Why Chief Revenue Officers are the most critical role in B2B with Tamara McMillen

The CRO Spotlight Podcast, powered by the Growth Firm Production. Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank and freeform conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zenna, the founder of the CRO Collective. And you know, there's a lot going on in the world right now. It's incredibly distracting. You know, I won't get into it myself personally, it's not about me, but I could tell you that, you know, as the world gets more crazy, it's difficult, right, to do your job and focus. And I'm seeing where, even LinkedIn is a good example where I'm seeing how social media etiquette is colliding, right? It's, it's becoming a lot more vocal about people's opinions and thoughts on issues unrelated to work. And you sort of have a little flexibility when things are this crazy, people want to have a place to speak. And it's having an interesting, interesting impact on work in that I'm seeing people focusing on a lot of different things as a result of this stuff. Maybe it brings some strange fresh perspective, but any event, hope everyone's safe and okay. So I'm really happy today. I have an amazing guest with me, Tamara McMillan. She is the chief customer officer at CRO Connected, which is a basically called like a, like a cousin organization in a way of the Sierra Collective in that this is a community based organization that's similarly and excitingly focused, focused very much on the Chief Revenue Officer role. And Tamara has really great insights and she's really smart. And we, we met because we both were a pleasure to be involved in the CXO games. And you know, I always meet great people there. So I say, let's talk again. And she was kind enough to say yes. So here she is today. So, Tamara, welcome and thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much, Warren. I'm delighted to be here. I really enjoyed the games with you and I'm so looking forward to our conversation today as we sort of unpack something we're both really passionate about, which is equipping great revenue leaders to impact businesses and customers and give good results for their investors.

Great. I think our first thing like to know is, and we talked about this a bit, I think it'd be really good to understand. So when the organization that you're part of, CRO Connected, what is its objective and what's your role in that organization and what is your perspective on the role of Chief Revenue Officer as a result?

Well, I mean CRO Connected started in 2019 as really identifying a similar problem that you support, which is, you know, we have this job title that's now circulating, but there's not a clear definition. And you find a lot of people failing to deliver to the expectations of the board or their CEO because somewhere if someone had one idea of what it was supposed to be, but the person that was put into the position is probably not equipped to deliver to the brief. And so it was really an effort to help fill the gap. But through peer to peer relationships of, you know, talking to people who perhaps have already done it, solve similar problems that you're facing, may have some resources that would be useful to you and likewise sharing what your experience is. So, you know, those that maybe are further along in the journey or have that more complete, have held the more complete CRO role can help those who are either gaining some new responsibilities or their role is expanding in ways that hadn't before. Because as I've heard you speak, I was listening to one of your other episodes as well. You know, there's no rule, clear rule book. It's not, you know, a CFO as a CFO is a CFO pretty much. And whether you're in a small, mid large business, whether it's scaling, whatever, they're going to focus on different things and they'll have some different financial metrics that they may attend to that indicate directionally how their business is doing. But essentially the job is the job and we don't have that clarity with as CROs. It's just, it's not as clear. Even though I think it was intended to be clear, I think it's manifested itself in a variety of ways that causes confusion and that confusion impacts investors, shareholders, customers, and I think most importantly just people, the employees who are delivering the job. So, you know, that's kind of what we're there to do and my role in that. I started engaging with Josh when he first built the business and have been an advisor to him and sort of a mentor and have been active in the community building aspects of that organization in terms of being a bit of the face of the, the community. So performing interviews, facilitating events, those sorts of things.

I see.

So yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of my.

There's a lot there. Let's talk about a lot of these things. Thank you. That's really good. So I guess the first thing I want to know is because we, there's a lot, I think three question questions from that. But let's start with this first one which is more, just more, more pragmatic is what does the CRO connected organization do? What are the things that you guys provide that help that?

Yeah. So members of our community enjoy sort of regular access and engagement with members through a community group, social group that they can reach out to anytime. We have in person events and we have roundtable discussions where we bring in either thought leaders external to the community or members within the community who have a particular expertise or topic passion area that they think is of benefit to the rest of the members and they, they not just share that. I think what we try to do differently is it's not about sort of showing up and pitching your knowledge. It's about humbly saying hey, these are some of the things I've learned or these are the things that I found are really key to my success. And then engaging with other people through a conversation that surrounds, well, how have they done it or have they done the same thing or they found the same thing or have they found challenges executing in the same way. So if we were talking about the topic of pipeline management, you know, and effective strategies for accurately forecasting people, it's a topic that everybody talks about but some people have really got it dialed in. But being in an environment where you can have a facilitate, you know, a free flowing conversation where it's like, yeah, well we kind of tried that and that didn't work. Or you know, what we've really done is this and that's really worked. That doesn't. It's very difficult to find that community of peers and colleagues that you can have that conversation with. Or hey, we have sales ops, but the CEO is saying we need to have a rev ops team. Has anybody built one of those? What does it look like? Do I really need to hire people? It's just a place to have those conversations.

That makes sense. Okay, good. So let's talk a bit about the things you said before because obviously we're both very much aligned over this thing. It's great. I don't speak to many people that are as focused on this as I am. So it's kind of cool. So I guess the first thing I'd ask is because I certainly know, I have all my theories and opinions and I've done all my homework on this, but I'm curious to know. I guess the first question is succinctly, how would you define the CRO role? And it's correct, that iteration?

