Should we get rid of the "CRO" title? with Jonathan Spier

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. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of NCIRO Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zenna. I'm the founder of the CRO Collective and I want to do a little preface today. For today's session we're having a really great guest come on named Jonathan Spear. He's a CEO of a startup and the reason why we're having this call this conversation today with Jonathan is because of a post that he left on LinkedIn that drove an incredible amount of engagement and certainly got my attention. And we ended up having a lot of back and forth on his post and I asked him if he would join to discuss it. And I'm going to read it to you because I think it's really helpful to set the context for the conversation, understand what promulgated this entire discussion, but it's a really, really great topic. So basically again, Jonathan wrote my hot take. Chief Revenue Officer is a terrible title and we should get rid of not only sets sales leaders up to fail, but it is dangerous for the business. Here's why. Background we love fancy new titles in tech. The VP of Customer Service becomes a Chief Customer Officer. The VP of HR becomes a Chief Human Resources Officer. The VP of Sales becomes the Chief Revenue Officer is just how a new title to indicate the importance of a function and who am I to come out? Who am I to complain? But the CRO title is dangerous because it is not just a title, it communicates a new approach that just doesn't work. It implies ownership over the entire revenue cycle, not just sales, sales, CS and sometimes marketing. And in theory this is great because it aligns all revenue under one leader. Particularly in our SaaS era, you can argue this is necessary because more revenue comes after the sale than before it. So what's the problem? Few CROs can actually lead all of sales, CS and marketing. It's unrealistic. And when we set ourselves up for failure by trying consider in sales, if you can turn a no into a yes, you're a hero in customer success. A key part of the job is knowing when and how to say no correctly. In sales, moving fast wins. In marketing, you often need to carefully craft words, images and execution strategies. And a big one Sales is commission driven. The other functions a lot less. How can we really expect one person to wear all these hats? Indeed, the only thing they really have in common is revenue. It's like asking your dentist to be your chiropractor and primary care physician and heart surgeon too, because they are all about your health. To be clear, I'm not disparaging the great and hardworking people who do the CRO job. It's the title itself and the expectations that come with it that are the problem. Too often I've seen renewals or messaging suffer because the CRO doesn't have the time or skill set to drive CS or marketing. Aspiring CROs ask yourself do you really want to wear each hat for weeks at a time? Digging into non sales issues of coordination and efficiency? Do you really want to spend 2/3 of your time on jobs that don't drive commission? If so, great. But you're probably a COO or a CEO then, not a CRO. Get the title and comp that fits the job you're really doing. CEOs ask yourself with all three functions. Really? Will all three functions really be led well if they report to one person? Or are we just setting our sales leader and our organization up for failure by putting too much on one person who won't have the time or the inclination to give each function the attention it deserves? Takeaway should we get rid of the title? End the era of the CRO? Yes, 100%. But will we probably not like our fancy titles, remember? But at the very least, let's stop expecting great sales leaders to own way more than they possibly can or should. And maybe, just maybe, VP of Sales is a perfectly great title. It just deserves more respect. So as you can appreciate why I responded to that, I was had a lot of thoughts on it, which I'll save for the conversation that Jonathan and I have, but I thought it'd be a great topic because it's a very well written and provocative treatise on the title, and one that I hear a lot frankly. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation and I'll be having him join us shortly. So let's first talk about you and your business and your company and a bit about your background so people get a sense of just who you are. Why not? So rev talk about that what does Rev do?

REV is in the go to market space. Helping companies figure out who they should be selling to in the first place. We're part of what I would say is a revolution in how people think about go to market where what. What we're all figuring out is that we need better ways to know who who and how we should be engaging the right prospects as it relates to figuring out buying signals, knowing your ICP and making outreach and engagement a lot more efficient.

Got it. So you're solving the problem of vague or maybe even dubious or incorrect target targeting that companies have the people that they're.

You got it.

How right now?

Maybe would help if I share a little my background.

Please.

You know I'm a, I'm a four time now venture backed CEO. I started my career actually prior to running a company. I was early at a company called Ariba back in the late 90s. Company that grew really well from 85 to 3,000 while I was there in terms of people sold to SAP after an IPO for over three and a half billion dollars. And then I got the itch. I launched my own company, a company called netbase that I ran for seven and a half years now. Now goes by the name Quid. Still, still a terrific company serving customers like Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble with social media analytics. We're early to that market and helped helped pioneer and create that market. I then ran a next generation an E commerce online brand for seven years. Again a venture backed startup that did well before getting recruited into Rev. So I've. I've seen sales a bunch of different ways. I've seen, I've seen the game change back in, in my first role. Unfortunately Warren, I'm old enough. Maybe like yourself, maybe we're probably the.

Same age, you and I. I'm older than I. Than I. And you think I'm older. Good.

All right. Well that's great to have a contemporary then.

You can't tell I'm 60. I'm 60 in October.

Oh, you got me by a couple years then.

There you go. See Bam. Look at that.

Even better. Well then you remember, you remember the eras where we could walk in and sell a million dollar deal.

I did it. That's what I used to do. I used to walk in the office and sit down and close a deal like that. And it was. Those are good days.

They were good days. But times have changed. Customers don't do that anymore.

No. No.

So I've watched the game change and that's why I was excited About. About the opportunity at Rev.

