The CRO Role in Modern SaaS: Navigating Shifts in Scaling Mentality with Frank Nardi

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. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Sierra Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zenna. I'm the founder and CEO, I guess, of the CRO Collective and I've been having some really interesting conversations lately with people related specifically to data and the use of data and I think the, frankly, maybe even the over reliance on data and how in my view data has sort of become a default for marketing and it's in the B2B space anyway, it's sort of destroyed marketing and the magic that marketing really is and get a lot of feedback on that particular topic. And people are in agreement right on this point because I think we are just swimming in data and we are over reliant on it. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm not saying data should be issued, of course it's good and the fact that we have so much of it I think can be helpful. But what happens is I think we have too much of it. You know, we've lost the art of gut feeling as a leader, as a leading generator, leading indicator of how to do things. And so much of what we do is a lot of magic. So anyway, there's a thought and we can talk more about that and probably will be in other topics, but I wanted to introduce our guest today, a gentleman by the name of Frank Nardi, who's the Chief revenue officer at SIN 7. And I met Frank because, you know, I'm as you know, I'm a loudmouth on LinkedIn all the time and you know, it's like when I call the, one of my, my LinkedIn connection friends, well, friends or colleagues, right, whom, you know, we, we get into a banter together on LinkedIn and we have a great discussion and it just turns out, you know, I'd like to have this person jump on a call with me and do a podcast because the topic we're talking about is one that I think is valuable and I think this Person seems like they have the credentials to be able to bring a lot of weight to the topic. And so today we're going to talk to Frank. It was a great conversation. He's really smart and he's seen a lot from his role as a Chief Revenue Officer. He's also in agreement with me in terms of the philosophy related to Chief Federal Officer. So I think you really enjoyed this conversation. So tune in. And thanks for being here. Oh, for sure.

This is exciting. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, yeah, not at all. So, you know, it's funny, a lot of people I meet this way, you know, like I do an engagement on LinkedIn, I get involved in some conversation and someone comments and they make a smart comment and then we end up getting into a chat about it. And I don't know, people put LinkedIn down all the time. I don't know why. I think it's awesome. I mean, it's done so much for me in terms of, like, my career and bringing out this business. It's invaluable. So, I don't know, I'm just. What are your thoughts on it? I mean, are you a. You a LinkedIn guy? Do you use X? Like, where. Where are you mostly out there talking LinkedIn?

Um, I think what I like about LinkedIn is if you, if you spend a little time on it and you build a good network, it really becomes valuable, right? Just like anything, you put a little effort into it, you start to, to get into the right channels, you connect with the right folks, you get some thought leadership going. I actually like how it's evolved over the last couple years. Right. So if I think back to LinkedIn, maybe 2019 to 2022, when we were all in that, you know, they call it the golden age of SaaS or whatever, I think a lot of what people were talking about, there was so much people doing the same things, right? We were all doing the same thing. So there was a lot of. The way to. The way to get clicks was very. To be very contrarian, right? So if everyone's doing one thing, you just, you say the other thing and all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's a, that's a, that's an interesting approach. And then all of a sudden you get all the clicks and you get all the likes and you get all the interest. But what I've noticed is we moved into that peg now, the profitable, efficient growth mindset. And I think what is interesting to me is there's a lot more folks just trying to Help each other forward and try and think forward. On LinkedIn, the thought leadership is much more thought provoking. On the path forward isn't so set in stone. The path forward is a little bit different now everyone's trying to find what is efficiency, what is automation, where do, where do we, where do we, where do we maximize our team, our people, our tech, our tooling, how do, how do some of the things that got us here, you know that idea we talk about all the time, it's in seven like what got us here won't get us there. So what, what's the what get us there piece of it. And I think the thought leadership has taken a big step forward in the last year and a half for me, at least in the network that I have a lot of people putting out really good thoughts, thought provoking content about like, hey, this may have worked for us in the past. Here's how I'm thinking about it as a CRO or a CMO or thought leader. And whereas before it was very much like everyone's doing the same thing. So let me just be contrarian.

Yeah, it's a really good point. I agree. I mean, I think there's a bunch of things you just brought up there that I want to talk with you about. So thanks for kind of setting a good stage here. But let's talk about that process particular point for a second. Right. So sort of on the heels of this idea of you saw the, the glorious days of sas, right, that the heyday. Right. So, you know, you and I are both, let's just say, for all intents and purposes, we're both chief Revenue officers. I mean, I'm sort of running a business now. I'm a business owner and a founder. But you know, I've come from the CRO world obviously and you know, the world of the Chief Revenue Officer was impacted so greatly by this grow at all costs sort of climate, which was a long time. I mean, it wasn't just a recent thing. I mean, I think that.

Right.

