Traits of a Successful CRO and How Companies Should Prepare For Hiring One with Mark Walker

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Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank and freeform conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and. And its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs, and founders who are looking to appoint the CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. So Mark and I, we met on a. It was a. It was a debate, right? The debate through. I think it was the CRO connected, correct? Right. There was a debate.

Right.

We had a good chat and then, you know, everybody knows I'm sort of a loudmouth on LinkedIn. I post a lot of stuff and I, I was talking about a specific thing that I tend to focus on quite a bit in my business, which everyone listens to me know, is this idea of CRO readiness. And I posted something and Mark weighed in and expressed a respectful disagreement, which is great. And so I said, you know, it's probably a good, good conversation to have. And I invited Mark to come and speak to me on the podcast so we can talk about it because it's a really good topic and I think both perspectives are worth hearing. Right. So what I was saying essentially is that a company needs to be ready for a Chief Revenue Officer in order to do that. There's a certain degree of work they need to do to prepare for one, which is mostly data assessment of revenue, health. Right. A lot of aspects of it, the details of which we can get into more. But essentially it's a. Work has to be done before you bring a Chief Revenue Officer on, and we can get into the reasons why. I think that. And you're. I have your comment here, Mark. Yeah, here we go. Mark's comment was. I know we don't see eye to eye on this, Warren, but to my mind, finding answers to many of those questions is the CRO's job. So even if they're not at yes. Before they join, they will revisit many of them. For me, it's one of the arguments to bring in the right CRO at the earliest stage. Without one, many companies are incapable of getting to clarity in the areas that I addressed and flatlined. So, first of all, thank you for doing this, Mark. Cool. We'll have a good time. Welcome. If you don't mind. I mean if you could, I don't know, I guess expound a bit on your thoughts on this and then we can talk about. I think, if I may say, I think we agree on the basics. I think it's a when question, not an if question. Okay, great. So let's let. What do you, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think there's probably more but if I remember the post correctly, where a lot of the, you know, a lot of the structure, the processes, the important answers that come with scaling go to market in the post, your viewers, they should really be in place before a CRO comes in. So yeah, understanding the data health of, of the business, having good processes in place, having having like strong language, market fair or mess.

Yeah, I agree and that's a big mistake. Yeah, we, I know we're on the same page there. It's, it's a big problem. It's a major one mainly because for both parties are screwed because the CRO doesn't get the job they want and the company doesn't get the value out of the title. And so it's just, it's a, it's a bad thing. But the other issue is there's two parts to this, right? So there's, there's the, you know that I have a training program for chief revenue officers and it's not like any Tom, Dick and Harry. I only have people who are in my view probably ready for the job in some respects they just need that sort of last mile. Right. And these are people whom again let's get more specific. We're talking about companies whom are probably hiring their first CRO and people who are likely getting there, maybe their first or second CRO role. So really we're narrowing it down to like very specific situations where companies are at the point where they haven't had one before, they know they need one and they're going to hire their first one and they're going to probably make a couple of common mistakes. Now here's the. Where I think you and I might differ because I agree with you. I'm. I think in the best world they should do it that way. But here's why it doesn't happen. I'm almost very rarely ever see it happen is because at the stage that you and I are talking about, there is muscle memory at early stages where customer acquisition and top line growth is the main thing that's almost anyone's focused on just almost obsessively. And so if I bring on a chief revenue officer, the almost like unavoidable desire is going to want to have that person get into the sales role in some way, right? Whether it be managed sales or being deals or closed deals. Because a lot of the obvious reasons you mentioned in your response, which was focusing on investor relationship, right? Getting another evaluation, maybe getting another seed round, whatever it might be, and all those things are generally dependent on top line growth. That's why you get that money. And so your, your business is so focused on that. If I'm going to spend a half a million dollars on an executive and I'm not having him in deals, it seems off purpose given the meta goal that I'm trying to accomplish at that stage. So what happens is they don't do it. They should, but they don't. And what happens is, is that CRO gets yanked into a sales leadership role mainly because the organization loses their intestinal fortitude to give this person the time they need to focus on strategic growth. And they say, all right, Steve, we've had enough. Three months is fine. Thank you for the report. Could you please close a couple deals? Because investors are flipping out about your costs and I need to justify it. And once that happens, you're never get out of it.

That's it.