Yeah, I get it. And I think it makes sense. And look, I. Thanks for that background. And it's really, really impressive. And so it's good because you have a good breadth of experience, which would help inform the conversation here, which is excellent. So, you know, similarly, you know, certainly I went through the whole cycle of change through the early 90s until today, which you and I both know. It's. It's like a completely different world. Many times as. As much up to speed as I am on things, and I feel like I am. I kept myself up to speed. I didn't let myself get too stodgy. I still realize that some of the skills I have are really great. I'm really glad I have them. They make really, really useful, but they're also somewhat antiquated. It's a weird balance there. And trying to figure out how to shoehorn myself into these situations where maybe I know what I'm saying makes sense. But generationally, technologically, contextually, sometimes it doesn't fit. And it's interesting. And I do think that what's happened. I know you know this. I'm sure we agree why this company's in existence is we've gotten so far away from the customer at this point that we don't even know who we're talking to anymore. And so I think the two things we solve for our clients, aside from what we're about to talk about, is exactly that. You sort of have to know where you're going before you can even make any decisions. And if you don't know where you're going, you just gotta, like, throw a lot of stuff in the air. And unfortunately, it's become too easy to do that because technologies have been invented that make it just too easy to throw anything up in the air really cheaply. And so people just do, and then they don't really care. And they catch the sliver of people that they reach and they think it was a success and it was really inefficient. And I'm amazed. Actually, probably the first thing we do when we work with our clients is helping them to really know, like, who the hell are you talking to? And it's not just personifications and Personas. That's one part of it. It's also the other part of it is too, is, okay, so now you've identified, let's say, an avatar for the person that's the buyer. What's the kind of buyer that you're looking for from a revenue perspective, how often do they purchase from you? How profitable are is this buyer? Do they renew quickly? Do they buy bigger items from you? Do they buy smaller ones? It take a long time for them to make decisions. Did they buy the right suite of products? Are they right kind of company that can maybe upgrade three or four different types of iterations of your product and if you know those things and you can probably have a better success. So these are things that people don't think about a lot. I know, I know you're, you're nodding your head. I know you get what I mean. So it's great to see that your company's solving this problem.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of spray and pray out there. You and I are going to have a lot of common ground on those, on those topics.

And you and I are victims of it. I can only imagine how many emails and inbox and in mails you get on a day to day basis that have no relevance to me. I mean, I get, people ask me all kind of wacky questions and stuff. It's crazy.

My favorite is the folks who saw that I'm a cow bear and therefore we should talk, you know what, go bears. But I'm not, I'm not answering that one. It's not even creative.

Yeah, I get the Syracuse reference all the time. Actually had one this morning. Some guy's like, hey, you know, so where'd you go to drink? Did you go to Chumleys? You know, like, are you serious? Come on, come on. You know, it's, ask me where I, what alley I puked in when I was, you know, 20 years old. It's not really the right place to start the conversation from. So that being said, right, So I mean, let's set the premise here for this discussion. So I, given our respective experience, you know, I came to my own conclusions. You came to yours. You know, my ascension came through the marketing industry. I started out selling media and then broke into marketing services, mostly technology based marketing solutions throughout my whole career. And some of them were agencies. You know, as you probably know, back in the early 90s, late 90s and early 2000s, there was this big spate of, I'd call them sort of boutique technology marketing companies that had really unique ways of reaching customers. And I work for a lot of these kind of companies and I was lucky that I was there when search got started. Got very heavily involved in search and then I was involved in social media when started. But the bigger thing that really got me launched was mobile. When the phone. When the, when the iPhone was created in 2007, I jumped on that and I got a gig with Publicist Group and I was an executive there and I ran their first mobile division. I had a really amazing opportunity to be like on the forefront of this new thing. And being on the forefront of anything is always great because you're sort of the smartest guy in the room. And we did a lot of really neat stuff. And then I got a gig at Havas where I was an executive there, and I built a mobile media business for them there. And this is about the time where I was doing a lot of interactions with ad tech companies. I was very involved in the ad tech community at that time, very deep. And my clients were either brands that were selling, spending money on media, or they were the ad tech companies who were trying to help me support to do that. Right. The enablement platforms, all them. And so I sort of became a buyer of these ad tech company services. And given my background, you know, I was targeted. That's funny. You'll get this. I was like the, I was the ICP for these ad tech companies. You know, I had the target on my back and I had the budget. I was at the agency. So I was being courted a lot and being sent to a lot of dinners and stuff like that. But what I really got was an amazing opportunity was to have sometimes three times a day, these ad tech companies sending their sales forces into my office and pitching me with their, with their PowerPoint presentations and all their stick, you know, and I was not an easy person to sell to because I was in their seat for longer than they were. You know, I managed these people. And so I wasn't really evaluating these ad tech services from a perspective of is this going to help me do my job or better, as much as I was looking at it from how do these people approach selling to me, how do they construct their story and how do they persuade me to understand them and are they speaking the language? And I was fascinated by this. So I noticed something that I had already noticed a long time ago, which was that, you know, the sales organizations tend to have their own whole way of going to market, distinct from a marketing organization and even distinct from the customer experience. When you become a customer, you almost have a third experience with a company. There's like three separate organizations operating many times at these companies. And unless that's solved, those three organizations just increasingly become bigger, more siloed, and more disparately separate from each other. So that's when Sort of. I wouldn't say I had an epiphany. It wasn't like a rock fell on my head and I ate some sort of like an epiphany, which is like, I thought about, you know, what would solve this if there was some leader who had more control or strategic control over the entire revenue function. So that it's misalignment, which I do believe fundamentally is the congenital disease of most businesses. Misalignment is the problem between revenue operations is that if it's solved, it solves a lot of problems. But the issue is that there's too many C suite titles in these companies and everyone's got this big traffic jam because everyone's got their own agendas and they have executive leadership and it's impossible to get anything done. The marketing person wants to keep their job and keep their budget. The sales leader wants to keep on running the thing. You know how it works. So I thought the Chief Revenue Officer role was the sort of the silent, you know, solution to this, in that if the CRO could be the leader whom brought together all these functions in some cohesive way, data process operations, then you have more fluidity between these things, particularly given what you and I know is now how complex things have gotten with all the data that we use and all the platforms. And I found that companies that do this do have a better time. Your point, which, by the way, I already recorded an introduction to this where I read your entire post, so we don't have to reference the whole thing. In it, you say some really provocative things, which is that it doesn't work. I'll kind of, you know, just succinctly say what you said. Summarize it, because the CRO can't do all these things. They never can. Give each one of these things the proper amount of time. It's too much to ask. It's a preposterous notion to think that there's this one person that can do all these things and it should be done away with. Right? That's basically what you're saying. So I just love you to elaborate on that a bit because I do have some thoughts on this. But I'd love you to have the chance to weigh in after my long little introduction there.

