

Yeah, well, and you know, we're, we're.

About the scope of the knowledge of the world and how I should be taking more participation in it. And I made some pretty significant changes. But I think that there's a curiosity that we have to have about people.

Starting down the journey on like a plg down market. Yeah, we've always been about how they.

Operate and you know, it's thematically comes up a lot in the way I talk to people about this role is. I think my view is that executives, people in the particularly revenue executives get revenue executive is as you know, it's a very complex system.

Right.

There's marketing, there's sales, there's numbers, there's finance, there's. It's incredibly complicated but it really ultimately is populated by people who different do different things. And if you're curious, you're going to be good at what you do in this job, I kind of want to ask you a question here about this. So when you describe the difference between.

A, a enterprise CRO in you know, heavy sales. And so it's one of these things where it's like we've got really smart capable people, but I can also pick up the phone and whether I have a relationship or I don't like along the way and talking to customers, I've built these relationships. There's a great company who's a big customer of ours, heavy enterprise. They brought on this gentleman.

What, what do you do? What's your role consist of? Are you overseeing marketing? Are you overseeing sales? Do you oversee everything like at the size of the company that you're at? I'm just curious how a CRO operates at that complexity.

Yeah. So we are about a 3500 person org. The CRO GTM. Org is 2100.

Okay.

And so you know, in terms of the way we are set up, which is not unique but it's also not standard is, you know, we've got customer experience. So onboarding, implementation, training, learning and development. Very, very smart. And took a PLG motion from 0 to $100 million in like two years, picked up the phone called him. I said would you mind connecting with our team? Because we're in the early stages of like a true PLG motion. He's like to that core theme that people love to talk about.

They most definitely do.

They do, you know, CSM support then the sort of top of Funnel, if you will. So like SDR bdr, we've got then sales, new business account management. I think I said CSM then we've got a partnerships team. And so all of our, you know, we've got multiple pillars from a partnership standpoint. So oem, si, gsi, traditional partnership motion. We've got data strategy and analytics. And so you know, again that's sort of go to market strategy and innovation. And so yeah it's, it's the, the group that we have cross pollination with is top of Funnel. And so we do have got a.

Funny story about this. So I won't. It's a long one but I'll make it really short because it gets important. So I was in college, I was a junior in college and I was having an argument with my roommate in our, in our a house there. We're arguing about the difference between dinner and supper is what we were talking about. And we had these, both had these theories about the differences and I won't get into the details.

I have a cmo. She's amazing and she is a peer of mine. We're both directs to CEO. And so when you think about marketing, you know, you've got brand, you've got, you know, basically communication, you've got mql. There's, there's all kinds of things that fit into marketing. And so you know, we operate in a sense where we keep them separate but from an MQL to demo mql, you know, like the top of Funnel, if you will. You know, clearly that is the place where talk to some companies, you know, SDRs will sit under the CMO and they'll have it fully separate. So you've got this partitioned off sort of all things top of Funnel sit with cmo.

And my definition was a bit different this. Anyway, so what I did was I.

I mean you'll have some orgs where CMO or like a VP of demands with the CRO and we're, we're, you know, we're not that different in the way that we're set up. And so I think just given how many hats the CMO wears as well in this where you've got community and you've got all these different things that from a company found at the time.

I was, I was at school, I was at college. I picked up the, the university handbook. It was like 9 o' clock at night. And I called the head of the linguistics department because I thought this guy would be the perfect person to solve.

This brand standpoint stick out. We really delineated at that top of.

Funnel and all those were other than the CMO obviously. But the organizations that you referred to, they all report into you. You sort of have nominal leadership over all those groups. Ultimately, yes.

So I've got a, I've got a head of data strategy and analytics, head of partnerships, had a new business, head of what we call retention and growth, head of csm, head of CX which is onboarding, implementation, training and support. We've also got data services. And so that consists of pre, you know, like the SC function, if you will. So pre sales, post sales, data services, data delivery.