The SaaS business was in fact, and I'm about to write a big piece about this as we talk about mfa, you know, made for advertising sites, they're the same thing as made for revenue. Made for revenue businesses. Right. They don't really provide sort of a long tail opportunity for customers. They're sort of a flash in the panel. But they're built by a combination of economic forces that understand the way to manipulate the marketplace to drive valuations and make stock prices go up. And that model of being Able to get that repetitive revenue became such a big thing because it got companies multiples and it got them to be bought or acquired or. Right. And so people were making money because they saw a business model as opposed to a solution for people. And lurking amongst a lot of SaaS, companies, in my view are a lot of companies that are putting out products for that reason. Right. They're made for revenue business. And I think the chief revenue officer role was impacted by that because they're. The job is different when you're, when your role is that short term. If you're being told, I got a job like this, I got hired. The guy, the CEO told me, we want this company sold in three years. Yeah, that was a mission. Right. It wasn't like help customers solve X problem. It was get this company sold in three years. Right. That you're gonna. As the, as the president of that company at the time, I had to deploy and implement strategies to meet that end. Not anything to do with customers. Like almost nothing in fact. So I'm just curious like what your thoughts are on, like has Peg, is it real or is it just because there's no money? I mean, like if money comes back, will PEG be tossed out the door? And I'm curious if you think we've really reached the shift and if it's permanent or not.

It's a great question. I do think we reached a shift and I think we reached a shift because is what happens in industries. Right. Like you had the Industrial revolution and there's been several iterations of that. Right. And I think you're right about the grow at all cost mindset in SAS. It was not just two or three years at the end there to 2022. It, it was for a while. Right. And it was about those.

It was, it was, it was probably back in, I remember back back in as early as 2015.

Oh yeah. Without question.

There were companies that were. That's it. That was their business model. Maybe even earlier, you know.

Yeah. It was very much find a product market fit, find something that you could sell the hell out of and then sell the hell out of it and get a great valuation and flip it. Right. And there wasn't. The way that you see that. Right. Is in the execution. I was talking about this the other day. We have, we have so much rigor on the front end of the bow tie. I'm a big. I've been using the win by design bow tie. I love that stuff. Right. I've been, I think since 2014. 2014 or whatever I think I first saw it, I was like, ah, there it is. I love that process. There's so much rigor on the front end of the bow tie, right? We know what an MQL is. We've got HubSpot, we got Salesforce, we got SQLs, we've got Time to, you know, demos per deal. We know what, you know, speed to lead, all the tooling tech, all the data revenue operations are so much like tight rigor on that part of the fence the minute the deal closes. Like very few companies have the same rigor on the back end, right?

None of them. Very few of them do. And people feel it. It's very palpable in the marketplace.

Right? Exactly. So you look at it like we've spent so much because that's what the job's been. That's what the CRO job has been. It's like acquisition, acquisition, acquisition. So now it's becoming more of like the revolution and especially the last couple years is you're not going to continue to scale and win with just new logos, right? You have to be able to land and expand. You have to be able to get your customers to stay lifetime value. And then what does that mean? Right? That means that you have to continue to provide value to those customers. So they stick around, right? That was always the promise of SaaS is like they get to pick you every year. If you're an annual renewal, they choose at some point like, hey, I want to buy send seven again. Right? I want to buy whatever product you're selling again. And so you have to. I heard one time it was great. It was like the buying process, that front end of the bow tie proves that you have a really good sales process. And you have product market, you have initial like you have the initial promise, right? The renewal is them confirming to you that you were right. Right. That, that what you sold them was right. Right. So I'm going to stick around because what you sold me was right. I got onboarded properly, I trained. This is actually providing the value you told me it was going to provide. And I buy again. The reason why I think that this is a, this is going to be ongoing. This, this, this, this efficient growth is going to be here is because this is kind of what it always was like, you know, our private equity firm is, is fantastic. And we always talk about like this is what it always was like. You're always looking for finding good customers that stick around and you have a sticky product that, you know, they, they don't rip out because they, they, it provides that ongoing value, right? That's where, that's where it's going to continue to go. So you just see it, you see it in the rigor. There's so much on the front end, not up on the other side of the bow tie. And I think our opportunity is in this shift is to take that rigor that we have on the front of the bow tie and apply it to the back end so that customers do see continue value in our products. They continue to choose us over time and then we, we understand that that end of it just as much as we understand the front end of it.

Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free please to share the Zero Spotlight podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And your, your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer Board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own Board of Directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other Chief Revenue Officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this, or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with Chief Revenue Officers. Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Master's Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me masters or master's Council and I'll follow up with you and Set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there. And thank you. Yeah, look, it's great. I mean, I certainly hope you're right. You know, I'm a big believer in customer value and I get angry as a customer. We're all customers of somebody, multiple people of how post sale, we get essentially ignored and thrown into a bucket of okay, good, you know, done. You know, we've got this person's credit card number or whatever and they're really like fine, you know, and we've got a big enough engine that we can replace this person if he decides to renew or not renew because we're just driving so many more deals. And you can feel it. Right? I mean, I even talk about this a lot. It's a little boring thing I say, but you know, it's even goes into the way products are designed so everyone knows this. Maybe it's not something you're conscious of, but you know, when you go to log into any of your dashboards to go log into your account, the login button is like microscopic. But the, you know, sign up here is my button is like massive. You know, even as a customer, the customer interface is designed for people to acquire a new customer but not take care of the person who's already paid for the product. You know, and I even just that little thing is indicative of every touch point in a business is somehow designed to be a sales tool as opposed to a service tool. And I think that these are little things that when you build a product thinking more about customers and actually building customer versions of products that are different, distinct from non customer versions of products, I think is an important thing. So if you don't mind, I want to just back up a bit because what I want to do is I want to hear a bit more about, you know, you and your current role and how these sort of things are being implemented in the company that you're at a little bit more about how the chief revenue officer role is, is. Is sort of looked at and viewed and how you're implemented in your organization.

Yeah, great. I appreciate that. So been with Seven Seven for four and a half years now. The company was originally out of New Zealand, bought by private equity in 2019. Pretty small. No US folks at all. Everybody was really out of the New Zealand office and now I was the first hire as a VP of sales and now we have almost 100 or so folks here in Denver. We've got seven locations globally, so we've been growing pretty, pretty fast. 5x the revenue to this point. And now we're on our path to really being the market leader that we aspire to be, right? And for our customers, we have over 8,000 customers now and continue to grow and grow and grow. And we serve, it's interesting for us because we serve a SMB to mid market clients in inventory management and solving those problems. So it's very much like, you know, how we pinpoint our ICP and our Personas. They're all, it's super fun because they're all very entrepreneurial and disruptive. The folks that want to come up and create a product to be the next disruptive type of product seller out there, right? And so there's this spirit that we, we, we talk about all the time. Like we don't want people to just buy us, we want them to buy into us. So they, they could be doing like million dollars of revenue and they're like, man, I want to grow my, my, my business, I'm going to go buy since 7 and then it can do, you know, 25, 30, 50, $100 million of revenue. And they just, they grow along with us and we, we grow along with them. So there's very much an entrepreneurial spirit with our customers that we love and enjoy. Like that's how we wait. That's why we wake up and do what we do is because why I wake up and do what I do is because we see these companies come in and they're like, man, I have this problem. My inventory, I can't land, I'm using spreadsheets, I've made a mistake, it's cost me some money. Inventory inefficiency is a billion dollar problem out there and it's one of the top five reasons small businesses will go out of business. It really is a issue if you don't hit it right and you don't do it right. It becomes a hindrance to scale as a product seller. So we kind of enjoy solving those problems for them because then they can actually, I think about it as like the Maslov's triangle of business, right? Like if you can get the foundation right, you know, and then you kind of build on top of that and we can help you see around corners, give you that visibility and traceability into all your channels and how you're selling, you then can achieve that self, you know that, that business act, you can achieve your goals and that self actualization. Top of the, to the triangle there. So it's kind of, it's kind of a fun, fun customer Base. Moved into the CRO a year or so ago. Did a lot of work on marketing and branding and messaging to try and hit the right icp. Spent a lot of time running marketing and now I'm shifting right. To take on customer success and really help continue to build value with our customers as they grow with the product that grow with us part. Right.

So you were a marketing, you were in a marketing role originally and you moved into a CRO role. Is that how you migrated over from that position?

No, I was a VP of sales for several years and then took on the CRO role role led marketing through some transition.

I see. Okay, so you came from sales, but they gave you marketing and you took that over and that's great.

I, I came up through marketing, so that was actually my gig for the longest time. Like I started as a graphic designer, to be honest, back in, you know, back in the day I was doing photo retouching and, and stuff like that on the east coast in Jersey. Got into sales, got into tech and then, you know, moved up the food chain on the, on the sales side of it, became a VP of sales at a pretty big company and then took this role at sin7 because I thought it was a great opportunity to come in here and like build, build and grow. Like my own sales strategy, my own processes, my own team. A lot of times you don't get to do that, right? A lot of times you kind of, you join a big company, they have everything kind of built out for you. This was a chance to kind of go create something new and interesting and do my own, do my own methodology.

How big was the company revenue wise when you took the CRO role? At what point were they at in their growth?