I love your introduction. Thank you very much. I'm going to add an important corollary. It can work, but if the person does do that and is able to do all those functions, they should be called CEO or General Manager. They shouldn't be called Chief Revenue Officer, and they might as well get credit for the job they're actually doing, which is running the whole company. Okay, but let's talk about the part that I think you want to drill in on, which is, you know, I was like yourself, I saw the need. Right. I think we all did. You know, after that era when you could sell in a million dollar deal and sales could really just focus on that land motion.

Yep.

Especially with SaaS, it's caused us all to have to think about the whole customer journey more holistically. And I was very much in that camp of thinking. You're absolutely right. We, we should, we should centralize. We, we need more focus across that journey. It does not make sense to silo. It also doesn't make sense for each function in CS and Ops and sales to have their own operations function. You know, you have a different process, you have different systems, you have different data. All the alignment that comes from that, it's, you know, it's a problem. What I've seen again and again is that the actual items you list, when you start to list out the CRO responsibilities and you were, you were doing it to some extent right there. You were talking data, process operations and so on. Those are rarely the skills of truly great sales leaders. Great sales leaders, almost by definition start by being terrific at sales. It's a customer facing role and you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Right. It's about relationship, it's about building a genuine connection, understanding what the customer needs and being able to connect the dots between their need and your offering. That's a tremendous skill. It's a valuable skill. We need people to do that. In fact, VP Sales is a heck of a title. It deserves more respect.

No doubt a very, very necessary and important title. I agree with you.

And the question is whether someone who's really great at that is then going to also be really great at data process operations, efficiency, marketing. I haven't seen it too often. Maybe I'll pause and let you take the mic and respond to that part. I'm happy to keep going because I.

Understand that that was your premise and I love that is probably the meat of your thesis and I would love to respond to that because I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I think though that where we differ and the way that I approach my business, and again, just to be clear, my business is about this very thing. Right. So I'm training people to be CROs and I'm helping companies, I'm helping people like you frankly, bring them on and hire them and appoint them properly so that they get that done. And here's the thing that I've learned from five years. Okay, Number one is it is been a. I wouldn't say an error. It's not fair to say it's an error, but it's a. The only way I can describe it is I don't. I don't golf, but I know a lot of people that do. I certainly have tried to golf, but one thing I do know about golf, because I studied a lot, is that people have. There might be like a. Let's call it like a. An optimal swing. There's probably someone. You could say that that person's swing is. That is the perfect swing. Probably a bunch of guys you could probably point to. But not everybody swings that way. There's people that have weird swings, right? But they still get the job done. Like, they're able to be just as effective with a unconventional swing. So I think that while we may have this ideal about the way people should swing a golf ball, the reality is that we sort of find our own style of how to swing that ball. But yet we've codified what we think is this perfect swing. And in fact, it may not really be true because there's probably enough people that don't have that perfect swing that are equally as effective. And I think what's happened in the CRO space, if you follow the analogy, is I think we've sort of mistakenly think that the job should go to the sales leader. And I don't think that's true for the very reasons that you just said. And I think that we think, as we watch, to keep the analogy, great sales leaders swinging the golf club as they come up through the ranks, we think they naturally, that swing belongs in the CRO position. And I think that's not right. And I think that's actually the problem. And I think what's happened is that we've sort of codified this idea that the. Your ascendancy is going to be from sales of VP sales, SVP sales to CRO. And you're correct that the skill sets that possess those people possess that swing is appropriate for that particular game. And they should stay in that game. Not all of them. I want to make sure I'm clear. But what I'm saying is that ends up what happening. And so that's one problem. So that's one problem. I think you're correct in that respect. And I think that's what needs to change. That's one thing Number two is the person who has this job. Let's just remove the pedigree for a second. I mean, whether it be sales or not, shouldn't do all those things. That's not the purpose of the job. The job is not for them to be an expert in marketing and an expert in CS and an expert in sales. First of all, there isn't anybody like that. If there is a very few and it's not enough to try and find people like that. You can't scale a position like that or train for that reason. What you need is someone who has a holistic and strategic understanding of revenue, operations and business such that they can understand how those things work together and then they can apply those towards hiring the right people who are the functional leaders and coordinate those three people to work together. So if I'm going to be kind of the vision of the CRO should be in my view, maybe someone from sales. There are certainly a lot of strategic sales leaders who are right for this job. But you're correct that it's probably not the majority, but it's a heavy minor minority. I work with a lot of them who think this way and they've already, they've had naturally and I can already identify. I can speak to people pretty quickly now and I can pick up like someone whom in a sales leadership role has an incredibly strong understanding of marketing and how it impacts sales and they're involved in it a lot. There's a lot of these people. I was like one of these people. And so those are the profiles of the people that are ready for this job, whether they come out of sales or not. That's one thing. But the real more important thing is how does the role get implemented. And the way it gets implemented in my vision and the way I'm doing with my clients is find someone who has more of a leadership and authority, autonomy and resource allocation towards running the entire revenue operation and having three or maybe four subject matter leaders whom run this respective groups in a coordinated effort. So that means that a really great CRO should have an amazing head of sales and a meeting head of marketing, an amazing rev ops leader and an amazing customer success person whom work together as a team. And the reason why some would say, what do you need this fourth, fifth guy for? Well, the reason is because without that ballast of leadership, you end up having four more silos. Again, that's what's going to happen. Right? And so what this is, is really more. It's physics, to be honest with you. It's a way to kind of create the entropic reality that if you don't have someone running things, you're going to have four different people trying to run off and do their own thing because that's just what human beings are. So it's a way to build an organization that staves against human nature such that the organization is run in a singularity as opposed to non system. Okay. So if I have someone who's really good at that and reports to the CEO, what I have is someone who I know as a CEO I can count on, that I know is going to have a really strong understanding of a revenue operation and runs it properly without having to worry about whether they're. Like you said in your, in your, in your post, they're not sitting around worrying about the difference between the cadences of sales and the cadences of marketing because they're different, because they have other people that do it in accordance with principles and the proper systems and processes. And when I see that done this way, it actually works really well. So to add those tweaks to the way the role is implemented is the way that it works and the way that you professed in your, in your post, you're correct. If it was done the way you said, you wouldn't work and it shouldn't. And I think what I'm trying to fix, in fact, ironically, what I was trying to say to you in my response to your post is you stated the exact problem I'm trying to fix, which is that that's why the role doesn't work is because people don't appoint it properly and they think it's supposed to be someone that comes from sales and they think it's someone who should do all these things and they don't find anybody to do those things. And what ends up happening is because this person was a great sales leader in six months, that's what they end up doing, running sales because they're just, they're good at. And that's not the right way to do it because you end up with exactly the opposite of what the role intended. So that. Those are my responses to what you put out your thing.