Yeah, it's a great question. So the CRO is supposed to have end to end responsibility for revenue and the protection and growth of that revenue. I think there is a question around, is the starting line with marketing or not? And I would say that that probably varies. As organizations get larger, it is more common that you see it as a really standalone function. That's probably when people are focusing a little bit more on brand and some of those other activities and when they're smaller and we think a little bit more about demand gen and that conversion from leads into pipeline into closed one opportunities. I think sometimes the CRO tends to own it a bit more. But the definition is really how you think about the entire journey, the buyer customer journey. How do you create and capture customers for life? And are you really clear on the problems that we're solving and how meaningful they are and able to craft a strategy, a holistic strategy across product, sales, marketing and customer success to deliver those outcomes not just for your customers, but for the investors, the shareholders, employees and the customers. So I think whether or not you have all of the buckets, all the lines rolling into you, I think it is the person who has the clearest vision, outside of the CEO of why we're here, why the problems we solve are important and how we do it differently and why they matter to customers. And then how do we organize ourselves and execute to deliver that?

Yeah, okay. Well, we're in agreement for sure. So I guess the next question I have is, and you sort of like, you know, hinted at them a little bit, but let's dig into it a bit. Why do you think it is that the role isn't like that all the time? Why is it that the role has become so ambiguous and why it is that if I ask five people what the role is, I get five different answers. Like, what happened in your opinion that got us where we are today with this role?

Well, I feel it's. Yeah. What has happened besides the fact that tech grew quickly? And I mean, that's kind of a lame thing to say. It's been growing at exponential rates for decades. But when we had a shift from software in a traditional sense, you know, boxes and maintenance and old fashioned subscription and we had to depreciate our assets over a period of time. And so there was a lot of comfort and security in winning a customer because it was hard to leave. And that may have not been the right reason to have them or keep them, but it was still a fact that worked to the vendor benefit. And as cloud became more proficient, I mean, I'm telling the audience, I'm sure what they know, but that, that opportunity and ease of leaving became very simple. And I think it took time until we realized, hey, wait a minute, we can't just care about winning, we've got to care about keeping and we've got to care about expanding and, and we actually need to be thoughtful about how much it costs to win them and we know that it's cheaper to keep and grow them. So I think the role, its intention was there. I think it then learned, well, what are those areas in the business that actually deliver those things? Is it just sales? Is it sales and account managers? What about customer service? Is that the right role? Or we have this thing called customer success which Salesforce very famously has launched. So I think that's where the role came from. But how it grew from there was, look, we need more of these people probably than we have them at a truly qualified level because people overnight decided they wanted to change a sales VP's title to CRO because it was catchy and cool in some regards. It's a way to garner talent. So you see organizations of every size, from the single digit millions all the way up to hundreds of millions and into the billions having a role. Do they all need that role? Is a 5 million pound ARR company large enough to necessitate the cost and the skill set of a CRO or do they use that title to bring someone in that's really, you know, a very excellent hunter with probably a reasonable strategic mindset but perhaps isn't fully functioning in that role. And that's okay. But they've now been given the title and I think that creates confusion in the market. You know, there are different questions. The question of what does the business need should define the role that you hire for? Not. Well, we're a SaaS business so therefore we have to have a CRO. Like that's probably not the right way around. I don't know. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I mean, obviously yes, let's unpack that because there's a lot there. So I think you're 100. Correct. There's no doubt that the shift in the way businesses do business clearly changed, in my view. My opinion is that the biggest factor or dynamic that affected this is the investment community. Because as money flows into these companies, when tech companies became successful and that model became indicated and indicative of this ability to become this unicorn company.

Yeah.

It attracted a lot of money into the marketplace and the sort of, let's call it the like. I look at it like Vegas. Right. I mean, it became much more upside in funding a hundred different companies with the knowledge that if a certain percentage of them hit, then we'll make back our investment even though a bunch of them lose.

Yeah.

So if I invest in 50 companies and I know that three of them become a billion dollar company, well, it was a win for us. That means that Those other, what, 40, whatever companies are essentially sort of cannon fodder for the hope of three becoming successful or the five. And that model drove what you referred to very correctly as this speed to customer acquisition. Because the more customers we can get, then the valuation goes up. Right. People are using that, sorry, excuse these things. I have these weird gesticulations on my thing.

I didn't know someone was.

It's so stupid. Apple came up with all these really weird things and the settings are all messed up. You'll see. Just ignore it. I have to fix it. So it's interesting what happened is that, and I saw this happen is before I believe the role, the Chief Revenue Officer role was able to be like sticky in terms of the way like a CMO is, or like you said a CFO is. It was ambiguous enough that when the tech boom became a sort of a dream of every single big investor, the CRO role was just frankly more conveniently used to become someone who was responsible for headhunting and just getting more, more customer acquisition. Because that's really what the driver that everybody became so obsessed with because that's what drove all the other metrics. If I can get more customers, if I can get more users, I get higher valuations, which means I can get another, I can get another investment round. Investment round, I can get another investment round. And that became far more important than customer outcomes did. Like, it just the focus shifted from whether or not customers are happy is just how many customers I have. And a CRO was the perfect, let's say, tool or weapon in that, that, that conquest. And it became, in my view, a misused role. And as a result, the perception of the role changed in the marketplace and aspirationally more people who wanted to have that role came from different parts of the business, which is why so many salespeople become CROs and not, let's say like you. And I would agree, probably someone who's a really amazing marketer or rev ops person would pick a really good CRO because they have a different sort of larger perspective on things than just trying to get more customers all the time. So I do believe that this is sort of like what's gone on. But I would ask you this though. It's kind of a second part of the question is, see, I speak to, and I'm sure you do to so many CROs and CEOs over the course of my week and what I'm doing and I don't get a lot of argument. It's not like anyone disagrees with me. I don't hear like you're wrong, you know what you're talking about, get out of town. I never hear that. I hear like, yeah, wow, the trait. You're right. So the question is, well then, okay, so why is it still so hard for these companies to do this? I have an answer. I'm curious about yours. So despite knowing that this is, let's say, a misuse of a critically important role for all the reasons that we agree, why do you think it still persists this way? Why are companies like CRO connected and CR collective needed? You know?