They were pretty small. They were just crossing, I think 10 million, something like that. So we had good product market fit, but overall it was the idea of expanding into different countries. Right. They hadn't, we hadn't really had a good footprint in the US because it was, you know, New Zealand company really did some great work in New Zealand. Really good product market fit out there. Australia market really had some good traction there, but Emea and us did not really have that level of traction yet. So that was the goal was like, hey, get, get some folks here in the US start to build out a little bit bigger footprint in the US and we, we've done that really well.

So when you, when your company thought about chief revenue officer as a executive position, what was the, in your view, the sort of mitigating reason, like what was the business decision, why a CRO was needed.

I think this is not just a sin 7 thing. I think this is a, a go forward thing in SAS is that, you know, we kind of worked all. I think almost every company I've worked in, in SaaS, it's been very siloed, right? So like marketing does the marketing stuff, sales does the sales stuff. And there's very much like that baton handover, you know, like, hey, here's a lead. It's an mql. Go. Go run with it. Sales goes run with it. Turns it out, wins it. Hey, onboarding. Here's a new logo. Here's a new logo. Go run with it. Onboarding then, you know, here, yes, here's a new logo. Right? And in that growth at all cost mindset, we could kind of do that, we could operate in those silos. Because what we didn't realize is that in between those teams are these, I call them the gray areas of inefficiency. Right. Where there's a lot of, there could be money loss, there could be efficiently conversion loss. Like all this stuff where, because you're just kind of like passing things over, right? So we looked at it as an opportunity to bring sales and marketing together and create like some really good cohesion, really good, like GL between those two teams. And plus we're an SMB inbound model. Like our average deal size. We have a, we have a product skew on our websites. 350 bucks a month. Right. You know, so someone buys that, they're, they're $6,000 a year customer, you know, so, so, so a lot of our stuff comes inbound. So what we wanted to do was hey, instead of sales and marketing working a silo, what could we do if we can really bring those teams together? Yep. And we were able to do that and we were able to, to, to, to decrease those gray areas and, and get a lot more efficiency between the two teams. And then now we're looking to do the same thing as, as deals. Close one. And how do we bring that efficiency over? Right. A good example is we have a free trial, right. Our free trial is, is a combination of three or four things, right? It's a combination of a marketing experience, a sales experience, a product experience. And our free trial is set up so that like folks, a product seller can go in and kind of test out what an inventory management solution would be for them. So in a lot of ways they're, they're doing implementation, right? Whereas if you were to download like a Zoom or a Slack, you're using the product as a user, right? You're using Syn7's free trial as a user, but you're also implementing, right? You're setting up some products, you're seeing how the products flow through, you're seeing how they're the reporting works or you're seeing how inventory is managed in the platform. That's somewhat of an onboarding experience, right? So light education, like onboarding. So now, so you what? Instead of, instead of like this linear handoff of lead to sales to close one to onboarding, we see opportunity. And I think there is a lot of opportunity even moving Forward in whatever SaaS you're in enterprise or SMB or whatever product you're selling is remove the gaps between the teams and create a little bit more integration and experience, customer experience, buyer experience across as these teams overlap. And I think there's a great opportunity because in those gray areas is where inefficiency occurs.

Thank you so much again for listening to the Sierra Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. A couple things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even a old salty CRO and you're looking to either become a Chief Revenue Officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a Chief Revenue Officer, we offer the CRO Accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring Chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. The CRO Accelerator course, we kick off the next one in May, mid May 2025. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can Send you more information to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO accelerator course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great. And you'll see some more information about it on the website. Thanks. Look, obviously you're singing my tune here. I love it. It's amazing. And honestly, I don't come across enough companies who have the, I would say, organizational intelligence to recognize that and do something about it. You know, the reason I'm in business and the reason I started my business is because it's not the case. Silos are sort of like the norm. You know, they're protected for obvious reasons. You know, particularly as a company gets more entrenched. Silos are harder to unseat because, you know, people are stakeholders that want to maintain those silos for all sorts of reasons, as you probably understand. And it's leadership, right? I mean, all my clients are founders and CEOs of companies whom kind of understand this idea intellectually, but they're not looking at their companies that way and understanding, like, how they need to break down those silos and what the process would be and why. Unlocking what you said, not only the acceleration that comes from alignment, but also, like you said, all the leaks that are occurring in companies from the silos.

That they're not aware of.

And so we're helping them, what we call become CRO ready. So my question for you is, why is it like, what. What characteristic or what quality was it about your leadership that had that recognition to do that independently when you're. You're an outlier? Okay. Most companies don't make this decision in that way. I'd say you represent, in my view, probably 5 to 10% of companies independently come to that conclusion to put CROs in place that way. Most CROs, as you know, run sales and only exacerbate the problem. Why do you think it is you. You guys figured this out?

