What CRO Recruiters Look for in Top Revenue Leaders with Wayne Starritt

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 B2 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. Welcome to this episode of the Ciro Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zenna. I'm the founder of the Ciro Collective and you know, every once in a while I get introduced many times just through random inbound, in mails, through LinkedIn and stuff from people whom are just so like minded that I'm amazed. It's amazing, like someone who has sort of independently stumbled upon the same exact problem I have and articulates it the same exact way. It feels great. It's almost like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you know, and these people are all like freaking out about seeing these weird shapes and they meet somebody else that sees the same shape. It's like they feel like they found somebody that you know, just like that. And my guest, Wayne Starrett, you know, he's this gentleman from the UK who reached out to me, said, you know, I've been doing the work on this thing and this is what I discovered. And it's like the guy's talking like my brain. And I thought, okay, this is amazing. But the other thing about it that's really interesting is that Wayne works on the hiring and recruiting side of the Chief Revenue Officer kind of supply chain as you will. And as I've spoken about many times, that this is a problem is the way that CROs are hired is, and I, I believe is actually the nucleus of the problem. I think that if you could sol that we'd solve a lot of the problems. So when I met Wayne, we spoke and I found out that he's trying to solve it in the same way I am. I thought, well, not only do we have to talk, we probably have to figure out a way to collaborate. So we're working on that. But today I have him here. So, Wayne, welcome. Thank you. And thank you so much for joining me.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Great. So Wayne, I mean, you started this. You know, just tell your story the same way you share with me. Like, how did you Sort of come across this stumble upon this notion that CROs are sort of not really being appointed properly. Like what, what sort of led you to that conclusion? Which seems in my opinion really sort of obtuse thing like I came up with.

Yeah, so, so a couple of things really. It was, it was direct experience in, in my previous role I was COO of an executive search boutique business. So we worked with private equity back to SaaS businesses and we had two main offerings. The first one was that we would work with CROs to build out their sales org underneath them. So from them down to account executives, senior account executives, we'd help build out that org. And so I worked over a number of years with a number of CROs to do that and so really got a good feel of the problems that they face within their own department. But the second offering that we had was traditional executive search anywhere across the C suite within those same private equity backed SaaS businesses. And I found that we and other businesses often struggled on the CRO appointments. So it was this kind of an experience of being there and doing it that they were kind of the hardest ones to appoint. And also just the pure data warrant in terms of, you know, 18 months average tenure for CRO. I know it's often quoted, sometimes people say 17, but you know, either way it's not enough. You know, typically it's, it's failing. And my experience was that clients were after things are trying to run searches in the same way they were running appointments for CFOs, CEOs, even CPOs. And the metrics that we were looking at didn't feel like they were the most important metrics to get success. You know, I think in terms of my executive search approach, I'm a big fan of the WHO methodology by Jeff Smarr. And that's about working out the mission of this individual and where they go from here. And I found that too much of the qualification was, okay, we're company A, our competitors are company B, C, D, E, let's go and find the CROs from there. And it just has proven to not be working. And because it's too much of a focus on domain and external factors and the size of revenues and such like, rather than actually what's the internal challenge problems that are being faced within the revenue organization, what do we need someone to fix? And the domain you're working is, is very much secondary to that in my opinion. And so that's what I'm encouraging businesses to do when I work with them is actually really Understand what the problems are and what you're trying to solve and find someone who fit that and build a machine for you.

Yeah, wonderful. Absolutely true. No question about the fact that I believe there's in addition and echoing what you just said, there's certainly no nuanced, specific playbook for hiring Chief Revenue officers. And it requires one. Right?

Yeah.

Because it's not like any other role. Just you put a C in front of someone's name like a chief, it doesn't mean that you just sort of look for them the same way. I think there's also a gap, and I'd like to hear your more thoughts on this from your engagements. Is a gap in the real agreement as to what a CRO does? Right. It's sort of like very nebulous. Right. And so as a result, it depends who you're talking to. They're sort of hiring a different type of person with the same title and that makes it difficult to target the right person. And then you're correct in that because of that, my view, my experience is that they tend to be hiring a CRO, in my view, more to address short term problems than longer term problems. And this is a term, this is a job that's really a longer term strategic role, not a short term sort of f. Although, although I would correct to say that in weirdly, it's sort of both. Right. Because a CRO needs to address short term issues but at the same time while, you know, building a longer term strategy. So if I like to unpack a bit of this. So what do you think when you're talking to these companies are like some of the key ways that you think companies should be thinking about this role and what should they be doing differently when they're thinking about appointing one.