Yeah, I mean, I think have it habit. I think there's a little bit of a habit and belief system that although we do want our customers taken care of and we do want the revenue looked after and we want to control churn and we want to maximize, upsell and cross sell and all these other things that the only people that know how to win new logos are those who have won new logos.

Yeah.

And so I think that belief system, I think there are a lot of levels of an organization where that's probably right or different roles, but I think that there's a question around, should that have as much weight in the decision for a CRO? And I'm not saying it's not important. You do have to know how to win new customers because at the end of the day we will always have to win new market share. But at the same time, anyone in a C level job that manages people like your average cmo, you know, they're not going to be an expert at SEO and PPC and demand gen and brand and campaigns and PR and like they're pro. They're going to have enough knowledge, they're going to be very exceptional, probably in a couple of those. And then they're going to have outstanding knowledge and experience to know how to find people to populate their organization to execute those plans. And I think one of the things I was going to say when you were talking about sort of the CRO role and accurately, things that did happen in terms of the pressure and, you know, the demand to drive for new market share, which again would lean toward this highly sales, you know, jockey kind of person, the traditional classic salesperson is. I think they also wanted to elevate sales to have a little bit more visibility at the board. Because although sales was seen, you know, in a lot of organizations now, CROs are much more present into the board. But before they were an SVP or a, you know, until you got to kind of a president, you were a little bit shielded in some ways from the board, which also meant you may not have had the opportunity to tell your story, articulate that broader message. And so I think sometimes sticking that C on there was a way of sending a message in both directions.

Yeah, I agree. I think the title itself, you alluded to that earlier. You are so correct in that it's a lot cheaper. And this is such incredibly lack of foresight, but I know it happens. It's much cheaper for me to give somebody a CRO title and then pay them another $50,000. And people are willing to take a C suite, the title in lieu of money, because the title, it does open doors. You know, it's a very. It's alluring. It stimulates egos. It looks nice when I tell people I'm a C something as opposed to a V something. You know, there's just a lot of currency that goes along with these things. And I think that it's been abused. I still, I do think too. Similarly, CMOs are also promoted too soon. I mean, you see CMOs who have two years on the job, you know, because let's just give this person a title and you end up with this longer term, what I call C suite traffic jam, where you've got too many C suite executives at the top and there's no room for them to move up. So now they have to fight next to each other as opposed to trying to. It creates a big issue with the silos that come from the revenue operation that I think CROs are supposed to solve. So I agree. I think it's true. These are the sort of things I wrestle with when speaking to my clients is how do you break those habits? Is particularly when my clients, whom are CEOs or founders, they have strange jobs in that very difficult decisions to make. And that they understand because anyone would understand that nurturing my customers is always a less expensive way for me to grow my company than trying to find new ones. Not to say it to your point that we can't have to continue to get new customers. Of course you do. But the amount of money and effort and calories that are being spent on customer acquisition is far more greater than just nurturing the ones we already have. That just seems to me like to be really short, short term thinking. I think of it like almost as the same thing as the way we have been trained to eat. And that is, we all know that there are far more sustaining foods that we should consume that would probably, you know, make us feel better throughout the day and provide us with energy throughout the day. But we still snack on stuff that gives us immediate energy because it just tastes better and it's more fulfilling and satisfying and so we subsist on it. So we eat, you know, seven times a day, crappy crap that makes us feel really good because it's better and more frankly feels better than eating three meals a day that are probably just not as tasty, but are better for us. Yeah, and I do think it's the same thing. You know, the analogy sticks. You know, I think we're, we're, we're very addicted to potato chips as opposed to, you know, vegetables. And I think that, you know, companies whom are competing against other companies that have a short term view, they get valuated better. You don't get rewarded in the marketplace for having a long term view. You get rewarded for what you did next quarter, not what you did in three years from now. And so it's hard as a founder to say, you know, you're right, I'm going to hire a chief revenue officer and I'm going to give that CRO the time to build the brand and build the equity and build the operation and build the sustainability and focus on customers. Because I know that three or four years from now everyone's going to think, you know what, we did the right thing. But I have to have the intestinal fortitude to withstand everybody in the marketplace telling me I'm crazy because I should be going out there and hiring more salespeople right now and getting more logos when everybody else is. You're getting your ass kicked out there. Look at, look at your competitors. They just closed seven deals. You're sitting around talking about your processes. You a, when they realize you and I both know that that person is going to be at the top of the heap in three years because that those companies, the ones that last. So I, I think that the challenge I'm seeing, and I love your thoughts on this is how do you get companies to think more long term and use the CRO in the way that they're supposed to?