So it's actually super interesting. I think that one of the side effects of what you and I started talking about, where you come in as a sales leader, you're focused on new logo sales, you bring sales through, is how much are you listening to customers, right? How much are you listening to the problems you're solving for them? And in a very meta way, not the Facebook meta, but just like the storyline meta, it's actually what our customers face. So we went through a really good experience when I took on the marketing role and we were leading the marketing team through a new branding A new messaging framework. We were like, okay, the business was built with this. Solve this problem. Solve in mind. How has that changed over time? Right. And so last year we took, we interviewed a bunch of customers, we interviewed a bunch of partners, we looked at the market dynamics and we came through this idea that if companies that aren't managing their inventory properly look at the stages of inventory. Very siloed, right?

Yep.

And what happens is they end up losing a lot of revenue in the gaps and the great pieces in between. We called it like revenue revenue leakage or inventory. Inventory inefficiency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so as we were going through this process, you just start to learn. You're like, wait a minute, this is actually, this is a very interesting story. And it's relatable to like, it's, it's, it's a very much same kind of sales process. Right. They're still trying to get marketing inbound. They're just still trying to sell their product. Product. They're still trying to supply their product. We're just doing SaaS, they're just doing soda or games or whatever they're selling. Right. So, so like in between the gaps in what we're trying to do, there's leakage just the same way they are. So it was very much an eye openening thing for us to be like, you know what if there's ways that we can continue to work together and break down those silos, I think there's opportunity for us to. And the other thing I would say too is just it's a more funner way to work. Right. You know, you want healthy tensions between. They talk about healthy tension between teams. You want, you want, you want rigor. But like the part of the idea is like, it's so much more fun to have sales and marketing aligned on what an MQL is and why It's a good MQL as opposed to marketing going, I gave you 100 leads and the sales team going, well, they don't, I don't like them. You know, like, what's this? Tails.

I want the Glenn, I want the Glengarry leads. Yeah, right, yeah, totally.

I want the Glengarry leads. Right. So, so it's so better to be like aligned on what a good lead is and continue to work together to make that a better lead tomorrow and high increase, encourage conversion tomorrow. And look at that as a group as opposed to this kind of like friction between the teams and the same kind of thing. What happens with onboarding? Like, look, we're an SMB model. Not every customer we're going to bring is fully scoped and full. Like, we're going to do everything we can to set up a customer for success and bottom. But onboarding has to train that customer. Right? They have to pick that one up. And not everyone's going to be the same level of technical skill set awareness there. You know, a lot of them are going to be super busy. Our customers are super busy. So onboarding knows like, hey, I'm going to have different ICPs, different different verticals and how they pick them up. And I think having good understanding and handoff points create a, create smoother experience for us internally. But going back to listening to our customers, it also creates a smoother experience for them. Right. There's not so much these rigid points in their journey where they go, okay, I bought into the messaging on the website. It speaks to my problem. Then I go into sales and sales sells me something a little different. Okay, well that's weird. Then, then I go into onboarding and they, they say, well, you know, something a little different there. Well, that's weird. Like, so if you, if you don't work on the gaps in the gray areas in between, if you don't have that level of cohesion and unification and journey customer across, it not only makes it difficult for your internal teams to, to execute and solve those inefficiencies, it actually creates a very challenging thing for your customers to. What do you call it, like a very bumpy ride. Right. And so we think about it the way we think about it since 7 is how do we continually smooth the ride for the customer. So what's on the website for marketing resonates? And they go, oh yeah, that's, that's me. That's the problem I want to go solve. Great. Talk to the sales rep. Yes, we're solving the same problem. It's all aligned. Goes to onboarding. Yes, this is what I expected. This is what I think we're going to do. And then they go through and then they, they're excited to renew with the product.