Yeah. So a couple, couple of things you, you mentioned there, Warren, is I absolutely agree it's a long term appointment. But one of the things, and I'll answer your question in a second, but one of the things I think if I see it goes wrong is, is that because there's no real alignment on the tactical execution of that strategy. And so one of the things I do encourage CROs and typically CEOs that are interviewing at the start is not only understand what the strategy is going to be, but actually how are we going to tactically execute that for the, for the short term? Because, you know, that's where I see people are falling out in terms of one, one team wants to hire more people, the others wants to get rid of them. You know, it's quite different. So I see that at times. But to go back to your, your question in terms of what I think they need to be doing more is, is really thinking about how this person fits into the C suite as it is. And you know, one of the things that you talk about, you know, regularly is the responsibilities of that person. What do they really own. And let's try and give them full ownership of revenue just as opposed to one bit typically the sales bit. Let's try and do that. One area where I wouldn't say necessarily you and I differ, but I'm not so worried about what the person's responsibilities are as long as they make sense and fit within the organization and then we hire to fit that. So I know you're a big believer in giving CROs the whole piece and I can see that as being utopia and definitely the way to go and, and engages. I want you to help coach to get in that situation. If businesses have a little bit more they have requirement to be flexing on that. I'm not massively against that, but just we need to make sure that A, we hire the person who is prepared to go in and do what you want them to do and B, they can achieve what you want them to achieve with those responsibilities and with those opportunities. So. So that's one thing I would say. And, and just the final point is I see it going wrong when the board and the CEO aren't aligned. And I see that more with CRO hiring than with any other appointment in terms of people not necessarily agreeing what they want the CRO to achieve. And that often flushes out the very last stages where they're meeting final people and they want completely different things. I ran a search before where it went to. There was two investment partners and one wanted the CRO based in Europe and one wanted the CRO based in the the U.S. and that came out in the final steps. So at the start hadn't really been established actually what we want this person to do.

Yeah, I appreciate that and it's worth us talking a bit about that distinction you made before about you're less concerned and it's really worthwhile conversation whether you're really concerned about the scope of the role as much as you're worried about whether the person's set up to succeed there. I think they're both legitimate points. So my, my sort of doctrinaire, you know, if we will point of view on this is for a reason, you know, so, you know, I understand that there's complexities to this. So as a company becomes more complex and grows and the revenues increase, executive roles become far more entrenched. So if I have a cmo, let's say I hired a marketing person and I gave them the CMO title at some point, and now we're like a half a billion dollar business. I mean, that CMO is probably pretty entrenched in that position. They built an entire team and all sorts of things that come with it, that it's very difficult to sort of rip that out by the roots. And I understand that. I do. And I'm not necessarily proposing I can be a little bit radical sometimes, the way I talk about things, but it's for a reason. And that is that I do think that in any effort, right, anything you do, if we have in mind what the optimal situation is like, we know in our mind what the optimal situation is, whatever it might be, we should strive for that as close as we possibly can get there, right? Not sort of intentionally pull back from it. We should move as far close to that optimal as we can because that optimal is optimal for a reason, right? And I'm proposing in my thesis, which I tested and I know it to be true, is that when the CRO is overseeing all these things, it solves a really major problem that companies have, and that is this. So let's say I go to some of these really incredibly brilliant companies out there right now that perform, go to market strategy and go to market consulting or revenue consulting or revenue operating consulting. And there are some really just impressive companies out there that have incredible methodologies to do these sort of things. And I think it's a necessary thing. I'd say the flaw or the gap in those initiatives is that they're not baking in the important and in my view, critical component, which is the leadership of it. Because, like, I've been a coach and I've been an advisor in some respects almost my whole career. And I know this, like traditional consulting of any type fails mainly because there's no ownership of it. So, you know, if I go to a company and they spend a lot of money for me to solve a lot of problems for them, there may be an incredible amount of insights that come out of it and things that are realized, maybe some initiatives that come out of it. But typically what happens is the company sends to, you know, fall back on its old patterns pretty quickly when there's no one who is stewarding this thing and has, as, as I say, a lot, the authority, the autonomy and the resources and the Runway to do that and so the CRO role is that person and that that person is situated in a way that any work you do, foundational work that you do, will not only be applicable to the business to accomplish the alignment issue that you're suffering from, but more importantly it'll include a leader who's responsible for that and is uniquely qualified to do that. And it's going to solve a lot of problems and it's also going to be, if I may say, sort of like a ballast of it were of someone who's going to be making sure that doesn't slip back into the old model again because there's this structure is in place and I think it's really important. I think that the. Sorry, I'm going on here, but I want to make sure I clarify this now, get your perspective on it because you're hiring people, you're recruiting people, is when you have a, I'd say overly complex C suite where you've got a cfo, a cmo, a CRO, a cso. Right. Which I see a lot of companies have. I just don't think that in today's world there's any way that a company like that is going to be able to build a truly aligned revenue operation because you've got too many leaders whom have equal authority and there's little flexibility for one of them to make some sort of like final, like executive decision over how things are going to go. And so you don't. So you compromise and you have like a bunch of different silos running and operating at the same parallel path. And that doesn't work. So that's why I'm a bit, doc, you know, adamant about that structure because I know that ultimately it just ultimately works better. Even though I understand the constraints and the disruption that that might present in a company that may be a bit further along in the way they develop their leadership structure. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are on all that.

Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I think you're right and I think we will get there in terms of CROs as we know it's a new thing and people aren't getting there. But a couple of examples to back up your point really Warren, is I was working with, I didn't appoint the CRO, but we were working with a business and the CEO, it was his first CEO gig and he'd been a CRO before and he slightly preceded him, but they had a CRO in place, a real up and comer. The investment firm said this is Our person, we're investing, he's gonna be with us for a long time in different businesses. He came in as a CRO, but the CEO, because he'd run, he'd been a CRO before himself. He had the CMO reporting into him, he had the Chief Customer Officer reporting directly into the CEO and the CRO ended up not working out after 18 months. Now it's a good example that CRO is himself now a CEO and flying. So it was an example of a very good candidate, a very good individual executive in the wrong position. I went for lunch with the CRO after PP let go and he said, I just couldn't control marketing in terms of we weren't working together and I just couldn't get a grip of it. And this was three or four years ago, probably Warren. And at that point, CROs were barely talking about customer success, customer success at all. But now we are much more. But back then it was like, well, I was running sales and I wanted marketing as well. And so I see real life examples of the CEO thought he could put it together, but, you know, too much else elsewhere. You know, he had everything else to look after as well. And he had to look after things that he didn't know about before that because he was a CRO. So he had to learn about the product and technology in a way that he hadn't done before. So he was putting too much on his own plate by saying, I can look after this whole stuff. So I totally agree with you. And just one other thing to back up your point is businesses, I'm finding, are creating the CRO role into kind of a jigsaw piece rather than a paid. And so there's this unique role that someone is fulfilling in their job and when it doesn't work out, either they decide to move on or it doesn't work out and they're exited. It's a real mishmash of responsibilities that we're trying to replace and fill with the next candidate. And it makes it very difficult to find someone if you're making it a jigsaw rather than a more typical best practice type CRO appointment. So I'm not disagreeing with you.

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 Sierra 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 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 Master's 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 Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me masters or Masters 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, I get it. And I think that's also another misconception that I'm hearing too, from the hiring side or the company side of this. And I hear this a lot, which is, you know, I've been arguing with this on LinkedIn with a lot of people who make this proclamation, which is, there's no such person like that. You're never going to find anybody that's good at all those things. And I'm sort of, if I may be a little blunt, I'm a little kind of amazed at the ineptitude of that sort of perception. And here's why. I mean, no, everyone knows that there's nobody that can do all those things. That's not the profile that we're looking for. I mean, you're not going to find someone who's as good as a marketing leader or as good as a sales leader or Good. As a customer success leader. You know those unicorns, you might find a couple of them, but they're anecdotal. What we're talking about is not someone who has deep subject matter expertise in all these areas. It's someone who understands systems and how revenue operations work and how marketing and sales and customer success work together to provide value for a customer. So this is someone who has got a larger perspective on how to run a business, and they're going to appoint people whom are experts in those areas to execute on those components of the revenue operation, not be directly responsible for doing them. That's not a leader job that they're talking about some practitioner who's got eight arms and does all these things all day. The CRO, in fact, isn't doing any of that. The CRO is someone who has other powers and other competencies that are required for someone who can run a very complex system and know how to pull it all together and can look at the bigger picture and know how to turn the dials and build the right data and processes in place for those three functions to coordinate together. And they have a good understanding of how sales works and how marketing works across the value chain. And they're also capable of building models that are predicated on different metrics than a sales leader is that they talk to the board about, you know, more business metrics that the board is more interested in, and they certainly want to know what the pipeline looks like. But they're looking at things like profitability, margins, you know, and, you know, capital efficiencies and, you know, customer acquisition cost ratios, et cetera. And these are different types of ways of thinking than someone who runs a sales organization. So, yeah, it's not a octopus, you know, it's a. It's a human being whom has risen to a point where they have developed a business acumen that they can run everything. I'm sorry, I interrupted you there. I just think it's an important thing to say in this conversation that the profile, the person you're looking for isn't some magical unicorn. It's just someone who's mature enough to know how to run complex machines. So those are my thoughts on that idea.

No, I was going to jump in to agree with you. And what I don't find, what doesn't make sense for me in that argument is we accept it both below the CRO level and above the CRO level. So why not at the CRO level? Because we accept CEOs doing that and we accept a sales leader Looking after solutions, engineering when they might not be technical themselves and things like that. So we accept it 100 either side. And there's. I don't know why, there's a lack of acceptance sort of in between. It doesn't make sense to me.

I have a theory.

Yeah, let's hear it.

You know, the people that are arguing with this the most are the people whom feel that they may be displaced by this model. Okay. You know, it's a lot of survivor going on. You know. You know, I'm seeing what's going on in the market right now, and there's a big conversation that's brought it up in the last two or three months about CMOs and marketing and how that's been sort of marginalized. And I don't disagree. Like, I'm completely on board with the idea that the marketing function has been sort of turned into this mishmash of different pieces and the performance part of the marketing equation has been overemphasized importance in terms of the competencies as opposed to the branding and communication side, which I think is, in my opinion, more important. But that's a different conversation. But I really do think that when I talk about this, the CMOs that I'm talking to are understandably threatened by my model because it sort of removes their authority in some respects. Now they have to report into someone that's not the CEO anymore. And there's a lot of, you know, emotional sort of stuff that goes with their having that position and then maybe potentially having that lost. And I can understand that. So I'm empathetic to that position and I know why it is. But I do think that some of the, in my opinion, not well thought out critics of the model I'm proposing are really coming from more of a conscious, you know, bias place around their own role in that equation. I'm looking at things differently. I don't care who the stakeholders are. I'm not looking at, like, I'm not the hero of the CRO or something. I don't have some favoritism going on. I'm just looking at a system that just works better. That's all I'm trying to solve here. And so I know that it's disruptive. And I think, in fact, that that pushback is what stops companies from being able to execute this. They don't want to annoy people or dis. Disassociate themselves from people or maybe, you know, whatever the case may be. And so they don't. And so they sort of like Concede to this. Well, we'll just do a hybrid version of it here so no one's upset, you know, And I think that these are the things that bold leadership needs to come into play here and say, look, the old models don't really work as well anymore. We need to move to a new model. Which means I'm going to have to be a bit bolder and a bit more disruptive. And I know some people aren't going to like it, but it's for the betterment of the business and that's what we have to do. And I just think that there's a leadership issue that comes with this sort of thing, and I think I'm hearing a lot of that in the subtext to some of the objections. I get to it.