Yeah, I think there's two things there. The first is, I don't know, that has to be an either or. Like I think, I think a lot of organizations can just learn to build better mousetraps and that is about really understanding how to design go to market strategies and align those, you know, product sales, marketing and customer success so that we are operating with an efficiency and effectiveness that is profitable growth and scaling businesses not just top line revenue. So I mean I, I, I think that, I think you're right. There needs to be more patience and the, the allowance and now expectation of quarterly returns has really challenged businesses. And I know whilst that's in the public sector it is bled over also into the private sector in terms of the pace of movement and the pace of growth and the pace of results that people expect to see. And you know I do laugh. I mean a lot of the work that I've done, you know, has been around trying to help organizations think around that holistic growth plan. So you know the classic example is we're going to grow 40% next year and that means we need to hire X headcount which is, you know, we're going to grow by this much headcount and it's going to be this many salespeople. But very rarely do organizations stop and say well what first of all is that the right number of heads? Why do you think that's the case? Do we have the, the, the TAM and the SAM and the territories and the segments understood and cut out so we can actually equip those reps to attack them in a logical and effective way. We seeded the market there with marketing or some level of brand or one of first customers so we have someone to talk about. And by the way which, which other roles are needed because for every X customers we win, we need a customer success rep. We might overload our implementation teams, we might not know how to onboard them, we might not have enough back office support and sometimes those roles take longer to find or harder to bring on until they can perform at job effectiveness. So it's not just about saying we need to do this and grow at this rate and hire this many people. It's about having an understanding of the order in which you need to do those things to actually effectively and efficiently deliver your plan. And I think if people can understand that, then it gives, you know, CEOs the courage to have that conversation a little bit with the board that says, I totally understand that you need these results. Let me help you. You know, let me, let me peel this on your back a little bit and show you the reason why. I think that that might set us all up for failure, which doesn't mean I don't lean into challenge. And I'm not happy to go for the audacious goals, but make sure that, that we can actually execute to at least have the art of the possible. Possible. Right. And it's. You can't have that conversation without that insight.

I agree. I do. And I think the problem is that sometimes I'm finding that even in spite of having that insight, it's still difficult for people to make that change. Because Charlie Munger said it. You know, incentives, right, are the whole thing. So if I'm a CEO, if I'm incentivized by how quickly I can grow my. The population of customers I have, well, those things are going to drive my behavior regardless of whether I know it's right or not, because the incentives I'm being given are the things that drive me. So you have to sort of go way back into the food chain and get the incentives differently. And, you know, it's unfortunate you don't see enough customers. Customers, let's say you don't see enough companies, if I, if I may, whom have an incentive predicated on customer outcomes as the incentive, they have it as customer acquisition as the incentive. And I, I don't know how to make that change. I think that they're. It's weirdly kind of not. It's kind of sad to say that things like disruptive things like Covid, the lockdowns and et cetera kind of drove a little bit more focus on that. Because, you know, as you and I were talking about earlier, when things aren't great, it's when you have an appreciation for certain things that, you know, you really know, you should probably be thinking about. Let's face it. I mean, if all of a sudden there's a downturn, whether it's the economic downturn or some type of, you know, as you know what, we're going through a lot of turbulent times right now. It's your existing loyal customers that are the thing that are going to keep your business going. It's not new ones.

Right, right. And the key, that's the key there though, to maximize sort of the output of those oil giving wells is to make sure that they were your ICP in the first place. Yeah, right. Because if you, if you, if you won, if you grabbed market share and you won, customers who really weren't in your wheelhouse, but they kind of sat on the edge and you could find ways to serve them over time, they won't stay. And so when, you know, when the going does get tough, do you have enough of that customer base that really should be there in the first place that received enough value and there was more that you could do together to where everybody would win or not? And I think that, you know, in particularly in tough times, that's definitely when people are going to churn.

No doubt.

We don't have any reason to stay. You haven't given us one. And actually it's not really that great of a fit. So we do ourselves a favor by being very clear in the beginning about the customers that we court and choose to invest in to win.

Yeah, it's exactly. It's not necessarily just the people that are willing to pay for your product, it's that they're the right people to pay for your product. And again, I do think this short termism, as I refer to it, tends to make us unfortunately a bit too susceptible to the temptation of just taking people's money.

Well, I did that when I was an early sales rep. Sure, we all did, selling door to door, I mean, business to business. But this is in the days, you know, you actually walked and you tried to meet people.

I remember you and I did the.