Right. I need like a third party expert to tell us who's right. The guy answers the phone, the head of the linguistics department answers the phone and I tell him that me and my roommate are arguing about the difference between dinner and supper. Could you help us solve this argument? And like to your point, he was free.

All of those have a functional bu meter that report into thrilled he.

He couldn't stop talking about this. It was.

This is his whole life to my org.

Got it. And are you involved in deals at all? Are you closing deals? Or do you have a relationship to sales? Or are you really out of that now?

Yeah, so it's, it's one of my favorite questions. So I, I have like a monthly calendar sort of time audit to see where I'm spending most of my time.

And I'm curious to know what that pie chart looks like.

Yeah, I can, I can ship it to you but you know like there are periods of time where it's just heavy one on ones and so I'll sort of trim that back a bit. I always find it, it's challenging. You know, you want to have your skip levels, you want to be available, you want to be a man of the people, if you will. But then you get to this point where it gets so overweight that you've got a weekly with directors here and VP's here and managers here. And so you know, that's one that I have to just stay and then I'll try to set up a process that makes it a little bit more of an intake as like hey, why are we meeting? And then that pisses people off that I'VE worked with for years. So that's, that's a whole different thing. On the customer side. Yes, I try to have 40% of my week being customer facing whether that.

Tell people make linguistical, you know, challenges. And I said to myself at the time, this is actually a moment that a big epiphany for me. I won't get it some other time.

Prospect whether that's a current customer, you know, yes, more enterprise happen as a.

Result of this exact thing. People that focus on things want to talk about it.

So when you see large customer just because you know they're very big important customers of ours, but I'll also focus because again it's not for me. Yes, obviously helping to close a deal is great but I think more importantly just kind of pressure testing product market fit, seeing what's working, seeing what's not. You know, I think when you get too far away from the customer you then lose the ability to go drive product roadmap. You lose the ability to have like true voice of the customer. And so I think like yes, having executive relationships so that I can be very aligned with our eight figure customers and things like that 100% but if I hear certain things enough across segment, across vertical and we can then articulate kind of like this is where we should have the product or you know these things are wonderful and customers love us for this but they're not getting a lot of value out of this. You know I just, I never want to be that kind of tone deaf executive that's just like oh well you know, the product's great but they're just not getting enough value because you know CSM like a lot of that that goes on. And so I, I make it a point to make sure that every single week, 40% of it I am talking to customers, hearing from them good, bad and ugly so that I can amalgam.

To people talking to them about the thing that they're passionate about or that they do for a living, they'll tell you anything.

Yep.

And I think people lose the reality that you're not making, you're not doing a disservice to people. You're giving them a chance to articulate something that they spend all day thinking about. So you're 100 right to section 8.

All of those data points have a more articulate point of view on product roadmap, understand where we should be investing resources, understanding what motions are real versus anecdotal that we can go lean into. And so yeah, I spend a lot of time with customers but not in the traditional ride along like oh Warren, I'm going to go show you how to close a deal. Like I'm the guy very much as a participant to get what is the best first party data there is on your product.

Got it. It's really helpful. What are the things or maybe let me ask this more provocatively. What's the thing that you're most measured on in terms of your success? Like when you're looking a pretty funny story. But anyway that that was a pinnacle thing. I made a realization about your people who have are evaluating you. What's the thing they look at to see James needs to be doing this thing to provide evidence that he's being successful. What is that?

Yeah, I mean I think we set very specific goals at a board level.

And about the scope of the knowledge of the world and how I should be taking more participation in it. And I made some pretty significant changes. But I think that there's a curiosity that we have to have about people and about how they operate and you know it's thematically comes up a lot in the way I talk to them.

At a company level. And so you know I think everybody has revenue targets, retention targets, new business targets. Like those are, those are pretty easy. And then I think four particular companies, you know, then you have kind of like the subset of goals underneath. You know one of the things at ZoomInfo, you know that we've been very focused on, it's all public information is moving up market. And so in that transition when I joined Zoom Info I joined to lead the enterprise.

Got it.