Yeah. And to that point, I've seen CEOs, certain CEOs, really want sort of a headbanger CRO in to make some of these tough decisions that they're not really prepared to make themselves. And I think that's a bad hiring strategy as well, in terms of I don't want to be the bad guy, so I'm going to bring someone in who is a bit of a tough guy. Yeah, I'll hire a bad guy. And that's obviously not a strategy to go for either. And the other thing to say, Warren, is for the right business. And this is what, what I talk about with, with clients when I'm, when I'm taking a briefing and working with what they need is in, in the right business, there's no reason why the person who's heading up marketing couldn't become the CRO. We're not saying that's closing off that as an option for me.

It's about that.

So, so it's not. That's a ceiling on them. But, but what you're looking at then is what are our internal capabilities that layer below? What are our strengths? Have we got someone who's very good that can look after that portion for us? So it doesn't need to be a ceiling for marketing leaders.

I agree with you and I. In fact, I've seen numerous CMOs become really great CROs. It's, it's, it's, it's completely achievable. I think it's less. You're, you're bringing up a really good point, and that is that there's this sort of. And I'd like to hear your point of view on this because you're the one that you're getting all the job descriptions from. What are the typical sort of backgrounds that are being viewed as appropriate for being a CRO today based on the way you're receiving job descriptions?

Well, so two things in terms of there's my experience on the ground, but a larger sample size is what I'm seeing in the market as a whole. And I'm seeing more and more people coming through. Maybe this isn't your question and please ask me again if I'm not answering it. But more and more people come from a rev ops type thing. So I think people are realizing that the days of the CRO to bang heads together on a forecasting call and then shake everything up and then try and get the salespeople off to work, they're numbered. Those days are over. It's now about building the machine. And I think there's a number of reasons for that. And I want to come and talk about sort of the number of new CROs that are being appointed and first timers that are being appointed because that's a big change. But what we're looking at much more now is people that understand the technology that's available to sales teams. You know, we've got, you know, GONG was new a few years ago. We go beyond GONG to all other sorts of new technology. So people who understand that and want to get that involved in the business where AI tools are going as part of that. Secondly, the buyer journey is just changing so much in my world in SATs, how people buy is changing. And so we're looking for CROs that understand that. And that's where the strength of marketing comes in, by the way as well, to go back to that previous point we were making. And then thirdly, the next generation of salespeople are different to the generation of salespeople that were coming through 15, 20 years ago. And so people that understand how to develop the next generation of salespeople is what people are looking for as well. So I think that's why we're seeing more firstly, people coming up through Revops, I've never seen, you know, two years ago it was almost unheard of. But people are coming through and getting the CRO gig from Revops. I've seen people coming from chief Customer officer role over to chief Revenue officer this year as well. So people are understanding that that's important. And then thirdly, as I say, we're seeing more and more first time CROs. If I took a briefing three years ago for a CRO, every single time it was, you want someone who's been there and done that Whereas now it's not the case because. And also what I'm finding is there are a lot of. And there's two sides to this, Warren. I think there are a lot of really, really good CROs that have been in businesses that have struggled over the last couple of years, as many SaaS businesses have, and they're sort of being a bit disregarded and I think that's absolute nonsense because they're brilliant people and people are just looking at numbers and not digging behind. And I think there's a bit of a laziness and a misconception there as well. So I'm really working with a lot of CROs that have had a great journey, maybe a difficult journey, but, you know, I feel have learned from that and would be great again.

That's great. I want to talk about so much what you just said. So the first thing I'm fascinated to hear is that you're seeing a lot more people who are in rev ops being looked at for this role, which is fascinating to me because I knew sort of that was going to happen. You know, I was talking about this like three years ago and it made sense to me. Based on what even. What you're saying is that as systems and machines are being built, they need people who've built sort of engines that are grounded in process and data, as opposed to people whom, by the way, and I know I've done it, you know, building complex sales organizations is its own skill set. That's a difficult thing to do too, but it's a different thing because it's very, how do I say, it's very mono focused, right? So if I'm building a sales organization, right. The kind of cool thing about being a sales leader is your mission's really clear. It's like just get more deals, you know, it's a very, very clear mission. So you want to build whatever you can to fill their pipeline and close more deals. And so that sort of simplistic focus makes the job a bit easier to target because you know what you're going to, how you're going to win, right? You can go to your boss and say, we close more deals you want, right? It's that simple. Whereas a rev Ops person is more of like a systems person who's running across a lot of different things and they're looking at a lot of numbers and they're looking at things that work in different segments of the business, not just one segment. So it gives them more of a wider view on the way that they view things. And also because of the fact that that they're probably usually pretty wonky and they're great with numbers and data. It makes them good at being able to understand the intelligence that goes into decision making and why things happen. 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 an 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 their CROs that want to just make sure that they winning the role. The Serial Accelerator Course we kick off the next one in May mid May 2025. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure. Of 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. However, this is where it's weird. I want your thought on this. My take is that the Rev Ops community has gotten really big, right? There's a lot more people in this space now, which I think is great. I think is a very important and needed skill, vital skill. How many Rev Ops people do I meet though that I think wow, they're really amazing at this particular segment of the business. They don't have the gravitas or the leadership skills to go and run an Ent thing because there's a lot of. This is a tough job. You know, you're dealing with a lot of people with a lot of different perspectives and egos and you know, and then you got to report to the board, you got to stand up to those people and present and you know, this is a complex set of skills that I, I would say, and this is not to knock them. I'd say just someone who's a rev ops person who's running numbers all day long may not have the experience of having to exercise those skills enough to prove that they can do it there. Certainly some of them, sure. But I don't know, like, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, because I assume something right, that when you're hiring a CRO, while I understand it makes sense to start looking at people coming out of revops, how do the searches account for the needs for leadership skills and larger communication skills and multiple sort of managerial managing up, managing down skills.

