The Chief Revenue Officer of the Future

The goal of a healthy business is growth. If you disagree with that premise then this isn’t going to be your favorite read. Assuming you agree, then you’ll be interested to know how some of the fastest-growing companies are structuring the teams and departments whose primary responsibility is to grow. 

First, let's talk about titles. Traditionally, companies have these roles in their ”C-Suite”: CEO, CFO, CTO, CPO, CHRO, CSO, CCO, COO, and CMO.

We’ll focus on those who are most directly tasked with growth. The funnel starts with the Chief Marketing Officer, who is typically responsible for the brand of the company, the demand generation efforts to support company growth, and content creation.

After the CMO, The Chief Sales Officer has the privilege of carrying the “number.” The quota for her and her team is the single largest point of growth for the company. 

Lastly in what I call the Revenue team is the Chief Customer Officer. This role is newer and focuses on the Customer Success and Support teams, as well as renewals, upsells, and lifecycle management. 

That’s the trifecta. It’s done this way at many, many companies who are highly successful growth machines. This begs the question: is this structure the best way? You are starting to see companies identify friction in this holy trinity that impedes growth and causes inefficiencies. 

What is the natural problem that occurs in this legacy structure? Whenever Sales hits a rough patch the blame game is on. And your next executive meeting will sound a lot like this:

CSO: “Marketing sent over crappy leads, and not only were the leads piles of crap but Marketing didn’t even send us the agreed-upon amount.”

CMO: As they are pulling up dashboard says, “We sent you more leads than the model said you needed, don’t blame me because your Sales team couldn’t close perfect leads who were basically begging to sign up!”

CSO: “Your dashboard shows all the leads that I've rejected and plus you’re measuring MQLs and not SQLs”

CMO: “I hit my number, don’t blame me because you didn’t hit yours.”

And you’ll spend roughly a decade on that marry-go-round. The truth is that left as a stand-alone department, Marketing will always measure more “fluff.” Ok - before you get angry - let me define what I mean by fluff. I mean leads that don’t necessarily help you hit your number. For example, if it gets harder to drive demand you lighten the standards of what qualifies as a (insert your acronym of choice) SQL. It also wastes the time of some of your most expense leaders. The CMO and CSO spend as much time in CYA mode as they do improving performance. They spend more time gathering data to support their views than they do diving into the data to glean insights on where to improve. In short, it’s a mess. 

Moving one step deeper in the funnel you’ll find a similar merry-go-round but with Sales as the villain and Customer Success the helpless victim.

CCO: “How in the name of all things holy can I hit retention metrics with Sales out there lying about and selling customers on features that we don't have?” 

CSO: “It’s my job to close ‘em and yours to keep ‘em, you’ve got the easy job.”

You get the picture. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it’s pretty common. When it does happen it places a HUGE burden on the CEO and CFO to play referee. They have to dive in and do their best to determine who is right and who is full of it. It gets even messier when you consider this structure forces you to have a Marketing ops team, a Sales ops team, and a Success ops team. Each team with their own KPI’s and data that support their vantage point. It makes it tough for the head of Finance to dive in and understand. 

But ...there is a better way. A way to unite the Revenue teams under one roof in a way that allows for healthy friction but not an all-out war, and more often, companies are making the structural change to their organization. 

The better way is to have a true Chief Revenue Officer.

In the next post, I’ll share what the Chief Revenue Officer of the future looks like and how it’ll help your organization grow faster and more painlessly than ever before.