I love it. Some good stuff to talk about there. And then we've got to talk about incentives too.

Let's do it.

But I want to start with you know, and understand how you think about, you know, that, that sort of. In my mind, it's the elephant in the room. It's the whole industry expect that the sales leader is the one who is CRO and it's almost, I, I sort of, I was teasing people a little bit in my comments because the ones who'd say, you know, I disagree, I need to be a CRO. I'd say, great. Well, what do you think of sales reporting to the marketing leader and giving the marketing leader the promotion of the CS leader or the rev ops leader that promotion.

Rev ops tends to be people that are good at this, by the way.

Yeah, interesting that. That's what I was going to ask you. So what, what kind of people actually do this? And, and my gut would be rev ops. But you've done it a lot. Tell me, tell us what people are good at and what people aren't.

Yeah, so, you know, honestly, marketing people tend not to be, not for any reason. It's not to denigrate them. I love marketing people. I have an agency, I'm a marketing freak. So it's not anyone. I'm just saying the profile of a marketing person is just different. So this is the thing that, where it gets kind of weird is that there is, there is some validity to the fact that CROs should be salespeople at some point because there isn't a certain quality that they need to have in that role because it is about the pipeline still. It's a critical part of their job and it's not going to be avoided. You know, they can't hide from that. They have to be able to talk about it. And they also, if they're going to be overseeing a VP of sales, they need to have the respect of the stripes in their shoulder to be able to do that. Right. They have to be able to talk, talk, talk shop. So I don't think that we should necessarily toss the entire sales background out of the thing. I just think that we've swung the pendulum over so far that we see people who perform really well in closing deals all day long and getting new top line revenue. We think we put them in the CRO role and they're just not suited for it. Look, Jonathan, it's no different than hiring, taking someone who's a great independent contributor and making them a manager and they fail because it's just not the right skill set. They have a different skill set. It's the same thing, frankly. So I think that's one thing. You're right. There is a muscle memory in the industries that we both look over that need to be changed about the way they view the role. And so I think that the two type of people that I see are successful. Like I said before, one Is, I would say, the strategic sales leader, someone who really looks at the business differently. These are people who are probably going to be CEOs one day, like you. These are people who just. They have this larger aspiration and they see sales as a window into a larger business model and they look at the world differently and they end up running businesses and they do all this stuff and they understand that siphoning themselves off into one group where they make a lot of commissions is. It's a great way to make a living. But you're not going to have a good understanding of the rest of the animal if you just stay in one part of the business. And those are the kind of people. It's a profile thing. And again, I'm pretty good at being able to ascertain those. The second thing is the rev Ops people today. Some of them are really incredibly smart, really great people. So the earlier rev Ops people were more IT people. They fixed Salesforce, they tweaked the systems, they built the CRM, right. They fixed all the tech stack and stuff. These are people who, while that's critically important, these are more people who think about systems and data as it. As it pertains to process and integration with customer success and customer. And these are. These are people who might work with a lot of them, whom would make incredible chief Revenue officers because they have a centralized brain around how all this stuff works. And they'd be very well suited to have the sort of perspective of looking at the business holistically than someone who is stuck in one silo because the rev ops, a good one is covering all the bases. So those are the two kinds of people that I'm seeing are graduating into this role more. And if I'm working with CEOs, which is a part of what I do with this, is let's identify the characteristics and qualities of the person that would best be suited for the role at your company with your business model and your customers and type of, you know, commercializing that you have so that we can put the right person role as opposed to, which is what I'm helping people do. Just don't promote your head of sales to do the job because that's what everybody else does. That's the mistake I'm trying to stop people from doing because that's the first thing they do. And it doesn't work out for the reasons you and I could probably nod our heads and see where the train is headed. And I'm saying, look, no, think about it differently. So this is sort of the way I'm trying to get people to stick with my earlier analogy, lean a little bit more this way when you swing the golf, I know not be comfortable for right now my team in counterintuitive because you've been swinging your elf that way for 30 years. But if you make this one change in your, in the way you hold the club or put your feet, you'd be amazed at how much more velocity you'll get out of it. And people like, oh my God, I would never have done that if you didn't change my paradigm a little bit and have me do it, because I never would have done it on my own. I would have just done the thing I always do because I'm comfortable with it. So I'm really trying to change the way, frankly, CEOs and founders think and boards, to be honest with you, how they think about the way that they construct and architect leadership so that they can build the right model that's not based on what everybody else did, but what we know now works. And that's sort of what I'm trying to accomplish.