Yeah. And you know, to, to qualify that. Where I've, where I've seen it most is internal promotions.

So.

So I think coming in cold into a business new from that is going to be difficult. The exception I guess would be from an investor. An investor said this is, this is our person, we should move them across. But coming in cold is going to be, is going to be difficult. And, and you know, I am, I have sometimes feel sort of some. I'm in a similar situation, I would say back earlier in my career in terms of. So I consider myself a systems and a process kind of person. My last role was, was as a coo, as I mentioned. And early on in my career I was promoted into a leadership role before I was the top salesperson in that business because, you know, I was lucky. I had a MD in that business who saw, saw something in me at quite a young age in terms of my abilities to do that. And there is, you know, and to your point, there's definitely a credibility issue there in terms of. And if you've not been on the tools selling for a number of years as a rev Ops leader, you do have to show your chops and your ability to do that. And, and to your point, Warren, about building a sales org, my view is still you can put brilliant systems in place, but if you don't have great sellers, they won't work. And you can have kind of average systems in place. But if you have brilliant sellers, you still get somewhere. So the people are still, the salespeople are still the most important part of your machine. And you we're never going to turn. Well, I don't know, but I don't see us ever turning it away from the ability to sell being the core part of your sales.

Agreed, agreed. I think, though, that to that point, a great sales leader can do two things. They have that ability very quickly to recognize sales talent when they see it, particularly as it pertains to the business, that they know the type of salesperson they need. And they could really be really quick to know what that is is, which means they have a high competence for the sort of, let's say the. The qualification like makeup of the person that's going to work best. They can find the right people and they might be able to be someone whom people want to work for. And the second thing, that they know how to develop people. So they might not have the best salespeople, but they know how to take the B players and make them A players because they're good at doing that. And that's where they do have an impact on the sales team. And I think that that's. While it's correct, I do think that a great sales leader sort of knows to your precise point that the sales people are the tools that they need to deploy to get the job done. Buying the right tools and then also sharpening the dull tools is the job, you know, But I think that, like, and I don't know if a rebops person is going to like, be able to do that very well. You know, you probably need someone to run a sales organization that can do that. This is my problem with this, is that I'm in agreement with you 100% that looking at revops people is a great trend. I'm actually happy to hear this, frankly, because I think that keeping the pipeline full of sales leaders is not serving the role well, in my view, not a knock on sales leaders, but they bring a very specific competency, sometimes at the expense of other competencies that I think the job requires. And also it's become a bit of a habitual thing. Like, I think this for some reason, salespeople aspire to become CROs. It's almost like, you know, they've been taught somewhere back in like, you know, work school that that's what you're supposed to do when you come. There isn't like, much thought to it. It's just that's the track that they're on and they sort of aspire to it. I think that's been handed to them culturally, in a way, and I think that has to be broken. But what are some other things that you're seeing in the job descriptions? You're seeing that in near view are the red flags that you notice right away indicate that they're company that's hiring is sort of off a bit and needs some, maybe some intervention.

Yeah, it's, you know what it's. I can see it when it's just generic, Warren. When it's just generic, this person needs to, to grow this, they need to expand into new territories. When it's just empty generic stuff then I just know they've, they've pulled out their job description. They wrote four years ago. In the last year, more like in the last year. So the detail is not. That's where I find it is in terms of. It's, it's that sort of thing where I think we got to spend some time on this and really, really get into it. And it's also, it's just that gap before they even do that Warren, where they're really reflecting in terms of what are the problems this person's going, going to face. I spoke to one of the things that's interesting is the rise of the operating partner, the go to market operating partner within investors, especially PE firms, but also VCs as well that I've seen. And, and I think that's helpful for these people as well. I think it's helpful for CEOs because it's giving them a guide and putting in some guardrails for how their business is run. So you're not going from one CRO to another hopping over there. So I really welcome that and I really like speaking to ghost market operating partners. I was speaking to one just, just the other week who was saying and he's had, you know, a couple of great stints as a CRO, but he was, he was agreeing with me in terms of he came in with a fairly, you know, clear remit to do something and then he realized that the problems they had were not things he was particularly qualified to deal with. So the let's get here was, was what they'd all understood. But actually the bit, the challenge that we've got to face to get there wasn't really suited to his skill set. And he said that I, I got there and I managed to sort of butcher my way through it but there would have been better people out there than me to do that. So I think it's when they're not really addressing the problems, they're thinking about the to be and not enough of the AS is right now.