Yeah, that's so great. I completely agree with all the point of it and you know, your observations about what, what's broken about it and also what I think you made a good point about what the other side of it is. It's just better. I mean people work better, better. Plus, you know, it's funny. So here's the thing. I have this notion about, I talk about this with my clients and it's somewhat provocative as per part of our earlier Conversation. And that is that, you know, one of the pushbacks I get, a lot of people have from my particular point of view on this is, okay, so if your premise is that the chief revenue officer is going to be the person that oversees all these revenue functions, well then what do you do with the cmo? Like, stuff like that. They'll say, and you know, my notion around this is that the CMO in a B2B company, that's B2C company, but a CMO in a B2B company represents in my view, an example of a particular syndrome which is having accelerating people's course career trajectory too early before they make a decision about the way they want their C suite to be architected. Right. Because when you, when you put a chief marketing officer in a business and a chief revenue officer in a business, the natural inclination is that now they're co leaders and they work together and they build a relationship, but it doesn't solve the problem you and I are talking about, which is that sort of like one neck to choke type of thing where the CRO really is responsible for the entire thing. And you know, my notion is that I don't, I don't think that B2B companies should have CMOs. I think they should have a head of marketing. I think someone should oversee marketing and be, bring the level of expertise that they, they would as a CRO. But if you look at titles and the way that titles communicate things and the way that titles create perceptions in the way that people respond to them and the way the C suite is constructed, I think you're creating a problem. And I think, like, what I'm, what I'm saying is that it's foregoing maybe old notions of management and old models of organizational growth and building or hierarchies that are more customer centric. And those things are going to probably have you collapse old ways of thinking about things and the ways in which you move people up the chain. Right. So in your case, right, you, you, you're like me. I mean, we're both creative. So I come from the creative side too, you know, you, very interestingly both have very similar careers. I came from the creative side of the world and I ended up selling. So it's just interesting. Most people don't, right. Most people don't have that kind of brain, but it's an interesting thing. What I'm saying is that my, my issue that I see mostly in the engagements that we have is, well, what do we do now? I mean, we agree with you. We think you're right. Like, everything you're saying is correct. And we do believe that we see all the efficiencies that would come out of having this more aligned model. But I've got people who are in the C suite that run these divisions, and I can't demote them. You know, so what do I do if I want my CRO to oversee this whole thing? And there's a silo that's created by virtue of these kind of ascendancies that we've put in place? And I think that's a problem. I'm just curious. I have a solution for it, but I'm curious to know what your thoughts are. Let's say your company had a CMO that was your partner. You know, how would a alignment organization be created with that type of a leadership hierarchy?

I think in this transition, CMOs have gotten a bit of a bad rap. I think depending on the physics of your business, depending on what you do and how you do it, right. CMOs can be highly valuable. Right. Because if you think about the marketing side of the fence, right. If you're an enterprise company that has. We sell a couple products, right. We don't really have the breadth of products. Let's say maybe a major enterprise company with 24 different products that they sell, right? Yep. Some are. Some are SaaS, some are on prem, some are professional service, like all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of different work that has to happen there with Personas and ICPs and value propositions and. And so in those type of environments, I mean, CMOs, specifically with product marketing and social and ads and all that kind of stuff, it becomes. It becomes like an expertise. It is an expertise that needs to be valued. I think one of the challenges of rolling marketing to CROs is, you know, I feel lucky that I have the creative background because I could provide a lot of value in the coaching of those folks. We have some great folks on the team, but, you know, directionally, I understand what they're trying to do and what they're trying to say. If I'm. If I. If I'm just coming from the sales side, I mean, or they're, you know, if it. And a lot of times it's just like, you don't have that visibility. So it might be easier for some folks like us that have that creative background to understand, you know, why certain things about brand are important or why certain things about how we. How we go and with, you know, PR and SEO and all that kind of stuff, you know, So I think there's, there's a ton of value there as far as like what CMOs can bring to the table. On the flip side, I think that the CRO from the revenue side of like customer success and upsell and expansion, that motion feels a lot more natural to me. For us, for a lot of C level for sales leaders, right? Yep. Right. I know what an. In a lot of ways, you know, some plant, some ways, some physics, they're like, hey, you know, sales, new logo sales, those, those reps own the deal for a year, they own them for two years or they just, you know, in a, in a thing where you're targeting the top 500 top 1000 accounts, you own it forever. Right. So. So there is that much more aligned, kind of similar skill set across the revenue, every dollar in, every dollar out that I think that skill sets. There it to me, when you talk about the value of a CMO versus the value of a CRO and how it all plays together, I think it has to go with the physics of your business and then the skill sets of your team. Good example is if you think, continue on the path, like you have CPOs and you have, you know, chief engineering folks and like, there's a lot of folks that there's, there's lines there that depending on your skill set, you may not be a great engineering leader. You just, you're just a great product leader. Right. And so how can you really provide that value to an engineering team? Right. Or there's some product leaders out there that are great, come from engineering and they're great at it. Right. So they can provide value. I think it, to me, it becomes a skill set thing of, of of where you want to, where you want to grow and learn. And I think I've, like I said, I see a lot of Valium CMOs, talk to a lot of them over the last year. And I think that there's something to be said about just the intricacies of what good marketing is today.

Yep. I'm in agreement. I would say that if I would maybe attenuate my opinion, I'm in complete agreement with you that if you're an enterprise company, you need a CMO for the very reasons you said. It's just too complex at that point. You need a person who just has a really good grasp of marketing strategy and should be a chief marketing officer.

No question.

I mean, you look at a big company like a salesforce, something like that. There has to be somebody who's overseeing that, baby. That's Just that's a big job. No doubt. I'm referring to maybe be a little more clear about companies more that fall into, let's say the 15 to 100 million or $250 million in revenues. They're not enterprise companies. You know, they're at that point where, like you said, they're, they're finding their base, they found their product market fit.

Right.

