When and How to Hire Your First Chief Revenue Officer

How to Hire a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) for Startup Growth

Part 1: Hiring a Chief Revenue Officer and the CRO impact on SaaS growth with Vicky Klonaridis, Head of Delivery at Think & Grow.

Chief Revenue Officer Responsibilities & Qualities

Core responsibility: Owns the entire revenue function–aligning sales, marketing and customer success to drive predictable and scalable growth. 

What this can look like day-to-day: 

• Define and execute revenue strategies that support rapid scaling. 
• Build and optimise revenue operations and go-to-market frameworks. 
• Manage seamless customer acquisition.
• Establish data-driven processes for revenue forecasting and pipeline management. 
• Lead and oversee the sales team (if there is no existing sales lead to do this). 
• Identify and drive new revenue streams as part of next level growth.  

What if you have a VP of Sales and/or Chief Marketing Officer? While the VP of Sales will close deals and manage the sales team and the CMO drives demand generation and brand awareness, the CRO oversees the entire revenue engine: ensuring cross-functional collaboration, breaking silos between departments in order to optimise customer acquisition, retention and expansion. 

At Series B+ (ideally past $50M ARR), you would need proven scaling success under their belt with strong leadership and ability to build high-performing teams. An effective CRO will have a deep understanding of data-driven growth strategies and experience with go-to-market challenges (recurring revenue models like SaaS or subscription is a bonus). 

Expectations for SaaS Growth with a CRO

Expectations of a CRO:

• Within 30 days: Have an understanding of the company’s GTM plan, revenue metrics, team structure and customer feedback. 
• Within 90 days: They’ve identified bottlenecks in the revenue engine and refined processes to start unblocking.
• Within 180 days: Measurable improvements have been made towards good pipeline health, revenue predictability, and cross-functional alignment. 

Milestones expected of a CRO:

• Established a scalable revenue operating model.
• Improved the sales cycle efficiency and reduced churn. 
• Aligned marketing, sales and customer success with a unified GTM strategy.
• Delivered predictable revenue forecasts with high accuracy 
• Driven key hires and talent development across revenue streams. 

Red Flags for the CRO Role

🚩Red flag 1: Lacking adaptability to fast-changing market dynamics, particularly in start-up culture.

🚩Red flag 2: Has a poor track record of scaling teams and revenue operations effectively. We call individuals with the scaling experience and knowledge ‘scar tissue’, and it cannot be underestimated when it comes to a role as commercially-driven as a CRO. You need someone who can prove they have scaled successfully.  

🚩Red flag 3: A CRO that struggles with data-driven decision-making and forecasting accuracy is a sign that perhaps they are in the wrong role for them; it’s an essential skill for any CRO.  

Challenges Unique to CROs in SaaS 

Candidates who can provide evidence of being able to manage complex customer journeys, drive net retention while keeping acquisition costs in check, and balance short-term revenue goals with long-term sustainable growth are certainly worthwhile to make the next stage in the hiring process. 

Bonus CRO Hiring Insights for Series B+

💡A background in both sales leadership and marketing or revenue operations is essential. 

💡Experience (scar tissue) scaling revenue past £50M ARR in high-growth environments is like having someone who’s two steps ahead into the future growth. 

💡Industry experience can be beneficial but the ability to implement proven revenue strategies and adapt to different market dynamics is more critical for the CRO role because a strong CRO will quickly learn the nuances of a new vertical. 

Part 2: Gaining insights into the impact, challenges, and best practices of CROs in scaling businesses with Andrew Cantle, MD, EMEA at Think & Grow (20+ years CRO experience)

Role and Responsibilities

My first CRO role was for a company making the relatively common journey from inbound to outbound sales, where the ‘build it and they will come’ phase was plateauing, and it was time to tell the world what we’d built. This required a rebuild of the GTM team:

• Ensuring the right people were in the right seats
• Aligning marketing to sales 
• Developing a repeatable, scalable process all the way from lead generation to deal close

Smaller companies need a hands-on CRO: You can afford to give time to each team member, cater to their differences, and provide leeway whilst still defining a formal marketing and sales playbook for everyone to work to. You can also get heavily into deals and channel partners, and stay very close to the front line. 

Series B+ companies need a CRO with strategic oversight: Global expansion that requires a larger GTM team, featuring formal processes, data-driven decision making, and identifying scaleable, predictable revenue opportunities. 