You know, I think that what you're describing has a lot to do with the battle that a organization has between hiring someone who is going to fix our immediate problems or hiring someone who's going to get us to a place where we no longer have those problems in the future.

Yeah.

And if I'm, if I'm honest, you know, I think most companies, most people, I mean, human beings are much more focused on the immediate problems that they have than the future ones they have. Like, we're all really bad at playing, you know, for the long term. We're, we're very caught up in what's happening today. Right. And so because the problems that are staring us right in the face become the priority. If I'm looking for a chief revenue officer, I need both of those things done. I need someone that's going to come in and fix our immediate problems, but also build us the machine for the future. And you know, if I'm going to bias myself in any way, I'm probably going to bias myself more on the stuff I need to get done right now. Which means I'm going to be looking for someone who interviews and says things that give me an indication that they're going to solve my immediate problems. Because if my immediate problems are solved, I'll be satisfied emotionally and maybe even realistically from things. And then I'll get to the long stuff later. And then we find out that the person we hired was really good at solving those immediate things, but they're lousy at solving any long term problems. They're not made that way. So they in a way feel like they didn't hire the right person. But in fact they hired them, like you said, for the wrong reasons. They didn't sort of think about the both pictures. And I think this is where the company needs guidance in thinking through this stuff so that when they hire somebody, they're planning this way. Because I think that what my clients tell me, the CROs tell me the reason why they lost their job is exactly that it was like they were brought on for one thing and they sort of solved that thing and then the company sort of didn't know what to do with them afterwards, you know, and so they sort of were put in this weird, like nebulous job and they still had this title and they were sort of walking around like, like a very unclear zombie, looking for some way to grab onto a specific mission without one. And they just ended up parting ways. And this is the danger is I believe that if I'm going to hire A chief revenue officer. I'm advising a company to do it. They should be really thinking more about the longer term stuff than the shorter term stuff because that person would probably be smart enough to know how to solve the shorter term stuff while they're pursuing the longer term goals as opposed to just hiring someone to come in and be a quick fix it person. Because that's, that's like you're, you're not extending the value of the person you hire. So what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, definitely the case. And the other thing to say is sometimes a CRO is getting booted and a new one's brought in to solve a problem that probably isn't a CRO's job to solve. So that's the other thing is they're trying to get a CRO to solve a problem that really sits under someone else. But in the scenario you talk about, it's definitely the case. And I agree with you 100% in terms of you've got to think long term and short term. But in nine out of 10, nine times out of 10, that's, that's the case, Warren. But sometimes you might just need someone to come in for 18 months, fix it, and then you might need someone else. And if that's the case, that's, that's okay. But let's plan for it. Let's all know that, let's all be clear about that.

Exactly. It's the idea of being clear about it as opposed to this sort of, well, let's get the really good guy to come in and fix our immediate problems, then we'll figure it out later. There's a bit of a. I wouldn't say it's necessarily intentionally duplicitous, but it is sort of subversive. You know, it's not like being clear. I agree with you on this, Wayne. It's really important, you know, to just say, look, we need this shit fixed in 2 years and I need you to come in and fix it. What happens after that? I guess we can sort of figure it out. But right now I need you here because I think that this stuff that we have broken is probably going to take us around 18 months to deal with and it has to be done. That's a really clear remit. I mean, I, if someone came to me because I get. I agree. Exactly. I advise a lot of people on this. If they kid to me, I would say to them, they told you that? I'd say that's a really great company. Yeah, I mean, that being really Straight with you. Like that's good. That shows to me, like at least you have a company that's really clear about what they want and you know what it is. And that says a lot of things about other aspects of that company that are probably going to be good too because that's an indicator that they're honest and up front, which is good, you know, so that's not the worst thing. But that doesn't happen hardly ever, you know, And I don't think they know that. Right. So I don't think they have the ability to even articulate it.

No. And I've seen it. Yeah. It's funny because you do see it sometimes in something like a, a cfo. Maybe it's planning around an event, but we say we're getting spake as that and then they'll go, but I don't see it, I don't see it in the world of CROs. And maybe it's, you know, warrants back for the old things. People just don't understand enough about what they do so, so they can't plan for it in the way that everyone sort of understands what a CFO probably does.

Okay, so we spent, this is great. We spent a lot of time here talking about the hiring organization. What's your thought on the candidate? So when you think about a person looking for a CRO role right now, knowing what, you know, what might be some things that CRO candidates need to be looking for so that they're clear about getting themselves into the situation. I certainly have a lot of thoughts on this. I'd be very curious to know what yours are from a recruiting perspective.