Same businesses had this offer at mci. I remember it's my first sales job and it was like, hey, you know, if you sign up and convert from AT&T to MCI, we're going to give you up to a thousand dollars of free long distance calling in this, you know, in this next month or whatever, your third month. And so, you know, one day I was just like, I was gunning to be top seller or whatever it was, and I got into a conversation where a customer was on the fence for whatever reason. And in the end I convinced him that he should definitely do this. It was a smart play, it was good. We were a great service, we are a great price. We were all this. Yeah. So what'd he do? He stayed three months, took the money and ran. Right. Like, which in the end, of course affected me as a sales rep too. But the whole idea is you know, winning the wrong customers is always winning the wrong customers. And you a win today is not really a win if you never recover your cost and you don't keep them for a long period of time because what's the stat? It's five to eight times to win a new customer as it is to maintain an old one and then the old one, by the way, when they turn. The other thing that we often forget is, you know, if I have a million pounds of churn this year, I didn't lose £1 million. I probably lost 3, 4 or 5 million pounds because you certainly didn't have 100% of their share of wallet. So they walked out with what they already trusted me with and I'm not going to get the opportunity to earn the rest of their business and I'm going to have to re try and win them again later. I mean, you know, these are silly things that we know, but I think, you know, we get a bit desperate and we should just have confidence. The businesses were started to solve a problem that was meaningful in the market. We had an idea of who those customers were that needed those outcomes of value. And we just need to really stay focused on what we do well. And, you know, that's not always easy, but it definitely wins in the end. I'll give you one other story. When I was at mci, we went to Siebel Systems to buy their CRM. But they were, I think this is just before they went public. But they were small still and you know, it was going to be, I think probably a 20 million. A big, big deal that for a company of that size would have been amazing. And you know, Tom Siebel said no, he wouldn't sell to us because we would have completely consumed their resources to deliver and it would take them off track of the bigger prize that he knew the business had the ability to serve to the entire market. And so, you know, a few years later we were able to buy it. We spent a whole lot more money, you know, so, I mean, he made the right decision for that business and, and of course we hobbled along until we got it, but I think it's. It always stood out to me as such an incredible example of the courage to say no. And we always know in negotiations no is the most powerful word. It sets the limit of people stop asking when you say no. Right? Or at least they change their tact. Like you have to know where the boundary is. And I always think that that's a really great example of someone who stuck to what they knew they were there to do and didn't get sidetracked by sort of that shiny thing that was right in front of them, but stayed focused on that longer goal. And in the end, they. They won. They were the fastest growing company in the world many years running.

Yeah, it's a great story. And Tom probably benefited not only from being really smart, Right. Being able to see longer term, but he also had the ability to make that decision. I think that he had. He had the authority. So I talk a lot about with my. My customers. I have, like, sort of four, let's say, must haves for a chief revenue officer. They need to have authority, autonomy, resources, and Runway in order to do the job. So of the. I was asked my participants in my course, of the three, right. Having the authority you need to make decisions. Having the autonomy to make mistakes. Right. And try things and experiment. Having the resources that you need to get the job done, which means you need money and people. And Runway, right. Which is you need the ability to time. Need the time to be able to make the things you're doing work. Which one of those four is the hardest to get? I'm curious what your thoughts are of those four. Which one is the hardest one for Ciro to get.

That is a tough question. I'm thinking Runway is.

That's right. It's Runway. You know, 100% it's Runway. It's time. You can never get the time you need to do something done because the market moves too fast. No one has patience.

Yeah.

And as soon as the CRO runs out of time, that's when they get off purpose and they start making what you referred to as desperate decisions which make the wrong decisions to correct their lack of time and to restore whatever integrity or trust was lost because too much time. Which, again, that's a. That's a like a perception. It's sort of. It's somewhat arbitrary, Right. I mean, if I give you six months or I give you three months, they're both arbitrary. They're all driven by, like we both discussed before, incentives. So if I'm a CRO, and I think this is the main thing that CROs need to deal with, and this is whole premise of my zero courses. When you get the job, the thing you're going to be up against most is the time you have to make the things you're doing show results. And if they don't happen fast enough, you're going to be told, do something to make up for either a lost time or a prove to us that time's up. Like, do something that warrants your value. And it usually is what, get us a customer, right? Go, go close a deal or get into a sale, you know, and then once you do that, you're stuck there. You never get out of that again. You become like someone now who just does that. So that's the trap, right? So I got a question for you. So if we both agree, and I'm not surprised you got it right, is how do you deal with that? Like, how does a CRO manage the need for Runway to build the results that you and I know makes sense long term?

Well, I think there's certain aspects of that question that's going to be impossible to answer. Right? Because sometimes you're. I mean, pressures are going to dictate the timeframes and you're gonna have to do the best you can within them. But I'm a big believer in being data driven. I also think this is a key failure point for a lot of CROs. I think that they perceive themselves as data driven if they've run sales teams because they think about it from a pipeline standpoint.

CRM data. Yeah, exactly.

Knowing their close rates and their sales cycle time. But. But actually, being data driven is really, you know, being able to amalgamate a lot of information and understand what the insights are and understand the impact that each of those have so you can prioritize them for the greatest amount of impact in the shortest period of time, you know, So, I mean, I've had people talk to me about, you know, oh, we want to hire this kind of a CRO because they come from the industry and we have a bunch of deals we think we need to close before the end of the year. So we think that kind of a CRO is going to be able to help us close the most deals. And I'm like, I have a feeling everything in your pipeline is pretty much going to. What's going to happen is going to happen. And you can't hire a miracle person that's going to make, you know, the wrong deals all of a sudden close or it's going to change customer time frames. Like, there are certain things that are, you know, just flying some person in can't necessarily solve that problem. But I think we can use data to better understand that and say, okay, well, if I look at all this information, what do I know about these customers, what I know about our positioning? What do we know about their propensity to buy? What do we know about the fit for the products and the Outcome and the value of that. And what happens if they don't do anything? Can we help? How can we leverage that? I think it's people really having a better understanding of their data. One of the challenges in go to market strategy that I often see is that it's not boiled down even to, well, where exactly is the money going to come from? How much is going to come from new customers, how much is going to come from existing in new customers, which markets, which segments, which verticals, how many of what size and type of deal do you think we're going to be able to win based on the reps you have and where they hunt and the customers are going after? And in our existing customers, which of those are going to actually buy something this year? Do we even know? And enough that what are they going to buy? I think if when we don't know those things, then it still becomes a little bit of, you know, get anything that sticks. You know, we feel like we're fishing in a barrel of fish, but we're actually fishing in an ocean.