Because if you do a good job at that, which you probably will, they're going to keep you there forever. Because now all of a sudden I can justify your existence and it's easier for me to keep you around. And that's what I see happens, that companies don't have a disciplinary ability to resist their dynamic objectives and think longer term. So what happens is they bring on the CRO. And the CRO is if it's a great one, which by the way, you and I agree, it has to be someone else they're doing. A good one would come in and say, look, I really don't want to get into any execution until I really know what's going on. I want to perform a diagnostic of the company and as a good CRO, I should have a process for that or I know a third party that does whatever it is. And I need the time, I need the. But I, but I tell my. I don't call students. I hate that. It's like a professor. But you know, the people that take my course, I tell them that the four things as a CRO you need are the proper authority, the proper autonomy, the access to resources. That's just not money, but it's people and technologies and you need the proper Runway. Runway is the hardest one to get. Getting time to do things, there's never enough time to do anything because in that environment everyone wants to move so quickly. But the assessment that you and I are talking about, you're correct, it takes time. So I think the nuance I just want to propose here is that I'm not, I'm not saying that the third party assessment should be be done in completion before you hire a CRO because I agree it would take too long. It has to be started and it has to be conducted with an understanding of how long it takes. And I believe that in, in our process, if, if I were a CRO is brought on during the assessment, whom it becomes the sponsor of it, so that there's an agreement with the leadership that the assessment needs to be thorough, it needs to meet these criteria. It should, that's going to require this much time and investigation, it should yield these sort of results and that in the best situation it would be like, just say, like a company has identified somebody in the company that they want to promote to be a chief revenue officer and that would be a time when this sort of process would start. But sometimes it doesn't work the way, sometimes they have to go out and find one. You know, that's when it gets tricky. So anyway, I, I, I, I'm sort of, I know in a long lengthy way here what I'm saying is while I am inclined to theoretically agree with you, I'm a realist and I'm looking at the world and I just don't see it ever happening that way. And because it doesn't, you need processes in place to mitigate those realities that it just doesn't usually work out. So that's why it is that I bake this in because I'm sort of predicting that the resistance of the organization could be the problem that we encounter with this.

And I completely hear where you're coming from. CEOs, founders, they're under an immense pressure and they're all on these compressed cycles, right? The next funding round is probably the moment they've closed one, it's 18 months.

Away, they're thinking about the next one.

That, so they have to, they have to show results. Therefore they will force their executive team to step on the gas and generally provide results pretty quickly. So if you're going to bring on a high six figure, salaried C level executive, you want to see results down well quick, right? Like you don't want them pontificating on strategy that may or may not hit top line growth 9, 12, 15 months from now, right? I get that the pressure is immense. So I think. So one of the things that definitely resonates that we are totally aligned on is that you have to. Before you bring in a CRO, you should really know who your ICP is.

Spent a half a million dollars on an executive and I'm not having him in deals. It seems off purpose given the meta goal that I'm trying to accomplish at that stage. So what happens is they don't do it. They should, but they don't. And what happens is, is that CRO gets yanked into a sales leadership role mainly because the organization loses their intestinal fortitude to give this person the time they need to focus on strategic growth. And they say, all right, Steve, we've had enough. Three months is fine. Thank you for the report. Could you please close a couple deals? Because investors are flipping out about your costs and I need to justify it. And once that happens, you're never get out of it. That's it. Because if you do a good job at that, which you probably, probably will, they're going to keep you there forever. Because now all of a sudden I can justify your existence and it's easier for me to keep you around. And that's what I see happens. The companies don't have a disciplinary ability to resist their dynamic objectives and think longer term. So what happens is they bring on the CRO. And the CRO is if it's a great one, which by the way, you and I agree, it has to be. Some of those are doing. A good one would come in and say, look, I really don't want to get into any execution until I really know what's going on. I want to perform a diagnostic of the company. And as a good CRO, I should have a process for that or I know a third party that does whatever it is. And I need the time, I need the. But I. But I tell my. I don't call students. I hate that. It's like a professor. But you know, the people that take my course, I tell them that the four things as a CRO you need are the proper authority, the proper autonomy, the access to resources. That's just not money, but it's people and technologies. And you need the proper Runway. Runway is the hardest one to get. Getting time to do things. There's never enough time to do anything because in that environment, everyone wants to move so quickly. But the assessment that you and I are talking about, you're correct. It takes time. So I think the nuance I just want to propose here is that I'm not, I'm not saying that the third party assessment should be be done in completion before you hire a CRO because I agree it would take too long. It has to be started and it has to be conducted with an understanding of how long it takes. And I believe that in, in our process, if, if I were a CRO is brought on during the assessment, whom it becomes the sponsor of it. So that there's an agreement with the leadership that the assessment needs to be thorough, it needs to meet these criteria, it should, that's going to require this much time and investigation, it should yield these sort of results and that in the best situation it would be like, just say like a company has identified somebody in the company that they want to promote to be a chief revenue officer and that would be a time when this sort of process would start. But sometimes it doesn't work the way, sometimes they have to go out and find one. You know, that's when it gets tricky. So anyway, I, I, I, I'm sort of, I know in a long lengthy way here what I'm saying is while I am inclined to theoretically agree with you, I'm a realist and I'm looking at the world and I just don't see it ever happening that way. And because it doesn't, you need processes in place to mitigate those realities that it just doesn't usually work out. So that's why it is that I baked this in because I'm sort of predicting that the resistance of the organization could be the problem that we encounter with this.