Well, let me, let me put them into two buckets. I'll put them into. First of all, we'll talk about first time CROs, people who want the gig for the first time and someone who's been there and done it and wants another gig now. Because there's probably different advice for both. The advice that crosses both is be really sure that you want to do the job. You know, that's the thing because people aren't getting second chances. So be sure that you understand what the remit is. Maybe come back to, to that. So the first, the first lot, the ones who want to see our gig for the first time is to show up a breadth of biz, a breadth of understanding and knowledge within your own business that you want to operate outside of just your channel. So let's, let's for simplicity, talk about being a sales leader right now. Once the first CRO again is make sure that you're building strong relationships within your organization with the cfo, with the chief Product officer, with marketing, with customer success. And make sure that you're widely versed across the business and also show that you can develop people. I think that's the most important thing, Warren, is someone doing that is. Is that you can develop and you can train, you can hire people. Well, the advice for a CRO who's been there and done it and maybe, maybe hasn't had the best success last time round, and so they haven't got a great story and there's a lot of good people in the market right now. Now, the important thing to do is to make sure that you're doing all those things that we spoke about earlier so that you're embracing the latest technology. You're talking about your understanding of how the market is changing. Because I think people are wary of CROs that are coming into interviews at the moment and saying, I've been there, I've done that. Sales is sales. The basics that I learned 20 years ago still apply now. I think they, they're putting across the wrong message. So I think it's embracing and being excited about the modern change. I think that's where clients, and potentially I get bit turned off CROs if then. If they're living in the past a little bit.

Yeah, it's a really good point. I like the idea you're giving about the relationship building the building those sort of alliances early. I think it's very critical. I think too is aside from the building the bridges with those key leaders, it's also to come into the job with an understanding of what your job could be and how to start. Maybe getting other people to view it the same way. Be a bit of like an internal evangelist of sorts and propose ideas that allow for more alignment across streams and some initiatives that demand it to show how they work so that your authority and your credibility is being demonstrated through you're making suggestions. People are taking those suggestions and they work. And people know that the originator of those suggestions is you. So it builds your credibility to say eventually, hey, look, I'd like to take on a little bit more scope here, because if I could really do that, all these things that I've been suggesting would be even better. But you need the data and the experience to back up your claims. It can't just be a theory. You have to do things. And, you know, one of the things that we do for our clients in that respect is when they get into the company, we Provide them with a very clear sort of a framework and a program that enables them to increase their influence in the job so that they do get that credibility. And that's something that a lot of the time the CRO lacks is some where, where do I start? What do I do? Because you're right, you sort of have to, I call it like the land and expand sort of thing. Right? So get the job, get the title and then when you get in there, do start doing these things so that you can expand your, your role there. That's their way to sort of maybe make a first time CRO job work. And the other one is it's a danger zone. You know, just like I can take, I can take a look at a lot of the components of the job and I'm like, just don't, don't take this job. Just go, go look for a different one. I could tell already that you're never going to be given any opportunity to do anything here except this. And you know, as soon as you do it, they're probably not going to need you anymore. So if you want to do it, it's fine. But I'm suggesting that there's probably other opportunities in the market that would be better for you. What are other some things do you think? Like when you, when you're. I'm sorry, go ahead. What were you gonna say?

No, I was just gonna, just gonna add to that in terms of the other. The mistake I sometimes make. See first time CROs come in is they landed it softly Warren. So they won't necessarily come in and say, look, this is what I need to do. This is what I need to get done. They're like, well, how do we do things here? You know? And I see that potentially in hiring sometimes in terms of there being a CRO that I've got, you know, worked with number of times before I know I'm a trusted advisor to. And they come in and they started a new business and they say, oh, sorry, I've been told I need to use the internal hiring team. I'm thinking the most important thing you do, it doesn't matter me or not you someone, but use someone you trust to build your team below you. Make sure you get the very, very best people in. That's obviously my world. But it's wider things that.

I understand your point.

Purchase and procure. I do, you know, make sure you don't compromise too much on what you want to do.

Yep. 100. Which means you have to know what to do. That's the problem is a lot of times they don't know what to do. Right? And so they're sort of coming in, they're making it up every time. And you made a really good point before. I want to make sure it's emphasized. And that is that, you know, you look back at someone's history, a CRO, and you know, what are the. What are the ways that you have in your. What. What data do you have with which to evaluate somebody? Right. You have to. Have to look at the success of the stuff they've done before it makes sense. So how many times you were a CRO, or how many times you hit your number or whatever ways that we evaluate things without thinking about, well, maybe that company sucked, maybe that product wasn't any good. Like, you know, it might have nothing to do with this person. You know, people take bad jobs all the time, and that the experience from that bad job rubs off on them and they carry it with them into their future jobs. And it's not necessarily a reflection on them. I mean, sure, one could say, well, you shouldn't have taken the job in the first place, but now we're being a little bit nitpicky. I mean, we take bad jobs all the time. But I think you're right. You have to figure out a different diagnostic. So I'm curious to know what might be a diagnostic that both the CRO and the CEO can kind of use to enter this relationship. So a CRO coming into the job and say, here are the things that I should highlight about myself that would make me qualified, and vice versa. What are the things that a CEO should be looking for from a candidate to see that they're good, aside from just past history? Success.

Yeah. So. So the thing I would say is, and it's not, you know, it's not necessarily bits of things that could be written down on a cv. And I think that's the. The challenge that people face in terms of. It's. It's the story, the narrative around it. I think the respect that they had from their peers within that business is really important. So it. And this is something that, you know, when I'm doing a process with a CRO, I'll. I'll be asking them, you know, what would the CFO say about your successes there? What would the Chief Product Officer say about that? How would they talk about the story and your part in it? Because I think that's important. That gives the overall picture. The most important thing really is what was the mission and how much of that did you achieve? What didn't you achieve? Why didn't you achieve it? I think those are the things that are there. What would you do differently? What have you learned from it? I think, you know, you've got to go beyond that. We grew from X to X to. Yeah. As a simple measure for good. For good. Success and failure, by the way as well. Warren, in terms of. Oh great, you went from X million. ARR. So you must be brilliant. You know, some people just get on the right train at the right time.