Yeah, yeah, I totally get it. And these are the challenges that two people have, which is, I think it's. I look at it like a marriage in a way. So, you know, both, let's say both partners in a marriage have a generally similar idea of what they'd like the outcome to be. You like to live together and a degree of harmonious, you know, relationship and have it sustained for itself long enough to be able to, you know, have a successful marriage where you produce a family and you create all the things that a marriage should produce. And they both go in with, I think, unrealistic notions of what the other partner is supposed to accomplish. So if I'm a CRO and I walk into the job and me and the CEO have a completely different understanding of what the role is, you're screwed from day one. I mean, it's not going to work out. Right. So I think that the first shift is getting both people and both sides of that equation to have a clear understanding of what a CRO is supposed to do and agree with that, like, and agree that that's. That's correct. Right. That's the hard part. Right. So first thing I'm telling my participants who are looking for a CRO role is to walk in with a clear understanding of what the job is. And the interview process should be understanding what think the job is and seeing if you can correct that, maybe come to terms with that. The second part is the CEO not only needs to know what A CRO does, but the CEO needs to have the ability to make the environment correct for that CRO to succeed in. And that's what you and I talked about. This guy Tom has the ability to make all these decisions. CEO has to think, all right, can I provide an environment where a Chief Revenue Officer can be successful in the way that we agree the CRO should be? How do I build an organization that allows for alignment and, you know, the right amount of time and a data driven decision making process and a unification of their functions? That's a key part of this. And you know, that's where it gets complicated. It's not enough just to get CROs put in the marketplace that know what they're doing. They have to go to companies that can let them do it. You know, and so that's kind of like, I'm curious about your thoughts on how companies can better equip themselves to take advantage of what a Chief Revenue Officer can provide them. Like, what's a, what's the. I'm sure there's not one way, but what are some of the things they should be thinking about in your view, when you hire a Chief Revenue officer that would allow you to get the full benefit of the role in the way that it should be implemented in your organization?

I think the first and foremost is, you know, I know that you and I define the full benefit is kind of across all those operational areas. So they need to, you know, I think you likely need the budget to invest in a person who's probably been working and a leader of leaders for 10 or 15 years. Right. I mean, it's, it's hard to find these people. There are absolutely exceptions, but it's harder to find these people with a lot less experience or for a lot less pay because it is a really big job and you really need people who know how to lead, leaders who are humble but insightful. You know, you need people who are good strategic thinkers. I think you also, I think you need to make sure everybody knows what the CRO's job is, because the only way that you can ask someone to draft a go to market strategy that involves every part of the business is if everybody understands that's what their job is, which doesn't mean they're the boss of it. Right? But they should be the orchestrator and say, hey, based on, we know this is the job that we have to get done. These are all the things that impact that. How do we get on the same page? What do we need to be considered about, you know, from each of these areas of responsibility, and what are the blockers that are already in our way that are. That are not going to allow us to do that? You know, for example, we just rolled out a new product. We didn't do any beta. We don't know if our customers want it, but now we're expecting this amount of revenue from it that next year it's like, well, okay, we might have to take a few steps back. We're going to have to adjust if that's a key expectation, because we didn't plan for that. Right. At the same time, we have these other problems. So I think it's. I think how you can prepare. Prepare is to begin thinking holistically. Put the customer at the center. Remember what you do better than anybody else and why you're doing it and why that matters to other people. Yeah, I think if you can start with that, that, I mean, that's what everybody in the business should be orienting around. So if you're orienting around that nucleus of things, we know we're clear on who we are, why, why we have a right to win where we play in the market. The value we drive for our customers and the impact of them not making a decision and the impact of them not making a decision with us, we can all agree on that. Then the other things that we do from there, the products and services we build to take to market, the way that we represent those things in the market in terms of the language that we use, how we translate that into the buyer and customer journey motions that our sales reps and customer service reps and customer success reps takes our customers on. Well, it's. It's that infinity loop. Right. And you kind of have this customer heart that sits at the center, but it does have to start at the top. I think it has to be continuously reinforced. And I think you have to have discipline, which is hard. These things are hard. But you have to have the discipline so that when a great idea comes out of left field, that we don't just get excited and run after it, but that we discipline ourselves. Kind of like the, you know, we're talking about, you can eat everything. It's like that chocolate cake that just went by is great, but it's not gonna. The dress on Saturday night. It's like, have it next week maybe, or put it on the map for later. But that's gonna prove a distraction today. So, you know, unless we can. Unless we choose to be prioritize and sh. Resources, we have to say, not now. Sometimes it's not. No. Maybe it's just not now. And you know, it's having the courage to stop doing things as much as it is to start doing some new things. And, and these are, these are tough things. That's why, you know, most of us don't always get it right, and not all companies always get it right. But you have to at least know what that good thing looks like. And I think that's one of the things that you're helping to solve, certainly in that CEO conversation to say, hey, if you're ready for this CRO, what does that really mean to you? What does it mean to the business? And you know, so that the person comes in with a clear set of expectations and an ability to deliver 100.