And I completely hear where you're coming from. CEOs, founders, they're under an immense pressure and they're all on these compressed cycles. Right. The next funding round is probably the moment they've closed one, it's 18 months.

Away, they're thinking about the next one.

That, so they have to, they have to show results. Therefore they will force their executive team to step on the gas and generally provide results pretty quickly. So if you're going to bring on a high six figure salaried C level executive, you want to see results down well quick. Right? Like you don't want them pontificating on strategy that may or may not hit top line growth 9, 12, 15, 15 months from now. Right. I get that the pressure is immense. So I think so one of the things that definitely resonates that we are totally aligned on is that you have to, before you bring in a CRO, you should really know who your ICP is. Right. You should have a sense of 100% most companies.

But you know and I know that most companies don't. Right? I mean, not even close. I've seen incredible missteps. There's.

Yeah, but it's a small component of. So no founder or CEO should ever delegate finding product market fit. Right? That is their job. And I do think there's a big mistake if you bring in a heavy hitting CRO and expect them to go and figure out product market fit for your organization. But maybe one route to avoiding the issue, the pragmatic issue that you raised, which is, well look, how do you stop a CRO just sliding into being ahead of sales is do they have, maybe one of the prerequisites is do you have a strong head of sales? Do you have a good VP of sales? They are very capable of executing the sales playbook. They know how to sell to your big customers. There's confidence there. But what they're not good at is the longer term strategic thinking. They're weaker on the board reporting. Maybe they don't quite have that presence or that nous to present in that way. Maybe they're good in their swim lane, but they're really crappy at pulling together all the stakeholders across product and marketing and cs. And their view is a bit infantile still. Which is, well, once I've closed the number, I'm going to throw over the fence and I don't really care what happens to it. You know, they're, they're, I've heard this expression that they're buying churn, right? But that's, they don't care. They're hitting their number. Right? So I think in that circumstance you might, you know, you know, your icp, you're selling consistently and you've got a playbook, but you've got, and you've got a strong sales leader in sales but they don't have the maturity to operate and act like a chief revenue officer. That's when I think you could bring in a chief revenue officer. You might not have all those other things, right? You don't necessarily have all the KPIs nailed down. Actually one of the reasons for bringing in a CRO is you don't have sales and marketing alignment. You've got possibly two strong characters who are rowing in slightly different directions. And a CRO comes in to help hopefully cure those things. And they don't get pulled into being a de facto VP of sales because they've got a good VP of sales. They just, you know, hopefully coach them into a more mature position. But Maybe that's one of the nuances here. Right.

I agree.

Yeah. If you don't have a good VP of sales ahead of sales, don't hire a CRO and overpay and hope they are going to be that person. That's a mistake. But if you do, then a CRO is a good, good position to come in.