And luckily you don't work for Apple. You're going to pick up the phone and anyone's going to say yes to you. I agree with you on that point and I think you need to know that. But I love your point, which is 100% what'd you learn? Because you and I both know that success is a lousy teacher. I want to know what, what failures you had and what you got out of it and how you're carrying those lessons forward because the more failures you've had, if you're a good learner, well, then you're going to bring a lot of wisdom to this job. And I want that here. Right. Another thing that you mentioned, I want to emphasize. Yep.

Sorry. Sorry. One of the things that I'm always nervous when I see appointments of when CEOs are appointing CROs from maybe being a number two in. In the sales org at a much larger organization and has been there kind of for a long time in their career. And I think they know what good looks like. I think there's a big difference between knowing what good looks like and knowing how to get to good, you know, and the assumptions that are made in terms of what the ground is. So just in terms of, there's, there's lots of people can tell stories about how they've done things within an organization, but they had such solid foundations and I think understanding their sort of baseline challenges that someone's faced in terms of stuff that you take for granted, I think that's really important. I see, I see a lot of that and sometimes it works, but sometimes it really doesn't.

Yeah, I get it. I agree. I think there's also. You said it before. You know, you look at the job descriptions and they can seem like really general, very vague, you know, grow the team, get more money, build a pipeline. You know, stuff that's not very specific. If I'm a CRO and I'm going to go interview for a job for. I see a road job like this, it's Very important that you can get extremely specific about the things that you did. Like, really specific. Like, when I hear someone talk about something, you could tell they're an expert at it because of the specificity that they bring to the dialogue. Right. They're saying really very nuanced, very detailed things that only this person could possibly know. And so it gives me a comfort level. Like that level of depth is there and present in the way they talk about things. It's supposed to. Generalities. Well, you know, I hired a team and then we grew the team, and then we got more deals. You know, how did you do that? Walk me through how that was done. What decisions did you make? What? Why did you make those decisions? And it shouldn't even have to ask you those questions. You should be able to articulate. And it doesn't matter how long. It is just a very good snapshot of your thinking. The specific things that you did and tried, how they worked, the motions you took, the technologies you used, the strategies you employed, the tactics. And I don't know if that's a skill that a lot of people come to interviews prepared for. And I think that also helps make someone feel comfortable.

You know, it's a really good point you make there, Warren, in terms of what choices did you make? Because really, that's what you live and die by in terms of the things. So what were the options available to you? What did you choose and why? I think that's telling your stories around that is great advice.

Yeah. Well, we can go on and on here. I think this has been great. This is a very important topic to me, as you can tell. I think the nexus between the hiring company and the CRO, that moment is where all the future of that role lives. I think that too much work is done after the person gets hired. I think the context for a lot of people is I'm just going to get this job and then I'll figure it out. As opposed to using the onboarding and interviewing process as a way to figure it out. Yeah, I think that's a lot of the time where things are figured out at the point at which you make a commitment to each other. And, you know, I think there's a lot of work to be done there on both sides. Both sides?

Yeah, 100%. And the challenge. And it really has to be led by the hiring business, and it has to be led by the search firms that. That are working with them to guide and help and challenge and make them think about it. It's difficult for CROs if they're out of work and looking for a new position to really stick to their guns. But they must, they must warrant, because otherwise they're setting themselves up for failure. And I was working with a CRO just sort of beginning of the year, and it took an hour, maybe four or five months to get her new role, and she turned a couple down and she was saying, oh, well, I wish I hadn't done that. And I said, look, you said to me at the time, they weren't right for you. You were right not to do it. It wasn't through me. But she's got a role now and she's absolutely delighted for it. So, you know, hold out the right roles there. I've got no doubt she's going to be a success. So, yeah, the CRO must, must, must do their due diligence and be confident that they're aligned with.

Well, great. So how do people get a hold of you? Who are you looking to talk to? What are the sort of people that you're trying to help right now?

Yeah, so you find me on LinkedIn. It's Wayne Starrett, Buildingstone Associates. You'll find me there. I'm connected to you. I'm also people I like speaking to. I like speaking to CROs, of course, I like speaking with those. Go to Market Operating Partners. What are my next projects is to start an interview series. Initially, I'm going to do a white paper, but then I might, you know, copy you, Warren, and potentially do a podcast series. And working and speaking with Ghost Market Operating Partners to really help educate the next generation of CROs in terms of what it's going to be, what. What they're. These people are looking for in them as well. So that's the next step for me. But, yeah, find me on LinkedIn connect. Very. You know, I love speaking to people about it. I love learning about the world of CROs. It's changing quickly. I've learned so much by purely focusing on this for the last six months. So, yeah, happy to speak to any CROs and give any advice I can.

Well, great. And again, thank you so much. I'm really glad we ended up kind of bumping into each other here, and I look forward to ways we can collaborate in the future as we, you know, try and solve the same problem from both sides. And thank you so much for your time and I look forward to our next conversation.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Warren.

Thank you for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CRO succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO Ready organizations. You can find out more information about our services@the crocollective.com that's the crocollective.com and we look forward to having you join us next time.