Well, and changing and changing the way the sales leaders themselves think about it when they walk in. And, and hey, I own sales, therefore I own revenue. And listen, their logic is, is reasonable. It makes sense.

It does.

To say I, I want to own the top line. And by the way, more of the top line now comes from, you know, direct through the site, through which ultimately is marketing or from customer success. That logic is another thing that you have to overcome in, in what you're describing.

No doubt. I mean, look, we live in a society. Our country is on a four year cycle. We're in the middle of it right now. Okay? So what we have is we have a culture of our, of our country that every four years the exhaust fumes of the four or five initiatives that we're trying to be implemented are being exhausted and new ones are being formulated or they're trying to be protected. So you don't really have a lot of time to see the kind of change that really needs to happen. Right. I don't want to get into a political conversation, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. And so companies are run the same way. I mean, you know, you manage companies by the quarter. And you and I both know that any meaningful thing doesn't takes a lot more than a quarter. I mean, anything that's really going to make a change, it takes probably, probably four quarters or maybe even six. Right? Particularly if you're doing things like marketing and stuff like that. So what we need to do is I don't know if I can do this or not, but I want companies and I think it's happening more. I think we've seen a little bit of this exuberance is becoming exhaustive is slow down a little bit, you know, think a little bit more about like what kind of business you want to be because I tell my CRO clients to. There's two things you need to look out for. One is the CRO job which is we want you to be a chief revenue officer at our company because our goal is to have this thing be acquired in three years or the company that says we want a CRO to help us turn this into a world class organization that's best in class and the leader of the industry. One of those goals is a short term goal, the other one is like an Amazon goal and CROs are very appropriate for Amazon goals because there are people whom you need someone sustainable who knows how to build systems and processes that take time to work and you need that. If I want to turn a business around in three years maybe this is not the right way to go about it because you're probably going to be looking at top line revenue every quarter anyway because that's the only way you're going to get there. I mean, you know this. So I, I'm trying to have people understand, be more honest about the kind of business you want to be and put the right people in place to make that happen. And maybe a CRO is appropriate in certain circumstances and maybe it's not and then there's stages which is a whole other conversation. But anyway those are, those are my thoughts.

Well, the goals and incentives are super important. I do want to still talk about that but I want to finish off something and you know, I expected here Warren, to, to agree with you almost not at all based on our, our online interaction. But I, I think we're finding some common ground because I think, you know, one thing I certainly agree with you is the importance of the revenue operations function. It's not just the, the tendency to be aware of the whole process or the ability to be aware of the whole process. It's also the degree to which our modern processes are so instrumented with data and in fact the way more of our businesses have at least an element of plg, automated anything, all those elements that use data. I think that RevOps function is critical now. I've always envisioned RevOps sort of growing up into chief Operating officer. I've sort of it's interesting because what you've presented here is a vision where rev Ops, it's the revpart, they become Chief Revenue Officer.

I have fought on that too, but yes, I do. I think it's really.

I'd love to know your thoughts because I've always seen it the other way. I've always imagined it going that the rev Ops people become the Chief Operating officer.

Yeah.

And it remains a sales function.

