Build Strong CRO Relationships: How VPs Boost Revenue

Keith Payne is a high-performance sales leader who has worked with iconic companies like SAP, Concur, and currently leads Nintex in APAC. His journey of self-development and growth through Level 1, 2, 3, and building followership and influence from CROs to frontline team members is loaded with actionable insights. So, let's jump right in. So, Keith, I come across so many different VPs. I work with well over 200 VPs and I see AVPs, SVPs, RVPs. What does the VP do? And tell me a little bit more about how you see the differences and similarities.

Well, thank you, Priyank. First of all, I'd like to thank you for inviting me to the podcast. I know that we've been wanting to work together for some time. And in fact, this came about from a very interesting LinkedIn post that you put up the other day around VPs and their longevity in the role and their ability to be able to work not only cross-functionally, but of course, with the CRO, who you may or may not experience in many, many different ways. Going back to your question, yes, there are VPs everywhere these days. There's first-line sales leaders with the VP title, the second-line sales leaders, and of course, third-line sales leaders. Me personally, my journey towards where I am at the moment, where I am the VP of Sales for a region for Nintex. That's been a growth journey, Pri. So I started off in sales management and learned the art of being able to coach people through deals. And then I moved through, I guess, in my own personal development to then take on more responsibility, to work more strategically, to have more autonomy in terms of decisions around structure and around targets, and then where I am at the moment, which is essentially, um, I'm very much responsible for the regional sales, which will always be the number one priority. Revenue will always be the number one priority. But in my role now, I'm also responsible for culture, and I'm also responsible for cross-functional collaboration, because the level at which I'm working at, I need to be able to understand how the cross-functional parts of our business can help drive customer experience, customer success, and of course, align back to that number one priority, which will always be hit your number.

Fantastic! So, in terms of, you know, level 1 being a sales manager, level 2, let's say, managing managers, and level 3 is cross-functional responsibility for a region. What are some of the things that you would see that would be essential in being able to actually grow your career from level 1 to level 2 to level 3? What advice would you have?

Yeah, it's a great question. So, I can only give advice based on my personal experience. And that isn't just a linear route from here to there. My path has been full of triumphs, but also full of things that I probably would have done differently. had I had the chance. And also, as you move from first-line leadership to third or fourth, even fourth-line leadership, it's all about having a level of awareness in terms of the level at which you're leading, the way in which you're perceived, the ability for you to be influential within your organization at senior levels. And that comes around, that comes about through a lot of practice. I've had extensive coaching. I've been very, very lucky that I've had investment put in my ability to be able to take me from here to here. And long may that continue.

That's a really interesting point you bring up, Keith, because a number of APAC leaders and other senior leaders, international leaders, have had investment in coaching. How has coaching benefited you? What would be you know, the top 3 benefits that you've received from getting coaching?

Yeah, look, I think the most important thing is awareness. By being coached, you have an opportunity to become aware of some of the things that you should be doing, but also some of the things that you shouldn't be doing. So, you know, what got you to one position won't necessarily get you to the next position. And there are some things that we naturally do as leaders that we need to stop doing. And in order to stop doing, we need to be aware that we're doing it in the first place. So, the extensive coaching that I've been given to go through, I guess, the stages of my career has given me that awareness. And a lot of that has not just come from having conversations, but it's come from some really, really good tools where I've been able to have my empathy measured and discussed, my ability to work politically within an organization, how I view myself, ways in which I can communicate at scale, but also be able to have the smaller conversations as well as the big conversations. And of course, the further you go into an organization, it's very much like dropping a pebble into a puddle. If it's in a puddle, the ripples will go to the edge of the puddle. But the more or the bigger your organization or the more responsibility you have, if you drop that pebble into a lake, the reverberations will go on and on and on and on across that lake. And you have to be aware of those points. The other thing as well is I think that it's important that you know that not everybody is going to love you. And that's not what your job is. Your job is that everybody respects you, but you try and get that followership by connecting people to a journey as well. And that's something that you also learn and need to be aware of because there's various different ways that you can do that. My biggest struggle at the moment is around having a voice. So it's something that I guess I've always struggled with, even in my own personal life. If I go to a function or a party, to begin with, I stay on the outside. And then as I build my confidence up, I slowly but surely become more confident by speaking to lots of people around the peripheries before I head straight to the center. And it's really interesting that that's exactly how I operate in business as well. And that's something that I need to really work on.

That is very vulnerable and down-to-earth of you to actually bring that because I hear that more often than people would believe because people see the VP of fill in the blanks from a distance. But when you come closer, it's a real human with real challenges and struggles.

It really is. If I could just add one thing, I mean, we manage upwards and we manage downwards, right? And so, followership is amazing with people who report to you. But followership from people who you report to is very, very powerful. But it takes a while to get to that point, right?