And 100% we're in agreement. And here's what I encounter is what we're doing here and which is good, is we're laying out sort of like a call, like a CRO appointment playbook, so to speak. Right. And, you know, if you had the wherewithal, you know, you'd get those ducks in a row and be thinking about these things. And maybe, you know, the efforts I'm doing and other people, within five years, these will become standard things. No one would think about them. They would just do it because that's just the way you do things. And there's a lot of those. I mean, you know, there's a lot of things that we do already that have been standardized and codified because they've been screwed up so much that people finally learned a lesson. I think this is probably one of them. And I would say, yes, I would say if I was to advise a founder, I would say, and I think this is another thing you probably disagree with is, you know, when's the right time to bring in a chief revenue officer? I think if you bring them on too early, then you're probably gonna throw them into sales because what else are they going to. I mean, if there isn't enough of a complicated organization for a CRO to oversee, if there's not enough critical mass, then you're going to want that person to get into something. And where are you going to put them? You're going to put them in sales. That's what happens. And so I do think that the stage is good. I've had companies whom, despite knowing these things and feeling that this makes sense, they brought a chief revenue officer in, maybe pre 10 million, and it just became difficult for them not to have the person, you know, be involved in the sales function in some way or another, even if they had good sales leaders, just because it was just an easier way for them. Again, it's all about justifying opex. It's expensive. So, you know, if. If there's. There's enough to do. So I would say that, that that's another problem we can, we can discuss. But let's just say for the sake of it that you bring on One. But prior to doing so, there should be a process by which you evaluate your icp. And there's a way in which you can do that. It's not just like a. Like a Persona, you know, or like a buyer Persona. It's more than that. It's a lot of things. It's how much money they spend and how many times they renew. And, you know, it's quite a bit there. And I think that you got to do a good job of that and be able to really make that clear. And then you're right. The second part is you need to have a great sales leader who you know you can count on, but probably is great as a sales leader. But maybe you wouldn't necessarily promote to be a CRO. Now, that's another mistake. You see, a great sales leader like this person. I want to be this person to make my CRO, because, again, this is the issue. This has to do with xenophobia, in my opinion. I think. I think that if I've got somebody in my company that I know where I work well with and does a good job, I'd rather take a risk of promoting that person to bringing in somebody new that I don't know, you know, because now that brings in a whole slew of other consciousness that I can't predict. This person may turn out to be pain in the neck, or I might be, you know. Right. And so I'd rather go with the devil I know and take a risk. I'm working with somebody in this capacity right now called me and said, my boss wants me to be the chief revenue officer. I'm an incredible executional salesperson. I'm very proud of it. And we had this conversation just last night. I was like, do you want to be the CRO? Do you want that job? Or is it more like your boss sees you as a convenient choice because, you know, you need to think this through. And I don't think people take. Put the brakes on and ask those questions sometimes. And so what happens is that sales leader that you talk about, that's great. Many times is used as the stepping stone for leadership as opposed to let's bring in somebody and keep that person in the seat they're in because I'd rather them stay there. So, you know, these are the sort of, like, disciplinary things that leaders have to think about when they're making these decisions. And you and I already shared they're under a lot of pressure to make these decisions, and they tend not to sometimes think this stuff through as clearly as they could.

No, I agree. And look, it's very hard if you've got an ambitious, high performing sales leader who naturally thinks they're, they're the right choice for that role to pass them over. Right. You know, you don't want to then churn that person out of the organization.

It's a tough call. I agree.

It's really tough. I, I'm really interested. Like, very genuine question on. You've mentioned a few times that you don't want to get the CRO drawn into being a de facto sales leader. And we both agree on that. Yeah. But they also, I've also seen scenarios where you've got chief revenue officers who are so ivory tower in their approach because they haven't rolled their sleeves up and they, you know, they, they're not getting on customer calls, they're not closing deals that, you know, that they're trying to tweak the dials and that, you know, they spend a lot of time in spreadsheets and they're good at putting together presentations and they're great with internal stakeholders, but they actually don't know the market. And so they, they can actually steer the ship in the wrong direction. So, you know, as you think about the CRO playbook and what it takes, what would, what's your view of the right amount of time and depth that they should spend in sales to understand how the product works, how it, how it gets sold, what the key challenges and pain points of the market are without being drawn into becoming a salesperson? Right.

And it's a fine line. It is. It's such a tough one. I mean, I have so many thoughts on this, mainly because, you know, your question is interesting in that. And it's not. It's just an observation. I think it's one that reflects everything. Is it, there's an assumption that CRO should come from sales. I don't know if that's even a proper assumption, but it is the way it is right now. Right. I mean, it seems to be the place where they come in from. There's this sort of, I don't know, stigmatized trajectory you go to. You could be a salesperson and you come a CRO. You know, in my work, what I found happened over the last. I've been doing this now for almost five years is I'm seeing more and more rev ops people become sales.

Yeah. Okay.

And they're really good at it for the reasons that are obvious. Right. Because they have a really good 360 view of a business. Right. But they have to have other qualities. And what you bring up is a good point. And that is, I've never walked around carrying a bag. How the hell am I going to oversee a sales department or even be a leader when people look at me like I'm some snook who's never even went out on a sales call before? And you know, salespeople are tough that way. You know, you have to be part of that club. And I'm going to say, screw you. I'm not going to listen to you. You don't even called a deal before. You know, you don't know what it's like to go out on the road and get rejected. So you know, which has me question a lot of ways in which you're talking about things because you don't come to me with the right level of empirical experience to determine that you know what you're talking about. I agree. So it's not an easy thing. I think that, you know, I'm inclined to think that even though I have seen a number of really, really effective, frankly, very effective chief Revenue officers come from revops, I tend to think to your question, and I agree with you, is that you sort of do have to be talking to customers and selling things and listening to where they buy and things like that to know the market. And sales is the best place for that because you're in the field and you're mixing it up and you're fighting hand to hand combat and you're closing.

Right.

And you just, you get a, you get a sense of things that you don't get anywhere else in that position. So I would say that, you know, the optimal situation, which doesn't happen often, unfortunately, as often as I'd like, is you get some incredible salesperson who's really dynamic and has a really great business sense and they rise to the ranks and they sort of have this long term vision that they want to run a business or maybe be a chief executive officer someday. And the CRO is an incredible stepping stone for that. By the way, CROs make great CEOs a great job for that. Just because they have such a good handle on a lot of the parts of the business. Most of the time. Most people that go into sales, they go into sales for the reasons everyone goes into sales. Because it's a great place to be independent, make money.