Balancing short-term revenue goals with long-term growth and scalability is a key skill for the CRO role–you must always have the end game in mind. You can make short-term tactical revenue wins as long as it doesn’t undermine the long-term strategies you’ve set out. An example is hitting a specific revenue threshold that potential investors need to see to trigger funding, which in turn powers future growth plans. Given the choice, I favour short-term revenue approaches that don’t impact the customer (i.e. don’t trade relationships for transactions–that you can’t undo). Areas like SPIFs and accelerators for sales teams or margin boosts in channels can serve the short-term without affecting a longer-term sustainable growth trajectory.

Metrics for SaaS Growth with a CRO

• Recurring Revenue (ARR); The whole company can rally around that number. It’s easy to understand, aim for and, importantly, celebrate when you pass through milestone levels. 
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR); It requires a combination of low churn, plus likely up-sell and cross-sell, putting the focus on Customer Success excellence. 
• Getting the Land-Adopt-Expand-Renew processes of SaaS businesses in good shape.

A few more that you could add:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and CAC Payback Period
• Sales Efficiency (e.g. ratio)
• Pipeline velocity and conversion rates across the funnel
• Expansion revenue and upsell/cross-sell performance

Revenue-Increasing Initiatives from an Experienced CRO

I believe one can hit the ground running by gaining as much information about the company and the people as soon as possible. Understanding the history, aspirations and current blockers allows a few easy and meaningful wins to gain trust and increase value. Solving HR-related distractions is a great way to boost motivation in the team. Big ticket items can follow that like GTM re-orgs, segmentation, and increase data-driven decision making so it’s backed by the numbers. 

I’ll share a couple of the most revenue-boosting strategies I have initiated as a CRO: 

• The extremely smooth alignment of marketing and sales: That’s true and important for all CROs, but I’m quite obsessed with the magic of marginal gains in the funnel, so I’ve focused on this initiative in a couple of roles. It’s the concept of taking a few key metrics in your funnel pillars, like turning website visitors into MQLs, or how to improve landing deal size. 
• Putting cross-functional teams together to solve these very tightly defined challenges: Focusing on just three or four across the business. And if they come up with fresh suggestions on how to move these items by just a percent or two each then they all multiply up to really accelerate revenue growth significantly. This is by far my favourite exercise as a CRO and always seems to work well.

Past Challenges and Solutions as a CRO

The challenge: Siloed teams will forever be an issue if communication isn’t encouraged, and after the pandemic forced the team to work from home for so long–this was in overdrive. 

The solution: I put together off-sites with cross-functional exercises so people were working together again on both work and non-work related projects. I also joined their targets even with joint commission plans so more than just one team felt responsible for the shared outcomes. It became second nature to them to collaborate and communicate and the funnel could operate with minimal friction.

A strong CRO won’t fall into this trap: Just because one growth engine is a success, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t immediately plan for the next one–all growth engines plateau so you need to be prepared for what comes next. A strong CRO will always be planning the next move for longer-term sustainable revenue growth, like building out channel plans whilst shaping up the best version of direct sales.  

What a CRO Will Look For in a Founder and Company

Trust the CRO and their processes: It’s common for founders to want their GTM teams to do what they did to get the first sales when the company was initially launching (often just raiding their black books). This is rarely repeatable or scalable, so the CRO will have new methods and playbooks to jump to the next revenue level. The founder must provide the correct investment to power the next phase of their business growth (as defined by the CRO) and to try their best not to circumvent the new processes that are introduced.

Support with investment and resources: The CRO needs these to execute on the founder’s vision; but will need to be open and transparent too. You both have to be aligned on the strategic goals and be very certain as a duo they are achievable.

Bonus CRO Hiring Insights for Series B+

💡You can’t afford to train your CRO on the job. Improve over time–yes, but not learn how to scale for the first time. Meaning, only hire a CRO who has that essential scaling knowledge and experience. 

💡See how a CRO will build their revenue team, what do they look for in the people they hire? I look for self-starters, digging into what they get up to outside of work when no one’s paying them. I’ve recruited and worked with a kickboxing influencer, a brewery founder, an author, and a vintage clothes seller - all were highly effective in their roles! 

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Next steps?

• Are you currently building your leadership team fit for scale? See how we can help. And don't just take our word for it:  "Think & Grow knows their stuff at a core level, and those fundamentals help make the decision-making process easy." - Tim Fung, Founder & CEO at Airtasker
• Try out Founder's Guide to Executive Role Evaluation

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