Yes. So, tell me more about how do you develop followership? Because I hear a lot about leadership. I don't hear enough about followership. So, I'd love to hear more your thoughts on that.

Yeah, okay. So, please remember this is my own experience and it hasn't come from any particular book or methodology. And I hope that it does spark some kind of debate maybe within your listeners. But I think that One of the key things that I've learned is that when you go into an organization, the first thing that you need to do is spend those first 30 days really diagnosing what it is that you're going into. That, of course, will then give you the opportunity to understand how you actually change your behaviors, your priorities, and the time at which you've got to make some pretty big decisions. But First and foremost, it's having people feeling heard and then learning and reading what the situation is. It's at that point then that you can read the room. And when you read the room, you understand what's important to people. You understand not just in their business life, but in their personal life where they're at as well. And I particularly love working with young leaders because they're at that stage in life where I first got into leadership. Having children, buying houses, all of those sorts of things, and they're really experiencing the fruits of their success. And what that means is that I've basically got empathy as to where they're at in their part of the journey. And by displaying that, you do foster followership within your teams. The trick then, of course, is to be able to create a journey that everybody is able to connect to. And that journey, when you describe it, doesn't necessarily have to be, we're going from here to the moon. It could be a journey around, hey, look, we're all in this together, but there's going to be things that we're not going to like as much as the things that we are, and we need to normalize that. So, if we can normalize the journey, get everybody onto the same path, you should get a level of followership, which means that when you go into an organization, some people are going to love you, some people are not going to love you. Maybe they're struggling with the change. The reality is you just need to win the middle ground over. And when you win the people in the middle, you should get that followership rather than investing a lot of your time in people that may not be able to step into the light and work towards your way of thinking or your priorities.

Yes, that I can think of so many situations where that is not the case, that it would be extremely beneficial to at least to get the middle on a journey. So, The concept of the journey is really important because a lot of people who choose to opt out of an organization is because they often feel that they are not connected with their leader, number one. Number two, they aren't going anywhere. And number three, the present situation, which is difficult, is not going to change. So, people hit this wall of stagnation. When you talk about influence and you talk about creating a journey, how do leaders ensure that people get taken along and that they do believe that there is a better future? You know, we're working towards something better tomorrow and keep moving forward.

Well, we need to take a few steps back on that pre. And so, When we look at the journey, you don't just come in and make your own journey up. It's about actually getting consensus from the people around you to make sure that it is the right path. And that involves being able to have checkpoints at certain parts to make sure that you are following the right path, not just for people who report to you, but also, for instance, dealing with the likes of the CRO. So, the organization will have a vision and a goal that's set by the board. the CRO will pick that up. And what I need to do is to be able to interpret that and have my team feel like they're part of creating the journey so that they can endear belief and followership into that journey as well. I'll give you an example. When you join a new company as a VP, those first 90 days are so critical. I talk about it a lot. And the critical part of it is being able to agree with your Chief Revenue Officer around what an acceptable timeframe is to be able to actually learn the business that you're in, but at the same time not go AWOL. So, you know, we hear these sayings around, oh, I'm drinking through the fire hose and I've only just got in, or that, how's your onboarding going? What onboarding? I'm literally straight into that. And unfortunately, that's a juggling act and something that we have to balance altogether. We need to be really, really disciplined sitting down with our leaders, our CRO, and saying, hey, I'm following a process here. And the process is, is that I want to learn about the business. I want to bubble up from beneath what the key challenges are. And I want to be able to segment those into these are the things that I have control over. And these are the things that I don't have control over. And so, you know, one of the tools that I use is that I speak to as many people as possible and I ask them the same 5 questions. So, by asking everybody the same 5 questions in a conversational style, you see themes developing very, very quickly. And then, through your first QBR, you obviously then get an opportunity in the parking lot to say, hey, these are the common themes. These are the things we can do. These are the things that we have an ability to fix or to make better. But on the right-hand side, it gives me an opportunity to create a list to go back to the CRO, the CMO, the CPO, and say, hey, this is what I need your support in being able to fix for us, or I need to understand what your strategy is around that so I can bring it into the business and say, hey, we've got this. It's a theme that's been dealt with by the ELT. We just need to have our own house in order, and we need to make sure that Irrespective of what happens, we stick to our priorities and those priorities are pre-agreed between me and the CRO.

Yes, that makes so much sense in terms of a framework of what you can control, you can't control, and getting those issues. What would some of those 5 questions sound like?