The marketing organization is critical. I'm a marketer. I mean, I have a marketing agency. So I have no mean, no, no disrespect to marketing. It's, it's really more, it has less to do with the value of marketing, has more to do with the way that the C suites constructed so that the silos are maintained in the right, you know, kind of, they're managed, if they will. Right. And I see my reason for bringing this up is I think at early stage companies, I see companies at like 10 or 15 million in revenues that have a chief marketing officer, which I think is too soon to have one for, given the reasons I'm talking about. And if I want to build a revenue engine that's aligned, I think a CRO would be the right ascension because that person, person would be able to kind of look at all things. And I also agree with you, just want to make sure I'm hitting all your points that a sales focused leader who becomes a CRO, which is you and I both know most of them come from sales and that's a problem we can get into in a second. They're right. You're right. They don't necessarily always have the right sort of brains to understand how marketing works. But you're right, they're usually customer centric because they're selling to customers and they have those relationships. They have that skill set. So you're correct about this and I'd say the correction on that would be make sure you get a really good head of marketing that does understand that, that you, you, you that reports into you so that you can kind of maybe compensate maybe for the stuff that you don't understand. But I agree. I think that the, the sales focused, sales oriented CRO has a blind spot on the marketing side, which is why it is that most of the time I see CROs not get marketing like they don't get control over it. They're not giving it, they're giving customer success a lot, maybe even product. And I guess that leads my next question, which is, and you probably entered it, but we'd get into a little bit more. What do you think Makes the right CRO. So if you're in a marketplace right now, you're a CEO of a company and you're at like 15, 20 million revenues and you're looking to create a chief revenue officer role for the reasons that you and I just said. They agree that there's an alignment issue. What's the type of background that you think would make the best CROs today in today's marketplace?

It's a good question. And I think you're, you're hitting on a, a couple points there and I want to kind of like, Sure, I, I, I could even argue that, that if you're a, if you're a $10 to $15 million startup, do you need a CRO at that point?

Yep.

Right question.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe not.

Maybe you just need a, a VP of sales or, But I, I think what makes a CRO is you have to be good at a little bit of everything, right? You have to understand marketing because you have to understand the messaging framework, the value. You understand the messaging in the brand and why that's all valuable. You have to understand where your leads coming from inbound, outbound. You have to really be good at finance. Right? There's got to be some aspect of finance in your, in your brain. One of the, one of the challenges I see with, with young sales leaders is they may come up and you know, just expect to be handed a rev build or handed the plan and here's your target and go run at it. And they're good at that. But to take the next step, building commission plans that really motivate building incentive plans, hitting targets consistently. You know, it's, it's, it's really understanding the, I go back to the physics but the, the ins and outs of your specific business and how that works from a finance to perspective. But I also like, as we move into the customer side of thing, I go back to the other side of bow tie. I think I like the idea of CROs running all revenue as far as like dollars in, dollars out, because it does give you a lot more awareness, understanding. You talk to more customers than you would if you're just a, a sales focus, new logo vp. You understand the value prop over time and how it grows. You understand why people expand. One of the, one of the best things we talk about is, is everyone talks about churn and they say why do people leave? Why do people leave? What you do are the churn codes. What are the, what are the, what are the reasons, you know, why do people stay? Why do customers Renew over and over again. Why do they see ongoing value, value out of your platform? Like, the more you understand that it's very easy to take that and bring that right in front of the sales process. Right. And so that customer that's on the fence, I'm not sure if this is the right thing for me. Well, we have four or five hundred customers that are, that are in your space doing exactly what you did. They're just a little further ahead of you. And they love our product and here's why. And it just makes it much more of a cohesive story. You, you start to avoid things like, you know, the, the, the theme of like bad fit sales. You know, we all hear, hear about that. Like sales reps just selling whatever they can and whoever they can. Like, you know, that's always the trope there. But if you know that your goal is not just to bring them in, but to bring them in, have them grow, stick around, extend lifetime value, then, then you become, then you have a sales leader that's really thinking about the whole journey of a customer, which means they're thinking about all the revenue. I think that's the, to me, those are the, those are the kinds of things. The one thing I'll say is like you say what makes a good CRO. I think what makes any good leader is I, I think about this all the time. We all talk about in sales and sales leadership about scaling businesses, right? That's what we're, we wake up in the morning, we're like, I gotta scale this business. I rarely hear us talk about scaling ourselves, right? And so one of the things that I always think about, I don't even call it talk about or focus on is I want to be a great leader for this company when it was, you know, 10 million. But I also want to be a great leader for this company when it's 100 million. And we've all heard the stories of, you know, 150 and 200 million, right? We've all heard the stories of, you know, outgrow, got to go out and find a new leader. Outgrow, got to go find a new leader, right?

Yep.