And if we looked at our, you know, we segmented out by SMB, mid market and enterprise. SMB is 100 employees and below mid market, 100 to 1000 enterprise a thousand plus. We were very overweight SMB and when I came it was basically to say hey, you know, we have a bunch of enterprises but they've kind of come in by accident.

They wanted people about this role is I think my view is that Zoom.

Info data but we haven't really landed that full land and expand ELA eight figure deal. And so you know that's where I.

Started Executives, people in the particularly revenue executives. Revenue is as you know is a very complex system, right? There's marketing, there's sales, there's numbers, there's finance, there's. It's incredibly complicated.

And so that's what we built. And you know at the time we were a pretty heavy barbell on the SMB side and mid market especially in early days mid market was doing great but largely propped up by high growth, well funded tech. And so like that, that is one of the biggest things and that helped me to the point of like do well at what you do. We did get the enterprise to eclipse the sort of down market business. The upmarket business is now significantly bigger than the down market business. And that was the old like pie chart of hey, you know, do, do good at what we ask you to do. And then you know again I think in a challenging macro and obviously anybody listening that's selling into front office sales and marketing throughout the last 18 months. Like you know, I think you can't feel like the world's biggest genius in times where you've got certain roles that are just exploding. You know like you go from we track titles, you know the SDR, BDR title insane. It was like 40,020.

But it really ultimately is populated by people who different do different things. And if you're curious you're going to be good at what you do in this job. I kind of want to ask you a question here about this.

So when you 22 it was like 200,000 and now it's back to 100,000. And then like you know, describe the.

Difference between a, a enterprise CRO.

You know there's going to be aspects of the business where you being able to articulate how much of this is macro driven versus then where are the bets that we're going to go place to go expand into the enterprise to go, you know, take capacity out of SMB so then making it more of a PLG motion so we can invest more in the enterprise, you know from like the metrics that matter if you will. For me personally obviously like anything else it's you know, net add. And so we take our overall retention plus our new business and our growth on that. And so you've got a net ad perspective for us. You know the SB business was great in 2020, 2021. A lot of money in there. SMB. We just announced it on our most recent earnings calls. SMB, you know, it's a much tougher business now There was an article that came out 60% of startups now it's the highest rate they've ever gone out of business. Sell a lot into them and so like making sure that we have a clear target to say this is what we want to do from a top line.

What, what do you do? What's your role consist of? Are you overseeing marketing, are you overseeing sales? Do you oversee everything like at the level.

But how we get there is really important. What is our segment mix between SMB and upmarket of that SMB? What is now going through more of an automatic size of the company that you're at?

I'm just curious how a CRO operates at that complexity.

Yeah. So we are about a 3,500 person made it kind of published to checkout pay upfront model. Like those are those micro metrics that are really, really important. And for me personally it is maintaining what is healthy growth but doing it in such a way that it's durable healthy growth which skews more upmarket, skews more to data use cases versus just selling prospecting into some of the SMBs. And so again, long winded. And I think we're all judged on revenue.

Yep.

And whether that's maintaining revenue, growing revenue, profitable revenue. We've got, you know, serious AOI metrics. We're a 40 margin company. So it's all of those things changing the tires at 80 miles an hour. Because we're a $1.2 billion company and you're being public, you can't necessarily be like, all right, we're going to go take nine months and go back to the lab and come out as a great enterprise company. You've got to quarterly go tell everybody what's going on. And so making sure we keep those particular metrics. I've actually got them on my board so, you know, retention, stabilization Software, vertical stabilization, 100K cohort and then org, the CRO GTM org is 2100. And so you know, in terms of the way we are set up, which is not unique but it's also not standard is, you know, we've got customer experience, so onboarding, implementation training, learning and development and the new business mix, skewing up market. Those are the biggest kind of sub metrics outside of just the overall net ad target.

It's great, really helpful and I mean I. A thousand more questions for you, but we don't have any more time. I, I don't want to get, get you back to your, your day. So this has been great, very insightful as I expected. And I want to thank you again for, for the time. It's been really valuable. I'm sure people will be interested in this. So anything else that you just wanted to just sort of let anybody know about what's going on over there while you got the opportunity? I know you mentioned some of it, but maybe anything specific.