Yeah, okay, great point. So, it depends who you're talking to. So, if If I am talking to the CEO, the CRO, the CPO, you would usually, in a position like mine, speak to those during the interview process. And the types of questions that I would go for is, what's your vision? What's your 3 priorities? What are your biggest challenges? Those are the sorts of things that I want to hear from the ELT, and I want to hear a consistent view from that because that tells me that they're on the same page. Which is really important when you join an organization. These are the sorts of things that you can sniff out when you're having those high-level business conversations around, is this actually the right company for me at the right stage that this business is at? And are the leaders aligned? When we look at the people who report to me, similar sort of theme. What I would probably do is add something in the bottom, which is, if you had unlimited money, What would you do right now that could increase revenue? And that gets people thinking. So, when I have these conversations, it is usually the question that people just go, okay, I haven't really thought of that. So, if money was no object, what could you do right now to influence some of the areas that we're seeing need to improve? And the themes will come quite quickly.

That sounds incredible. And I can think that in addition to having clarity and roadmap, people would actually have that emotional trust that you're at least starting by asking the questions, that they have been seen, they have been heard. So that when you get to the QBR, or when you get to putting the plan together in front of the team, you're going to have a lot more buy-in because you started by asking questions rather than telling them what you were going to do.

Absolutely. So when I was with SAP, they had a fantastic leadership training program that wasn't one-to-one. It was for everybody, and one of the things that we learned was Level 5 listening, and Level 5 listening is very much around having the discipline to either not say anything or spend a whole meeting just asking questions, and that can be quite difficult, especially for people in sales who sometimes like to talk. Not saying that that's me all the time, but there is an element of that, and again, just on another point with that, You know, sales VPs are often large characters, and sometimes there's a propensity to suck the oxygen out of the room. You know, you want to be the voice that gets heard. The most effective leadership is actually quite the opposite to that. However, it's really difficult because as you go through the levels, it's almost like you say less the higher you get. But what you do say needs to be more impactful, and the timing of it needs to be right as well.

That's fantastic. Can we, as we wrap up, can you tell me a little bit more, how do you build a great working relationship with your CRO?

Yeah. And I think that this is really, really important. I've been so fortunate. I've had some fantastic CROs. And it starts at the interview phase, or it starts when you go into the role, which is, hey, this is how I operate. I plan, I measure, I get buy-in, and then we check in at regular intervals. And what that does is it gives the CRO a vision that your decisions are based on data and insights that is agreeable and that aligns with the goals that the board has set to the, the sales part of the business. But it also gives you a framework to talk to every time that you meet. My sessions with the CRO have gone from being strategic. We actually say, do you want to do some speed dating? Because I turn up with a number of smaller things that we need to just go through that, you know, we can just tick off this, this, this, this, and this. The strategic bit we talk about probably once a month, once a quarter, because I'm giving that update as to being on track. And, you know, my current CRO is fantastic at saying, What do you need from me? Now, by saying that, he's showing that he trusts me. He's showing that we're on the right track. But also, I'm making sure that he knows everything that I'm trying to achieve from an outcomes perspective. And he doesn't really need to know a lot of the things that are going on beneath that. He wants to know that everybody's happy, everybody's connected, that I've got the right team and the right structure, that the data is telling me what I needed to know. and that I'm executing flawlessly. If I get those things right, my relationship with the CRO will always remain strong. And even now, when, you know, with my current company, we're getting to the planning stage, we're literally trying to work out what target we're going to get given from the board next year. And we're trying to plan that and resource that at the moment. And it's just fantastic because I'm being told that these are the parameters in which I need to work. And I'm allowed to be creative and try and work within those parameters as well. So building a great relationship with the CRO is very much dependent early on establishing those boundaries in terms of this is how I like to operate. I want to know what your vision is, what your mission is, what your strategy is, and I will subsequently create a brilliant, high-performing culture that's going to deliver on that. That builds your currency. And from that currency, obviously becomes the opportunity to have a voice. And going back to what we originally spoken about, you then have to work through how you present that voice in a way where you're heard, but you don't necessarily have to be the loudest voice in the room.

Keith, this has been an absolute masterclass in consultative leadership. We hear about consultative selling, but I think consulting both with the CRO and then consulting with your organization and putting a plan forward, I can absolutely see how you would maximize followership. You would maximize your leadership. And most importantly, you would actually be able to create a high-performance culture.

Yeah, no problem at all. I think what's quite interesting that makes me slightly different is that a lot of characters that do the VP of Sales role, if you look at the DiSC profiling, are highly dominant and highly influential. My profile is that I'm highly influential, but I'm also highly compliant. And that's because I have a process that I've learned, that I've followed, that I trust, and works really well for me. So it's almost like that is my superpower, and it is a slightly different profile, but it does work well for me. So, Pri, I'm just really hopeful. that our session together sparks some debate. I'd love to see some comments and feedback. But I hope people enjoyed me sharing my personal story.

Yes, I have no doubt this is going to help so many people who are at various stages of that life cycle of working with organizations with challenging targets. And basically, there will be a ton of actionable ideas from this. So, thank you so much.

Thank you, Pri.