Yeah.

And they have a skill for it and they're really good at it, you know, and they have the ability to persuade people and be very, you know, convincing and they have good communication skills, and they understand that stuff, but they didn't really necessarily have ambitions to be some sort of strategic leader, and now they're in that position. And so the other problem exists, which is they don't have the strategic chops to be able to run the whole thing, like you mentioned before. So I think the sort of candidate you want, and this is where it gets really hard, is someone who has sort of leadership written all over them. You know, there are certain people just. They just sort of seem like they think about things in a more bigger, more strategic way, right, when they solve problems. And these are people who tend to be curious about things. These are the kind of people who, when they run a sales organization, they meet with marketing a lot without being asked to because they want to know what marketing is doing, right?

Like, they just do it vice versa. To your point, you know, if you're going to be a CRO, you could come from a marketing background, but no doubt you better be curious about sales.

And understand you have to be really curious about it. And you can see those people. I mean, you and I probably have seen enough, right? I've managed a lot of people who I just look at, and I'm like, this person's great. I mean, this person's just. I don't even have to ask this person. They're looking. They're. They're looking under every rock all the time without me asking. Or it's the other thing, too. When you see a salesperson who's a great sales leader and without asking, you always see them giving advice to the other salespeople on their team, helping them out. Okay, this person, obviously is someone who could be leading people because they naturally do it. You know, you have to be observant, and you have to look for people that naturally display those qualities, because if they're doing it without being asked to, that means that they're already built that way and they're going to be really good at it.

Leadership's not a title, right?

It's not. You can't outsource it either. You know, I could. I could delegate things. I could say, I need you to be my rev ops person and run all my numbers and stuff, because I'm not that great at it. But I can't have you say, I want you to be a leader for me. I mean, that's. I got to do that. That's. That's my job, you know, And I think that, you know, kind of get back to the point we were talking about here is, you know, it's a very complex decision when you're bringing on this role as you. And I agree because of its intended complexity and the infected impact it's going to have on so many different parts of the business that if it's not thought through properly, it's invariably going to be a failure more often than a success. And that's why I see a lot of CROs don't last very long and why I hear a lot of CEOs tell me that they hired the wrong person and it was a nightmare and it really didn't work out. And I look at it like a marriage, you know, I mean, I know you're married, I assume you are and I am. You know, it's a complicated relationship, you know, I mean, when you, when you say I do in front of your, your family and friends, you're essentially making what should be like a 50 year commitment. Right? That's a daunting thing. And it's daunting because the way in which you courted each other and the way you met each other and the way you embraced each other and made a decision to be together, the context around that's going to change a lot in 10 years and 15 years and 20 years. And you'd be able to have to kind of think longer term about what the real purpose of it is. And yeah, I just don't think we live in a very. The SaaS world in particular is a transactional environment. It's not like, you know, very few of these companies are looking to build 20, 30, 40 year long businesses. They want to get out, they want to be acquired in 10 years or something. So these are like weird dynamics that affect the way people make these decisions.

No. 100%. I think you've touched on a really interesting point that may go into your checklist at some point, but a really key thing is a values match. If you're going to hire CRO for a role, whether it's internal or external, if you're going to bring someone in external, you have to figure out what the value match is. How do they operate? How do they think through problems? Do they have the same levels of integrity as the CEO and the rest of the executive team? Are they curious in that way? I think that's often overlooked because I think you bring a CRO in to do a job like any other executive. So you focus very much on their experience and their skill sets, maybe a little bit on their attitude and you don't dive deep enough into is this a good values match? Right. Is this going to work out from a, from a relationship perspective. So I think that's, that's a really good point.

It is. It's a hard one to measure. It's a very ethereal thing. It's not like I can give you a test for it. I mean, in a way, you know, I had an interesting experience where it happened once and I was very impressed with it. I had an interview for pretty, you know, pretty senior level position. It was an unusual process they put me through. It had a lot of problems and weird stuff that I reacted to. And I just reacted to these things in the way that I do. You know, I tried to work through them and later on they told me that they were all intentional. They wanted to see how I worked through those things. They were observing my reaction to these things, to see the behaviors that I displayed because it was going to be indicative of the way I would when I did other things. I was like, that's brilliant. It was, it was brilliant. And you know, it turned out that they liked the way that I dealt with them, so it worked out. But if I wasn't in that situation, you know, it's hard to put someone in a scenario and say, if this happened, what would you do? Because you're going to give them the answer that you think they want as opposed to throw them into the situation and see what they do and then you're going to get the answer you really want, you know. Yeah, that might be one way. I don't know how to do it.