I totally get it and I've heard this a lot and I. My thoughts on it are. This is that I think a lot of elements of this. I'm being a bit. How's the word I'm being. Maybe it's simplistic in the way I talk about this, but let's just say for the sake of it. How many companies have a COO? Right. COOs, in my view, tend to be brought on when there's a level of. Let's call it not just revenue, but general business operational complexity where a COO is necessary. Right. They get involved in everything, you know, facilities. Right. I mean, you know, everything. It's. It's a very largely encompassing role when a COO is involved because operations encompass more than just revenue. They encompass everything, you know, hiring and, you know, it's a very, very complex job. And I think that what I see. Maybe you can tell me if you see the same. Coos tend to be brought on for two reasons. I see one is I want to hire this guy who. Or this person, let's say, who I really think is really talented and really smart and would be a great catch to get here. I don't have a C suite title to give this person. So I'm going to give them the Chief Operating Officer title because it'll give them the sort of loftiness that will help them, entice them to come here and give them some operational, you know, context that would help me make sure that they can do things. I'm in the middle of the situation right now with two companies where there's a COO who really was brought on because that was just the right title to give them. There wasn't really a thought related to like, operational excellence, frankly. And then there's the only. Where there really is. There's operational people who are really good at running complex businesses and they, they're. They're needed for that. And I think in the late stage, companies that are complex like that, let's say post, you know, half a 250 million or so more in revenues, you could easily have both a COO and a CRO. And I think that the CRO is sort of a subset of the COO in that they have a nominal focus on revenue operations, which is, which is in my view, a distinct disciplinary function. Someone who knows a lot about that stuff as opposed to someone who's a general operational excellence person. Because if I'm running a revenue operation, I need someone who has that sort of pedigree of knowing revenue operations, which as you and I both know, has gotten to become an extremely complicated discipline. And I want someone who knows how to run that distinctly because it's like the heart of the, of the business. So I see them not the same, and I don't think they're one or the other. But I, I think if I were to talk about an evolution of a C suite, I think a CRO should absolutely come first because I think you want a mature revenue operation first because of its importance to the business. Right. When you reach this level of revenue operational complexity, which I think is around 15, 20 million in revenues, you start to see, okay, what we were won't get us where we want to go. Right. We need to be something different now. And if I can get out in front of it and bring on an operational leader who knows how to bring, build a revenue operation in a really strategic way, it'll give me a head start to getting to the 100 million I want to get to. And I'd rather get that person in. Then we get the 250 or 500 million. Yeah, achieve operating offer will probably be a really critical thing. And then the other one, which we haven't talked about too, is a CFO is another whole cog in the wheel because there's a financial component to a CRO and they bump into each other a lot too. So as you can probably imagine, I have these conversations a lot. And I'm not trying to say that there's like one solution. I want to make sure what I'm saying here is important. I'm making a contextual distinction here, not a operational one. What I'm saying is for a business to succeed through growth stage parts of the business, you need to have misalignment of revenue, misalignment eliminated or dealt with as soon as you can when it's appropriate, because the sooner you can do that, the more, the less friction. You're going to have to grow the business and scale and keep the customers you want because you know the customers are where your business comes from ultimately, and you want that. And I think that sales led companies are not as good at renewals, they're better at top line revenues. And that's not good for long term growth. And I think a CRO can create that balance earlier. That's sort of the reason.

Let's talk about that part. Because, you know, I think what we're saying is, is similar enough, right? Which is one way or another, the operations functions need to recentralize. It doesn't make sense for every individual.

Piece of the revenue to have three operations. Just. It completely doesn't make any sense.

Now we call that rev ops on its own and it reports high enough up the ladder to have authority or if it's COO or it becomes the CRO. Either way, you're solving that problem completely.

Fine with that.

Agreed with you there. Yeah, but alignment, I want to talk about alignment because I think this argument that you're making is, is thrown out a lot. I've heard it before and for me it doesn't address sort of the elephant in the room.

Okay.

The argument is, and I think, you know, you made it here a minute ago, which is that we need an executive to cause alignment to happen between the three big legs of the revenue engine, marketing, sales and customer success. And in my mind, if there's misalignment between those three functions reporting to the CEO, then there's going to be misalignment in those same three functions reporting to CRO.

I actually agree with you and I haven't answered that.

So you're right and I will, I will add. But I want to hear your answer. Yeah, but I'm going to add the root of the misalignment. It seems to me, and you've thought about this probably more than I have, so I'm curious, but it seems to me the root of the alignment at the end of the day is compensation. It's incentive Sales teams everywhere we slice it get, get comped on that initial deal. Yeah, that's not what CS's job gets comped on. Yep. And it's certainly not what marketing gets comped on most places.

No doubt.

How do you solve the alignment there?