So I mean, kind of last one, like two other things I want to talk about before we end. Okay. One is we agree here in our conversation that the CRO is, and you said it right, you know, it's not necessarily the leader, you know, like someone who runs these things, they're the orchestrator of them, but they're responsible for their integration. Right?

Yeah.

In my view. I'll, I'll share my view. I just want you what your thoughts are on it. In my view, then if you believe what you and I are saying as an owner or a founder or CEO, that alignment, customer, let's say customer centric alignment is the key to longevity and key to business growth. I think it's true. You can try and win that argument. You probably lose. But fine, let's just say that's what we think it to be true. If I were then to put together the optimal hierarchical organization, I would have those functions report into the Chief Revenue officer whom is responsible. Right. They present to the board, they're the leader of the revenue operation, the coordinator of it. Which means then do you need a cmo? How would you manage that collision that's occurring today that I believe is a component of the problem is if I have a chief Revenue officer, and I believe that that chief Revenue officer is the orchestrator of all revenue, then a CMO with the same level of authority is going to be some degree, in most cases, not all, of some weird like siloization that can occur. My view is that the CRO should be at the head of the revenue operation. You should have a head of marketing ahead of sales and ahead of customer success, and a head of rev ops report into the CRO. That's the best way to fulfill on what you and I are referring to. How would you Then in your world, assuming you agree, you might say I'm wrong. But assuming you do, maybe you don't. I'd like to know how do you manage that? How does like the CRO sort of like suddenly become someone who's in charge of something that people have already been pre promoted to and right that ship so that it works better. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that, that idea.

I have a couple different thoughts. I mean I think generally speaking I agree that marketing sitting under the CRO is sensible and is really where the definition of it sat in terms of this one owner of revenue.

Yep.

I think a little bit of the challenge for me though is. Or where I think it gets a little bit now what do I think is it's fairly hard to do sales, marketing and customer success and a product also sit outside. So then you're having to create alignment with that team. Very strong alignment at the top.

Yeah, I would say that's true.

Well then someone else could go, well, maybe product should sit inside there as well. Right. And then at some point you're doing everything that the CEO is doing except for finance and HR and legal and that, that's probably too broad. So I'm not saying no, but I, I almost wonder, particularly as organizations get larger and I do, I am an advocate of brand marketing now. There's different ways we can do that.

Yeah.

I mean even plg, you're promoting the brand, you're just doing it out. But you know, as you have longer sales cycles, more enterprise engagement and you're competing in bigger brand markets, there is brand building that you really have to do. PR is a real thing, managing the investment community. Like there are things that you really need to do that that I think you're going to find very few CROs who would really effectively be able to do that and they could hire ahead of marketing. But I think at the end of the day, the level of skill you probably need to execute that well is someone that we would see as more of a C suite person. So I think there could be a world where you say, well, maybe aspects of marketing are sitting under the cio. Like should we have the demand gen component in terms of the machine of where things are getting executed in the bdrs and sales enablement, like can that sit there? Do you, do we change how we think about marketing? I don't actually have a clear answer on this, but I think that there are certain levels as organizations grow and the way that they compete and the way that, you know, if we don't have any brand presence in the market. Our sales cycles get longer. The number one thing people do that crushes sales cycles is, is get rid of marketing efforts. Right? Like I mean we, we need something to help fuel the machine. So I think we just have to be thoughtful about it. And it will probably be a slightly different answer in different businesses depending on where they're at. If you're scale up, you predominantly need great demand gen and some folks that are great at doing some content and campaigns, you may not need anything bigger than that. Right. And so maybe that can sit under a CRO. The other thing is, can we think differently about C level positions like today what we think is that all C levels that, that equates somehow to a board or that's at the top or they get the most shares, they get the most equity. But you know, I don't know if you remember but like the CIO job doesn't get talked about anymore, but it does still exist. But it's been, I don't mean this in any insulting way. In some ways it's been slightly demoted to a Chief Data Officer or a Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer. So I'm not saying that should necessarily happen with the cmo, but I think we have to get more creative and the problem is you have to take people out of it. So when we think about organizational structures, the best way to design a company is not to think about any of the people in it. Right.

And that's all good. I love it. It's probably the best answer I ever heard to this. I mean, I'm not bullshitting you, that was the best answer ever heard. Two things about it I like. One was I think you're 100% right that taking that CMO position and maybe looking at it differently would be really smart because I totally agree. There's a completely scientific part of market I think would be very smartly put underneath the CRO role because of its measurement and you know, metrics driven stuff that falls into rev ops. And then there's. I agree, I'm a huge advocate for brand, you know, development particularly as it comes to B2B more. I think it's thought leadership frankly and expertise development, you know, and you're right, all those things are, you know, there are things that need to be done well. And I know you agree that when those things are done well, when the company has a really strong marketing brand, thought leadership, positioning, standpoint or perspective, it helps sales a lot more than other stuff does because that's really what drives interest. Right. And then you're right about the fact that there is this sort of genericized way we look at a C suite executive. Like they all have the same. But it's not true. And I think this is like a creative way that leaders or founders or CEOs need to think about these things differently. And whether we both, you and I are going to sit here and sort of solve the world's problems or anything is going to happen. But I do think that the leaders of companies, without question, need to be thinking about this conversation a lot more earlier than they do later. They just don't. They need to think about, okay, what's this? What are the implications of the way that I'm structuring things when I'm at 10 million that I can have huge implications at 25 or 50 million that I need to think about. And I don't think that they're doing enough forethought. Yeah, I appreciate that. So last thing I want to ask you about. Can I make one more comment, please? Yeah, yeah, Go, go, go.

