Growth Guardians

The Chief Revenue Officer is one of the best jobs in business today. It has a huge remit, it sits at the top table and it can create real change. Get it right and you can transform your whole company and its trajectory. However, it is a new role which has emerged within the Start Up and SaaS industry, so it may not be familiar to many people.

This article is for CEOs, Founders and people wanting to become a CRO, it is based on my experiences what I think really matters.

In his excellent article Stephen Diorio outlines a description as “a new generation of growth leaders….. with an expanded remit to manage revenue and the customer experience across the entire revenue cycle”. 

This definition gives a sense of breadth and a focus on two key elements, revenue and customer experience. Unless you have the entire customer journey within your scope of responsibility, you aren’t a CRO. Sorry to be the one to tell you. This job is about building the whole revenue machine, not part of it. 

There are so many facets to this role, it’s impossible to cover them without writing a job specification, which is not my intention. I’d like to consider the strategic elements of the role because as a C level executive that is where you should be focussing your energy. Too much of what I have read is about tactical elements, all of which have a place but they are techniques to deliver on the strategy.

What is at the heart of this role?

Investment Trade Offs: The CRO is an investor within the business. Funds are scarce within the scale up world, and strategic trade offs are needed to ensure that the right resources reach the right parts of the commercial organisation to service customers and to drive growth. What is prioritised and how these investments are made are one of the most important elements of this role. However, I don’t see this aspect being discussed.

Is demand the issue? Do you need more people to service customers or win new business? Is your CRM up to the job to help you manage and understand customers? Do you need a data scientist to help you understand your customers or more sales reps to carry quota?

Once opportunities or issues are identified within the commercial organisation it is the CRO who needs to decide where the priorities lie, so that customer experience is delivered which in turn leads to growth in revenues.

Alignment: Think about all of the degrees of misalignment in your company, between the commercial department and the rest of the business.  How many gaps exist between hand offs along the customer journey? Is it any wonder that you are not meeting your goals? Who is looking at the whole picture?  

The simple act of defining an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) has a knock on effect across the company. How the ICP experience is built requires all the departments to make changes and work towards a common goal. The CRO leads this alignment and its continuous adjustment not just within the commercial organisation, but also with their C level colleagues and into the whole company.

These trade offs range from the branding and messaging to penetrate the market, down to the goals and incentives that drive behaviour, all the way into the way data is structured in systems to build a profile and insight into all customers and prospects. 

Customer Advocate: Whether you collate it or not there is a huge amount of information within the organisation about customers. Some of it is codified and measurable and some of it is tacit and exists in the brains of those engaging customers. The CRO should be the epicentre of this knowledge because understanding who your customer is, will be the key to serving them 

The CRO is  the champion for customers inside the business. This doesn’t mean letting them do what they want, but it is a priority so that we can understand the necessary changes to improve their experience. If this happens customers will spend more and stay longer. In order to represent them the CRO needs to first understand them.

It is their responsibility to build a customer oriented company aligning the different departments for strategy development and execution. If Product, Operations or Finance don’t know what customers want, or how to innovate to drive growth, it’s on the CRO, you are the customer’s advocate. 

Leading People: The commercial organisation faces the market and is the manifestation of the brand, it needs to deliver on your company’s value proposition. Your customers and prospects won’t buy your brand unless your people are entirely authentic. That means that each engagement, each touchpoint and every moment they are exposed to your company has to deliver on your promise.

The CROs role as a leader in setting the standards of behaviour, focus and professionalism will define if your company is able to deliver on the promise. Allowing poor behaviour from high performers or ignoring poor customer treatment are not just cracks in the armour they are the death knell of your organisation. How your commercial team feels, how they are developed and how they are led are the CROs responsibility. 

The same is true for how you interact with the rest of the company. Whether your commercial organisation accepts it or not they are leaders, how they behave runs through the company, and affects how people collaborate with you. This is even more important for the highly visible role of CRO, how they behave is a signpost for others. If they don’t speak well of customers, people will feel that it is alright to do the same, if you only email customers and never visit them, that is how people will behave. If you want revenue at all costs, guess what? You get the wrong revenue and it comes at a tremendous cost.

How is it measured?

There is only one measurement, it is Net Revenue Growth as calculated by the Finance department. This is the only true measure, how can there be anything else? But it is important to remember that revenue growth is an outcome. It is my experience, like many things in life, that if you chase the result, you will never achieve it. Revenue Growth is delivered by taking the right actions and being humble enough to listen to your team and customers, too many CROs fall at the altar of hubris to their opinions.

There are many measurements that can be used, Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), Net Recurring Revenue (NRR) etc. Take your pick as it suits your organisation, we can discuss forever which is the best but if your revenue isn’t growing then it’s not working. The board won’t thank you for increasing leads, or opportunities, or brand awareness if revenue does not grow. All other metrics, whilst relevant and important, are just leading indicators to this growth. 

Summary

The CRO will need to align the company to ensure that everything leads to the same goals and objectives. To support this focus decisions will need to be made about investments that give the greatest returns on customer experience and growth.

It requires focus on understanding the right customers that will drive your growth and building the most effective journey for their needs so that they continue to gain value from you across their lifetime.

The CRO will need to lead your organisation with the highest standards and authenticity. When you have your house in order it will make your people feel engaged, and they will treat your customers well and that will give you the revenue growth you need. 

There are endless tactical initiatives and activities, from building a sales and marketing process that improves conversion rates, building value propositions, account based marketing, pricing and so on that you will need to execute, but they are topics for another day.

It’s a tough journey and sometimes a perilous one, to help you navigate it you might just need your own Growth Guardian.