Look, I'm a mongarian. I am like you. Incentives are everything. It's no question when you and I get up in the morning, whatever we do is because that's what we're incentivized to do. And I think that's a critical thing that people think about. So that being said, yes, we need to change incentives. No question about it. And I think that. Let me just address something you said because it didn't articulate my position as accurately as it could be. I don't think I want to make sure I'm really clever. I don't think that parachuting a chief revenue officer into a company is a magical misalignment solution. In fact, that's the wrong way to do it. So here's my point. There's a, there's a middle stage between, let's call it the growth stage, misalignment and aligned right context. And it has to do with sort of a, I call it the heart attack inducing stress test. You know, like if you and I go to the doctor and do our checkup, it's very superficial. They take your blood, they do your pulse. It doesn't really. The readout is not, the data is not that great, but it's enough to go, you're fine, get out of my office here. But you know, if you went and did the full Cadillac and they kept you in there all day and they did every fluid and everything that they could possibly do, you're going to get a better readout. You're going to really know what's going on. You can make a 10 year long decision based on that information easily. In fact, I think that you and I should both at this stage go get a full body scan, mri, we should pay five grand and go get one and have it looked as a baseline. Because we could probably do one thing right now that will save our lives easily. But we don't use that data. We don't have it. And the reason we don't is because, you know the same reason companies don't, because they're freaking lazy and they don't want to spend the time or the money or the doing other things. And so the premise of my whole business is to address that. Is that hiring a CRO incorrectly or what I call being not, not being CRO ready is when you either a hire one too soon because you think that the CRO is a solution, which it's not. And you don't know exactly what that CRO is supposed to do or how to make them happen. So what you need to do first is, and it could be sponsored by the CRO, but we do this is, this isn't a sales pitch, it's just a methodology intended to address what you just said. It's, what's missing is companies don't do that Cadillac diagnostic on themselves. They don't. And so they don't really, really know what's going on. They don't really do. They have Superficial under. They think it's a sales problem or a marketing problem. You know, it's very symptomatically sort of driven, like the way they fix things. And look, I get that. I know that if I have a board breathing down my neck, I'm going to say, look, we got to hire more salespeople. We've got to train them better. Or like, you know, with all due respect, we got to understand our ICP better. All good things to do. I believe, though, that the problems that were just talked about, those things are all systemic symptoms of a deeper problem, which is that we don't really have a true understanding of how our company is working together right now. So performing that diagnostic will yield better data with which to say, okay, now we know. Okay, let's say, for example, which I'm sure happens. We know happens almost all the time. We. One thing we do is we don't really know our customer. We think we do. We're fishing in the wrong hole. They're biting. But if we fished in this hole, we get better bites. And why aren't we not? Blah, blah, blah. Another one is, you know, our marketing is off. We're saying the wrong things to people at the wrong time. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to get leads as opposed to build smarter people in the marketplace that we can talk to. We need to do differently. There's thousand things. But what I mean is, once we know these things, once we've ascertained that that's the thing, that those are the gaps, those things become initiatives, and those initiatives become the job of the chief revenue officer to fix. That's their job now as opposed to anything else. And if they fix those things, that alignment will occur because the organization has coalesced around those things as being true. They're based on data, everything from our hiring practices. We don't have a competency strategy for the people that we're hiring. We don't have a baseline for the best practices person. We don't know how to bring them on board quickly. Our customer segmentation is incorrect. Our profitability margins are off. It takes too long for customers to buy. We're not all this stuff. So now the CRO is hired. That becomes their job. And you can see right in, even in this discussion, how that's a really important job. If that person was given that mission, there would be a lot for that person to do because there'd be a series of initiatives that would need to be implemented from that, that would create that Alignment. But because I've got that one person in charge of it, I'm ensuring that there's stewardship of all that stuff being done. And that's where the CRO becomes an important part of the business for me. That's what I need done. So this is what I'm proposing, right? That's where the alignment happens. It's two things. It's data intelligence and then leadership and ownership of the process to implement the changes required. That's what a CRO should do.

Warren, I proposed something really radical in my post. I said that we should get rid of the CRO title entirely.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah.

And it may be that you've proposed something even more radical than mine. I think. I think what you might be getting at is the sales function, reporting to the RevOps function, which is not the way that most companies do it.

No, I think it should. And the reason why I think it should is because I think that you and I both know that sales functions, despite their energy and their incentives, they need to be reined in a bit. You know, they tend to. I don't want to call them cancers, but they metastasize. They really do, because they're critically important. And so what ends up happening is they get the lion's share of budget, they get the lion's share of focus, they get the lion's share of the revenues, and I mean the money. And it's all fine. But I do think it creates a lopsided organization. And I think that if the company was driven more by. And my. I think it's even lean the other way. I think it's not so much Rev Ops as much as it's. Actually, the CS function is probably the critical thing here. Because if I look at. If I look at a customer as someone whom I haven't ever spoken to yet, let's say I work with Jonathan Spear at Rev and they help me identify my icp, and now I know who it is. Okay, so great. So now we've done a great job of working with this amazing company, and we really know now who we're supposed to target. I have to think about it this way, and I'm sure you do, too, is that there's people out there who fit that profile that I haven't spoken to yet. Those people are my customers. So how can I start talking to them today? Right? So if I. If I flip my company around and have a conversation with those people, that way, it's going to be more marketing and messaging driven than it is going to be sales driven, which I think people really want anyway. So I think that if companies can make that shift, I think they'll find the sales function will be more efficient because the people they're talking to will be more educated and easier to speak to. And I think the marketing function will also be clear about their job, which is not to get sales leads. That's very. That's an inward thinking thing. It should be more about. Marketing's job is to educate consumers or customers or prospects about something so that they're smarter. If they're smarter, they'll consider things differently and they'll be easier for us to talk to. Marketing should be doing that all day. And I think that that's the sort of idea that I think about the way the shift needs to be taken. I agree with you. I think it should be led by different brains than just sales.

And we're back to where we started there with Spray and Pray. And I think, I think the reality is in this market with, with ASPs down, with close rates down, with just being a tougher market out there, it's.

It's crazy.

You can't afford Spray and pray in any way. The Spray and pray is not working as well. Used to it, you know, too many, too many automated solutions, throwing out too much content. It doesn't work.

Yep, it doesn't. And mainly is because we've sort of cannibalized our own success. It's too easy to reach people now.

Too easy.

And so we do. Right. It's nuts. And so, you know, I think we're spinning around and running in a race now. We're overloading people. We've turned people into people that don't want to hear from anybody anymore. We've actually created a marketplace that hates us. And, you know, it's our own fault because the ease with which we can do it has become. It made us lazy, I think really has. It's made us lazy. And you know, I work with a lot of tech companies whom work with these like an enablement platforms that allow people to do things like the dialers and the gongs and stuff. These are good tools, but they just add more grease to a wheel that's spinning too fast already, in my opinion anyway.

And weapons of mass destruction. And I'll, I'll, I'll be an optimist here for a moment. I look at it a little like when, when Kindle came out and we all thought books were done and we threw out all our books.

Yep.