Yeah, I appreciate, always appreciate the chance for a shameless plug. You know, we Released our Copilot platform which essentially is the zoom info that everybody knows and loves from a contact and company data set into much more of a proactive, you know, serving up signals, serving up who to reach out to, when to reach out to, what to say, what's the point of view, what is happening within that company from an external signal standpoint we've always put it more incumbent on the rep to go into zoom info and do that themselves. And what we saw from a usage and an adoption standpoint is that you're always going to have 50% of people that do it and that's great. Then you're going to have 50% of the people that just use this as a contact lookup tool. And so building co pilot is basically to say at any given moment all you have to do is look at it. It's going to serve that information to you. If anybody, you know, listening to the CSM support then the sort of top of funnel if you will. So like STR bdr we've got then sales, new business account management, I think I said csm then we've got a partnerships team. And so all of our, you know, we've got multiple pillars from a partnership standpoint talk about it. Always happy to have a conversation. And then I think the last thing more from a market landscape perspective is that everybody is trying to get into AI. Everybody is trying to utilize and leverage AI use cases. And I would say the vast majority of those, especially from a go to market perspective are just being run on CRM data. And I think anybody in the CRO Org or ahead of sales role will say that most of what is in CRM is bad.

Yep.

As duplicate accounts people move decayed. And so as people get to that use case of AI this is what I want to go do. Signal to action and run these things. You have to get the data foundation right. And so where we are seeing almost all of our upmarket success is that data foundation at scale. And so when you have companies like Snowflake and Databricks and AWS that can now house all of this data, the marriage of your first party CRM email conversation intelligence with a strong third party point. So OEM SIGSI traditional partnership motion we've got data strategy and analytics. And so you know again that's sort of go to market strategy and innovation. And so yeah it's, it's the, the group that we have cross pollination with is top of funnel and so we do have data foundation allows you to go unlock those AI use cases with better data or else you're just going to piss people off at scale like getting to the wrong person at the wrong time at the wrong company. And so again, those are the two shameless Zoom info plugs. I appreciate whomever is listening that is a zoom info customer. If you ever need any help, if you ever need anything with the platform, do not hesitate to reach out. You know, always willing. As I said, 40% of my week is talking to customers and so would be happy to have those conversations. But Warren, it's been, it's been great being on here. Certainly appreciate our partnership and the friendship and you know, look forward to many more of these.

Well, likewise. Thank you so much man. Thank you for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CRO succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO ready organizations. You can find out more information about.

Our services at the have a cmo. She's amazing. She is a peer of mine. We're both directs to CEO. And so when you think about marketing, you know, you've got brand, you've got crocollective.com.

That'S the crocollective.com and we look forward to having you join us next time.

You know, basically communication, you've got mql, there's, there's all kinds of things that fit, fit into marketing. And so you know, we operate in a sense where we keep them separate but from an MQL to demo mql, you know, like the top of funnel if you will. You know clearly that is the place where talk to some companies, you know, SDRs will sit under the CMO and they'll have it fully separate. So you've got this partitioned off sort of all things top of funnel sit with CMO and then you'll have some orgs where CMO or like a VP of demands with the CRO and we're, we're, you know, we're not that different in the way that we're set up. And so I think just given how many hats the CMO wears as well in this where you've got community and you've got all these different things that from a company brand standpoint stick out. You know we really delineated at that top of funnel and all those were.

Other than the CMO obviously. But the organizations that you referred to, they all report into you. You sort of have nominal leadership over all those groups ultimately.

Yes. So I've got a, I've got a head of data strategy and analytics. Ahead of partnerships, had a new business. Head of what we call retention and growth, head of csm, head of cx, which is onboarding, implementation, training and support. We've also got data services. And so that consists of pre, like the SC function, if you will. So pre sales, post sales, data services, data delivery.