The other thing is, you know, I think the traditional career growth has been really disrupted anyway. So people do all kinds of things like we used to go and you know, it was very much a ladder. Like you go up and up and up and up. And I think among the younger and in some of the, you know, the scale ups over time, we have seen these really huge escalations of people into these really big roles or after a year or two, I need a new job or a new title. But the reality is, you know, we should, we need to start thinking about progress and growing and rewarding employees in broader ways as well. Because part of the reason that these things existed was, well, you have to get here for us to give you equity. Like the reason people want to be in that job is they get a bigger slice of the pie and they get rewarded more for the influence they have in the business. So again, is there another way to think about that? Because we're trying to solve both problems in one way. And I think it's just, yeah, there might be some new thinking.

Yeah, it's a great conversation to have. I think it, I think if we could change or let's say more bring some, I'll use the word bring more, a little bit more elasticity to the way that people look at this stuff, there's probably more options available in there than we probably have available to us right now. We're a little small minded when we think about these things. It's Very binary. It's like, well, you go this, then you go here, and you go here, you go here. And that doesn't leave a lot of room for much. So the last thing I want to ask you about, and thanks for that is, you know, I don't know if I'm right, but I think it's something like of all the chief revenue officers, and this is, frankly, I'm seeing a change I like, but I think it's like about 12 or 13% are women.

Yeah.

What's the deal with that? And I'm not like some. I'm not going to sit here and get on some, you know, shoot, shoebox about it. I just think it's interesting. I have a theory about it, but I tend to do a lot of interviewing a lot of women on my. My. My program for the purposes of. I think that, you know, bring the best ideas I've ever had, you know, this conversation, yet they don't have. A lot of them don't have the job. What do you think that is about?

I do think it's a multifaceted answer. I think one is just the pipeline itself. You know, McKinsey just put a study out and it's, you know, they talk about the broken rung, but the reality is, although we've made some progress in the C suite for women, that actually we've gone backward in the next layer down, which means the feeder pool into the C suite or into those top jobs has become smaller. So we need to figure out how to keep more women in those roles. I think. I mean, Covid was actually incredibly corrosive to women in work and staying into work for a variety of reasons. But, you know, I think one is we've got to figure out how to get more people, more women, more, and particularly like women of color and all minorities. How do you get them to that next level, to where the next job would be in that C suite? And that's going to be through, you know, making a culture and environment where they want to work by investing in that talent if they're underrepresented, trying to find ways to get more representation. I also think there's something around language that, you know, I mean, I'm not the spokesperson for all women, but men and women do communicate differently.

No doubt.

Of course, yes, these jobs are being hired by male CEOs with no disrespect of. Wasn't for them, I, you know, I wouldn't be where I am. But I. I do think that because women can communicate differently Unless a woman is very conscious or intentionally communicates in a very similar way, like highly numerate, less context, things like that. I think sometimes there can be miscommunication unintentionally where, you know, the, the person doing the interview may not be feeling like they're getting what they need. And, you know, so how do we think about that more broadly? And, you know, is it just about coaching women to talk differently or is it about, again, being a little bit more elastic and saying, well, what are the different ways that we can communicate and get to the same thing? Or how do we communicate differently so. And listen differently so we can hear that same answer? And then the last reason I would say is women. You know, it's a. It's statistical, right? We just don't put ourselves forward as much. We don't claim our own successes and we don't raise our hand as often. So one of the things that we can do inside of a business is help, you know, acknowledge the accomplishments of people, help put them forward, encourage them to step forward. Because they, they don't, they don't always do that. And if they're not, you know, I've had many recruiters say to me, well, we would really like to find more women, but we just can't find any. And some of it might be they're not in the role, but also the women aren't putting themselves forward. So, you know, I think that's a bit of an opportunity for us to help ourselves and help women have the courage to raise their hand also.

Yeah, all good points, and thank you. So how do people get ahold of you? What do you want to get out of this conversation in terms of how you can help people and who you want to talk to and what are the ways in which you would like to, like, share with everybody here, Ways to help you, put you in a position to be able to fulfill on what you're trying to accomplish?

Well, of course, you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn and you can find me also through CRO Connected. I love engaging with people in all sorts of ways. You know, I do these kinds of conversations which I find really meaningful because I learn from them and I get to share. So thank you again for the opportunity. You know, I do public speaking events and all the sort of stuff that I imagine you do facilitate events. So always open. If people think I can help add impact and energy to something that they're doing on these types of topics we've discussed, I'd love to engage in those ways as well. And soon I'll be on the hard skills exchange. So if people do want some kind of level of coaching or something, they can look for me there.

Oh, that's great. Well, good. This is great.

Awesome.