I always look at him. Imposter syndrome is somewhat of a positive, right? Because if I can, if I can work and scale myself to a certain role, then I'm going to wake up tomorrow and I'm going to learn what I don't know. I'm going to continue to learn what I don't know, not just for myself and my own career, but for my team. So that when the company's looking around, when we hit that, you know, $100 million mark or that $200 million mark, and they're looking around and go, do we have the right leaders in place for this next phase of growth? They're going to look at me and go, yeah, we do. And that's why I wake up and do what I do and continue to learn and continue to grow. And I think what makes a good CRO also makes a good leader. In any cmo, you know, cf, cpo, whatever, CEO is continually work to scale yourself as you grow into the next phase of growth for your business. Yep. So you can be the best leader you can be for your team.

Yeah. I say to my clients, you can't delegate leadership. A lot of other things you can do, you can delegate a lot of things, but that's yours. You own that. And you got to get good at it. And you have to have the right motivation for it. And I agree that it's all about self growth and self development. You know, when people see a leader who's looking to grow and develop, it shows up in the way they deal with people. You know, it makes them trust them more. You know, no one wants to work for a know at all. It's like the worst thing. And none of us are know it alls. You know, we, I mean, boy, I can, I can say that one.

Yeah, there's a, there's a great. I wanna, I don't want to be a know it all. I want to be a learn it all.

Yeah, there you go.

Like, you know, just keep, just keep learning. Just keep growing. And that's the exciting stuff. Part of, part of what we're trying to figure out is, and as you mentioned LinkedIn in the beginning is like, we're all trying to figure out what this next phase of growth is going to be in this new model for sas. And if you're not learning, you're trying to apply old models. One thing I know that doesn't work anymore is come and get a new job and just drop an old model in place and hope it works.

That's right.

We know that. Right. So the play. We know the playbook.

Yes. That's so, so accurate.

We know that. So what does that mean? Come in, learn. We have a theme at sin sevens. Like if you spend your first 30 days, no matter what role you are, you're just learning. Right. But it's learn, then listen, then lead. Right. If you can come in and do those three things in that order, you have a real shot at being successful and you have a real shot at bringing everyone, everybody along. And I think our leaders do a great job of that.

Terrific. Well, as I not surprised, this is a really great conversation. I have one final question we can kind of close out and that is, I'm curious to know, if you weren't doing this, if you weren't at since 7 or a CRO and you can do whatever you want, what would it be?

Oh man, I was talking about this the other day. I actually would love to, love to be a sports agent like a Scott. I know, I know.

The, huh, Like a Jerry Maguire, Scott, Boris type type guy.

And I know they get such a bad rap and you know, and everyone's like, you know, the sleazy agent kind of trope and stuff, but there's something to me about, and maybe, maybe, maybe it's not a sports agent, but maybe it's, maybe it's a GM or something. There's something to me about putting together a team of talented people and bringing a team together and watching them work. Like, I get the most excitement out of recruiting, hiring good talented people. Maybe you see something in them that there's a glimmer there, like, oh man, this person can really hit, hit it home. They could really come in and make an impact. And then watch them come in, watch them gel with a team and then watch them grow and do well. That's, that gives me the most joy. So, you know, I can imagine a GM of a, of a football team or a baseball team, like putting together a Moneyball team, you know, and all of a sudden that team's winning. Like, I really dig that stuff.

That's great. That's applicable to what you're doing right now, right? I mean, you are doing that. You're finding talent, you're putting them out in the field and you're developing them and you're creating a team for them to play with. That's cool. I mean, I love that. That's a neat one. I never heard that one. So is there any way that you want people to get a hold of you? Is there any way you're looking to communicate with people? How can we support you while you're everyone listening to this right now about what you're up to right now?

Oh, sure. Look, I, I, I am always reaching out and learning from thought leaders out there. And I always say, like, hey, if someone posts something great or I really like it, I'll reach out and thank them for the post. Or hey, if you Got a couple minutes, let's chat. So I'm 100% willing to reciprocate that. Right. So hit me up on LinkedIn, send me a DM in there and always happy to jump on a call and talk through anything. If I can provide any insight, I happy to do it. I see, I see. You know, what we build and what we've built at SIN7 is a great revenue engine and that is hire great people, put them in positions to win, put a great process together and then you know, how your systems all integrate with that. So I'm always open to talk those three things and how I can, how I can help those out there.

Great. Well, thank you so much, Frank. It's great, great conversation and not as I was, as I expected. I love hearing from seasoned Chief Revenue officers and you gave me some encouragement that there's some, you know, companies out there that are thinking creatively and correctly about how to deploy one. So it's encouraging. So I appreciate your time and I look forward to connecting with you more and continue our dialogues.

Warren, thanks for the invite. Love to love the time today. 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 thecrocollective.com and we look forward to having you join us next time.