But I think another is, I mean particularly if you're hiring at an exec or even at a VP level, I think there's a couple of interesting behaviors you can observe without directing people to them during the interview process. And it's how independent are they in action. And so I've, I've interviewed for VP sales roles to sit, sit under me as when I was CRO. It's amazing, amazing how many of these senior leaders didn't sign up for the platform. They didn't test it, didn't speak to a potential user. They have no view on the market. They are just going for a role because they kind of want the role, right? And it's just insane, right? And if ever I was to go into role, I would, I would sign up for Pat. You know, I sign up for the newsletter, I look for typos in the footer and you know, like, you know, you want to be, have this bias to action in a startup. And I think it's. The problem is when you get to a VP or a CRO level, sometimes you've spent so long out of the doing that it's below you. Right. You outsource that to other people. And for me, that tells me that they're not going to be partly they're not going to be a detailed, orientated person. Then they might, they might not have the bias to action. But more importantly of all, talking about values, they're not necessarily going to be customer centric. Right. Like I want someone that's customer centric. And I asked you the question around how long should you spend maybe doing sales if you're on board and as a CRO, But I think this is a wider problem. Maybe goes outside of the scope scope of this podcast. But I think the whole C suite doesn't spend enough time with customers. Right. In general, they should all be spending what, at least 20% of their time a week. If you're a CPO, if you're a CFO, if you're CMO. Sara, how can you possibly make good decisions if you're not speaking to customers practically every day? Right. You are uninformed and your opinions that inform your strategy are all secondhand from your team, which is just not the right way to run a business.

It is completely in line with this conversation. It's the core thing, I think, that has to happen. I think the CRO role, one of the reasons why it's become maybe broken is because of this reason, is that the CRO role is a very. It shouldn't be, but it's viewed as a very inwardly beneficial role. It helps us as a company, helps us align things and get more money and more profitability. But it's not enough about customer experience and customer outcomes, which it should be. I think the central theme, I haven't shared it with you, but I have sort of a framework for the role. The customer is at the center of a CRO's job.

Yeah.

So I look at it like I, we're very aligned on this. I look at it like almost I've shared this story probably a year, a couple of times. So people can be sick of me saying it, but it helps. You know, when you are single, you're very self indulgent because you can be. I mean, your life is, you know, about your own, you know, like, I mean, you have some people around altruists and when they're really young, they do. A lot of most people though, are, are experiencing things. You're out there figuring out how to have as much fun as possible or Learn or stimulate yourself. And when you're dating, it's, it's, it's very much a very self centered sort of endeavor. But when you have kids, it changes, you change everything. You change what you eat, you change how you, where you live. Everything changes because you, if you're a good parent, you know your kids are more important than, and the things that they're going to affect them are more important than you. And you change your things. You don't do the same things anymore and you don't feel bad about it because it's worth the sacrifice for the benefit of people whom you care about. More companies should operate this way. Customers should come first. So, so if I'm making a decision about anything in the company, I should be asking myself, how is this going to impact our customer? When I say customer, I don't mean people who are paying for our product and services. I'm talking about somebody who could pay for our product services because they are potentially a customer and I should be thinking about them way before they buy from me, not just after. So, you know, if I'm doing a marketing campaign or a sales outreach campaign, my question should be what's the experience going to be for someone whom I might want to talk to about working with us? Right, because it's going to have an impact how they're going to be treated by us. And we should be thinking about it much longer than not just when they're in our, in our spreadsheet as a customer. And you know, the problem is they don't at all. It's all very much about customers are sort of a means to an end in the beginning. How do we get more money into the coffers so we can get more pipeline or whatever. And I do think that if you're a CRO who comes to the table with that sort of context, you're going to ask much different questions of the people that you work with. You're going to have them take actions that have a different context and it's going to have a different outcome for the people that you're trying to talk to. Which means I would say if I work for somebody like that who is leading that way, I'd probably realize I better be talking to my customers more often because if this is the way we're operating here, I better know that. Whereas if I'm not, I won't because I'm really worried about my siloed metrics, how many leads I get people, how many qualified leads I get to, that's going to be really all I give a shit about because that's how I'm being measured. So I just don't think that the. It's a leadership problem. I do think that's what the case is. So to that maybe checkbox would be your right would be. You made a very good point. How customer centric is somebody. Did they, did they even evaluate what the experience is like to have our product? Are they a customer? You know, did they pay for the product? You know, I do this a lot. I sign up for things. I'm just interested in how big, how you're handled when you get signed up for something. This is why I started my business.

Yeah.