I spent the last 10 years reacquiring my book collection. Because you know what? Reading on paper is a lot nicer than reading on a screen. Enough. My life's on screen. We're all like that.

Yep. Yeah. I do think there's going to be backlashes to a lot of these things.

There will, there has to be. Because, you know, what still works is meeting someone in person, having lunch, spending time together one on one is so much nicer than, than, you know, text in a little box.

So here's the thing.

But, but the only way to do that efficiently is know who you're talking to and do the targeting and everything else. Right.

Got to talk to the right person. Da, da. The other thing too is, you know, we haven't talked about this yet, but, you know, you have AI at the end of your business. Right. These tools are creating another whole level of distance from people because, you know, we don't have to talk anymore. We can let other people talking. I mean, I'm getting people telling me things like, you know, I got an avatar that'll call people for you and it sounds just like you and it'll be just like you. And I know it's a little crazy, but, you know, they're just going to get better and better. And, you know, what's going to happen is that people are going to use these things. So I just interested in your perspective on this. Like what, what's the, like you and I, two stodgy old white dudes sitting there talking about this stuff. What do you think is going to happen in five years or so when all of a sudden now I can dispatch some robot out to call people and have those initial conversations? I don't need an sdr. I can just do it through a machine. Is this going to be even another distance that we're getting put from people, or is it going to backlash too? I don't know if you know, but I'm just curious because you're in it right now. What do you think?

You know, there's an old line that, that in the tech industry, we always overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and we underestimate it in the long term. Right. So we've all heard that, right? I think, I think that's where we are now. I think, you know, the idea that my agent will write my mother a birthday card for me misses the whole point. You know, yes, my AI agent is capable of writing my mother a birthday card, and her agent might be capable of answering that. And what's the point of that, that's not me having.

Doesn't mean that I should. Right, Yeah, I get that. I get that. I do. I think there's, we, there's a lot of tools we use just because they're there, but it's not really like, wasn't a, Wasn't a problem, you know, And.

I think we're already seeing that automation without contextualization, without targeting, without the rest of it really doesn't help anything. It just creates more, more garbage people to sift through.

No question.

So, so I believe, and where I'm focused, and I think about this all the time, like you say we have AI in the names, what we're doing. I believe the right tools will make us all a lot smarter all the time and more efficient so that we can spend more of our time doing the things that humans need to do, which is building authentic connection.

I hope so.

Telling our stories, answering real questions.

I really do hope that is true. And I think that I'm so optimistic. I agree that, you know, we need to get back into some handshaking and stuff. I do a lot of, I go to a lot of events and I lead a lot of events for the purposes of getting together with people. I, I like it, you know, so I, I do, I think that human, Human nature will win out. But I'm. It's weird. It's a weird time.

It's a weird, weird time. I'll tell you, I'll tell you a little story. And this also not a. Not meant to be a commercial, but you know, here's the kind of thing, the kind of thing we help with. You know, we just, we just helped a public company in their SMB business where only 15% of their actual pipeline, actual pipe, the deals are actually working. Only 15 match their own definition, their ICP.

Right.

It makes no sense. And by the way, when you get a customer that's in ICP or a prospect that's in ICP, the conversion rate is, I believe in that case, 48% higher. Now, knowing the difference, a human could do it. It's, it's millions of hours of research, but the AI just does it for you. That kind of thing means conversations are.

Better, but very useful tool. And as I said before, exactly. My earlier health diagnostics, and if I can walk into a room and walk out, they know everything about my body. Sign me up. That's great, right?

That's right. It takes, it takes an hour instead of, or, or 20 minutes instead of taking six hours. There you go. Then we'd all do it. So, so that's the point. But, but the. But what it needs to lead to then is genuine engagement with someone who really wants to hear from you and values your message. And your hit rates can be better if it just leads to more, you know, canvassing, spray and pray then, then we haven't solved the problem. And I don't think, I don't think companies get what they really are looking for any way out of it.

Agreed. Great. So look, let's summate here so we can kind of get together on this. So first of all, I think I'm not surprised. It was a great conversation. So thank you so much. As I, as I thought maybe you didn't. I thought we'd agree on a lot more than you think. I tend to find it happens this way. But I just want to make sure. I think the distinction we made is that I. Based on your original post, I don't think that it's the right thing to just shove salespeople into the role. I think that you're correct and that that needs to be thought differently. And it could be either A don't do it or B evaluate sales leaders differently that there's a different profile that makes sense for them. Number two is I think Rev Ops is becoming more of an important component to this that I think needs to be looked at. And the other part too is the CRO is not some sort of ubiquitous octopus that can do all these things. It's someone whom has nominal leadership over something that needs to be stewarded properly so that there isn't that alignment occurs not through necessarily like functionally and stuff, but also just if there's one person, so there's a set of three, you know, it gets rid of that human nature part. And then the last one is you need to diagnose better to know what the CRO is going to do before you bring one on. And that critical step is one that companies don't take and I endorse that and advise them to do the work and have a process for it, which we do. We have a process for this that uncovers this thing so that the right CRO profile is identified and the right job and focus is given to the person so that the outcome is produced. That's sort of how we solve the problem.

Warren, that's a great summary. I agree on all fronts and it sounds like you got a great process. So I appreciate the dialogue. Nice and nice and stimulating. Thanks for responding to my original post and good food for thought both directions.

Sounds like, thank you. Great, great talking to you and this is really wonderful. So I think that the audience is going to eat this up. So thank you for being here.

Really a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Great. 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@the crocollective.com that's the crocollective.com and we look forward to having you join us next time.

Done.