You know, it's fascinating though this stuff isn't really talked about at the leadership level enough. No, we're very, very, very focused on which understandably I'm not naive to business outcomes. Yeah, but you know.

They'Re an outcome of being a. Oh, they should be an outcome of being a customer centric company that provides value in exchange for revenue and, and the revenue grows that way. But yeah, I think people see it the wrong way around. Right. The, the revenue is the, the only thing and all the KPIs that lead to it and they forget that there is a customer in the middle of.

Someone on the end who's paying for something.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I would curious to know because my theory on this, it's a weird one. It's almost like the, you know, I'm not, I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stroke but you know, I understand systems, how they operate and that is that if you look at the, like in the military industrial complex, you know, there's a lot of effort to try and create as much, you know, need for that certain type of.

Yeah.

Infrastructure as possible. And you have to create conflict to make it happen. It's a, it's a messed up thing. Similarly, you know, when the technology businesses first came into the fore in the late 90s, I mean the early 90s, you know, like 200099 when the real first big tech boom came. I think there's a lot of glimmer in the eye. People like wow, these are interesting business opportunities that you know, there's a lot of fast returns in this business because of the nature of it and that over time an investment industrial complex was created which is, you know, we can create these portfolios, we can create a management system where we can invest in a whole bunch of different companies have a very specific type of model of how they go to market and some of them will end up flipping over and becoming profitable and the other ones won't, but it'll, it'll balance out, we'll make a lot of money. And as a result like this whole infrastructure was created of how to manage portfolios of companies through portfolio investments. And I think a lot of that's driving this stuff because if I going to open a business, I need to go get money from those people. And they have a very specific model of how they manage these things, which is very much in line with the way we're talking about. It's about to get this thing going. We've got to look at quarterly returns, got to get our money back to us this period of time so we can have enough the Runway in order to be able to get the next funding round. And so there's a consistency across this stuff that took the focus away from the engineer who created a product because they wanted to solve a problem for people that they care about. And then they're locked into this weird model where all of a sudden they're saying, yeah, we get that Steve. You know, we know it's a great product and you can help people but you got to get it done faster because you know, we need our money back next month. And they're like, yeah, I know, I don't want to piss my customers off that much. We understand that, but do it anyway because you know, we just gave you half a million bucks and we need it back. Okay. And so I think there's this weird like, you know, I think that there's a recalibration that needs to take place because I do think the culture of the investment community and it's not to denigrate them, God bless them, because they give money to people to grow businesses and some make it fine. I do think though that the nature of it is very anti customer at its core. At its. Because it sort of needs to be in some respects. You know, I'm not, I'm using a blanket here. I know there's a lot of probably that disagree and there's probably some that aren't, but generally speaking this is the main issue. I hear most of the people that I work with that are CEOs and founders tell me that, yeah, I'm under a lot of pressure from our board. They just don't want to take that kind of time.

You know, it's a really interesting thought. So you know, I've worked in the VC backed environment for a long time and, and yeah, there are, there are clearly many cons that come with the pros of taking VC money. And I think a lot of founders are naive in all honesty, taking it right. Often they're first time founders, they've not necessarily worked in the industry before so they don't know the implied trade offs for taking that ash or you are on typically this treadmill that then takes you to a big exit or not. If you don't go on a big exit, no one's interested in you, the company could quite easily die or they're sold for pennies on the dollar and no one cares. Right. But I think the best leaders and okay, maybe it's an unfair example because they are literally generationally one of the best leaders we're going to see. Like Jeff Bezos has always managed to take this very customer centric, longer term.

View, unique individual, no question about it, truly unique.

But what can you learn from him? You know, everything from the quirky, well, there's always an empty seat at the table in the board because that is the customer. But my point is if you are a good leader, good CEO, good CRO, you do have to know that the fastest route to profitable growth and again we're all very aware by now the end of ZIRP has been and gone. Everyone has to do growth, not at all costs, but actually the growth expectations haven't really changed much. You just have to do it profitably. The only way you can sustainably do that is by looking after your customers. It's by being deeply customer centric. And if you don't do that and you sort of rob Peter to pay Paul, you will get found out, you'll get found out by the market and you won't continue to raise. So maybe a long winded way of saying I believe the two models can work together so long as the founders stay true to that customer centricity and figure out how to tap into it and build their systems around it. It is when they panic and they forget about the customer and they live in a database and they live in a spreadsheet and they don't speak to the customers every day that things go wrong and actually they stop growing.

I agree.

And they look tactical and erroneous and outside of the customer centricity. So yeah, long winded way of saying I agree with you, there's a lot of pressures and it often leads founders to make poor choices. But I don't believe they have to be opposing forces if managed correctly.

I agree. I think there is a need for and maybe a rise of a more conscious leader whom goes into investment situations with a little bit more strength. Right. And says, hey look, I want to find an investor that is more aligned with the way I want to run things. I mean, Bezos didn't take any money, but that was different because he sort of had a very clear vision. He was a unique person. But it's a great lesson. I read the book, his book and story about his business and you know, it's an incredible story and I think it's one that everyone should read because, because look, it's not surprising that every single human being on the planet uses Amazon every day. It's an amazing thing. So anyway, just switch gears a bit because I want to make sure that we get a chance to just talk a bit about you. So tell us a little bit more. What are you up to? Are you a fractional CRO? Do you have a role at a company? What's your sort of business and how are you in the market right now?

Yeah, so I've fairly recently switched gears myself from being a fractional Chief revenue officer over the last couple of years to taking the plunge as a co founder of a SaaS business. So it's an interesting switch in positions from CRO to CEO and co founder of the business. It's early days. We've only been in market for less than six months. We launched in February. We have our first dozen or so customers and we are going through those early stages of a startup's journey, finding product, market fit, making sure we service our existing customers to give them maximum value out of the product and so on. And what I'm really looking forward to in this journey is a couple of things. One is going back to the beginning. I love creating, I love building, I love solving problems and this kind of colors. Maybe some of our previous debate around can a CRO going at an early stage. I just happen to be that type of individual that loves going in and finding all the problems and fixing and building them, etc. So I'm really excited about that. Again, being incredibly customer centric and just working on the, on, on the call face with, with customers to solve their problems is, is really, really exciting. But, but also I've, I've optimized my career towards learning. Right. And switching roles is enabling me to learn a lot. Right. I'm, I'm learning things that I've not done before including investor relations and fundraising and, and yeah, you know, the position as a CEO is, is very different to a CRO even at an early stage business. So yeah, I'm really excited about it and it's going to be an interesting journey.

What is the business? What do you do?

Yes, of course. So Revved up is building the content infrastructure for go to market teams. So what that means in practical terms is complex. Organizations that evolve over time have many, many different data points and inputs that sit around all of their different systems and teams. What we do is we connect to those systems, those data points they get run through the Rev Dub platform and revd up, then turns that into content that is designed to resonate with prospects, with potential customers across all your different distribution channels. So everything from email to social media to even call scripts to adverts, PPC, etc. And if you imagine, Warren, you've worked across a lot of different organizations, things are just changing and evolving all of the time. There's always a new product release, there's a shift in messaging, there's a new ICP you want to go after, there's a new market you're moving into. Perhaps there's something external, a new competitor's launch. There's been a big shift in the macroeconomic environment. There's generally something shifting quite substantially in an organization's world probably every month, but certainly every quarter. To try and cascade the shift in that messaging in the context of the business through to the front lines of the distribution channels is a herculean effort that generally most people fail at. Most organizations fail at because it's just so complex and it's happening so often. So what revved up is doing is looking to make that far easier, more automated so that you can adjust your customer facing messaging and content in real time to the switching context of the business.

That makes sense.

Great.

And I assume this is a SaaS business, it's like a subscription based business, correct?

It is, yes. Yeah.

Well, great. Did you take funding?

We are on the cusp of it.

Okay. I assume you're going to apply some of the things we talked about. When you go down that road, you have good awareness of it. So we'll probably talk more about that.

We absolutely will. Yes. I'm extremely aware of the exchange we are making as an organization in taking that money. But yeah, we believe it's the right thing to do for us. It's a huge market, it's a very big pain point and so my belief is we can stay genuinely customer centric, but we can deploy that capital in an efficient and effective way that will allow us to get to more customers faster.

Great. Well look really cool. Really great talking with you I really appreciate you in accepting my invitation to have this. I'm not surprised it ended up becoming a much more richer conversation. It was great and I've enjoyed it.

Thank you. Yeah, great.

So it's, it's revved up, right? Revv.

Revpar. Yeah.

Make sure you get some, some, some, some inquiries from this, you know. Okay. Well, look, Mark, thank you. I love it and I hope to see you around. I hope that we end up bumping into each other. I don't know we ever make it over the States. I'm working right now to try and get, I don't know if you know, there's a Chief Revenue Officer Summit that I chair and they do operate in the UK and they have events there. So I'm trying to see if I can get myself out there to do, to do one. So.

Amazing. If not. Yeah, I will be over in the States. No doubt a fair bit in, in Q3. There's so many events happening around, around the States in September, October. So yeah, be lovely to meet in person at some point.

Yeah. I'm in the New York Metro. So many events here. I'm in the city all the time. Time. Again, thank you. This is a lot of fun and I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

I really enjoyed it. Thanks Warren. Have a wonderful weekend. You take care.

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.