Nothing happens in business until someone sells something

Your CRO commits 2,000 hours a year to being a better revenue leader, how many hours a year do CEOs and Boards commit to being better at revenue? Conservatively, your revenue leader is getting 100X smarter than you every single year. That's bad for everyone, starting with your investors!

Committing an hour/week to understanding modern revenue management and leadership converts CEOs and Board members from uninformed critics to skilled collaborators.

Invest your time in getting revenue-smarter so you can know precisely when it's time to invest or divest in your CROs strategic plan!

Chat? Or keep reading?

Have you ever heard a CRO say this? If you have ... seek first to understand!

it's going to take a year or more to find repeatability and predictability - and we need both before we can expect to see the first stages of scalability.
let's talk about the progress we're making in some key areas OTHER than Quota and Pipeline.
there are some new market forces at play here that are going to negatively impact quota performance this year, and we just started seeing it last quarter.
our product isn't as competitive as it needs to be?
we're losing on price so we'll have to make some near-term adjustments, in the form of discounts.
pipeline is a lagging indicator - let's FOCUS on those things that pre-date pipeline, and that will determine the pipeline we're going to have 6-18 months from now.
if we want to double our ARR next year we'll need to DOUBLE the investment we're making in SALES & MARKETING ... it's a simple formula.
the issue isn't the sales reps, we have a lead volume issue and that needs to be our #1 priority right now!

the good the bad ... and the fugly

Hey, Ms. CEO and Board of Directors — do you know the difference between a CRO who genuinely knows their craft and one who's just winging it? Can you spot a CRO who strives for greatness versus one who's merely going through the motions? If not, get ready for the fallout — it will cost you millions.

know what to measure so you know when to invest - or ELSE

No ONE SaaS metric will predict the health and trajectory of your B2B SaaS business. However, there is ONE DOZEN that will transform your decision-making process and immediately improve the trajectory of your business. Neglecting your DOZEN metrics for the myopia of the ONE metric [usually performance against quota] is a costly and very common mistake. If this is YOU, it's time to stop!

If you're not assessing close to a dozen different metrics in your revenue operations when making sales and marketing investment decisions - you're likely making a lot of mistakes. Worse still, you might be wrongfully pinning poor outcomes on your CRO when, in reality, you're the one bleeding potential growth because you aren't acknolwedging the full picture.

Consider this stark scenario: You, the CEO and Board, fixate solely on 'Net New ARR versus Quota' and the Magic Number, and both are underperforming. So, you pull back on S&M investments until these metrics improve, all while your CAC, ARR, CAC Payback, Average ACV, Win Rate, Deal Velocity, LTV:CAC, and Rule of 40 are benchmarking near or at industry-leading levels. You're faced with 2 cautionary signals and 8 compelling reasons to double down on investment. In this light, the decision is clear: it’s time to invest ... a lot. Context matters.

respect your CRO ... they're revenue-smarter than you'll ever be

The gap is widening between revenue leaders and CEOs/Boards. Relax it's not your fault, because it's not your day job. While CROs keep getting smarter, CEOs and Boards are historically only as smart as the last article they read or the last person who whispered in their ear. You can't and shouldn't govern by anecdote or innuendo. When you do, it becomes a problem for everyone.

You can't read a book or an article on B2B selling because there is no single book ... there's a library. What you need to do is seek coaching or advice from a revenue leader who understands the foundational elements of building a revenue machine [sounds like a commercial for Too Far but it isn't]. Ask them to review the current GTM plan from a 10,000-foot perspective, simply to determine that the CRO has developed a thoughtful, defensible, and professional strategic plan. Then walk away and let your CRO go to work on THEIR plan!

LET ME BE CLEAR, this review by the advisor is a flyby it is NOT a critique of the current CRO by your revenue coach/advisor. Further, it is not a forensic analysis of the details of the plan. Any junior revenue leader with 3 years on the job can critique a plan, and it's usually worthless because it has little more relevance than being an "armchair quarterback" on game day.

NO outsider will ever know as much as an insider, and what worked at the outsider's last unicorn will have little to no bearing on the challenges your current CRO is facing in your specific market, with this product, and with your unique buyer, in this unique place in time. It's less about whether you should invest more in conferences and advertising next year, and more about the soundness of the strategic thinking around demand and lead channels.

Lastly, don't make the fatal mistake of engaging a hired-gun as your sales advisor. Their incentives drive the same specific behavior every time - to extend their contract and their income stream. It's human nature and it's unavoidable. Remove the incentive and you will immediately get more objective and more valuable advice. Be better.

your decision to terminate your sales leader will set you back a year. You better be damn sure you get this right

Think long and hard before firing your current revenue leader. Firing your CRO will set you back a full year. Don't believe me? How long did it take your current CRO to figure out the unique complexion of your business, the character of your sales motion, their team's strengths and weaknesses, your buyer journey, your serviceable addressable market, your product, and then formalize a strategy and a plan to improve the business? Chances are it took at least a year.

If a true FIX is needed in your sales organization, then the new leader needs time to determine the right strategy and then they require time to execute that strategy. There's your year or TWO! You've now introduced even more risk into your business with a year of change and disruption and hypotheses and testing and lost forward motion. Why - simply because the last CRO didn't hit quota? Were they thoughtful, smart, and strategic in their GTM planning? Maybe the CRO wasn't the problem, maybe the quota was the problem. Do you know how to assess this conundrum?

There's no rainmaker CRO out there waiting to join your firm and convert you to a unicorn. There are simply really smart revenue leaders who see the business through a wide lens, who have no conceit of knowledge, and who use their humility to engage other creative sales minds to make the business smarter. Give them oxygen, clear obstacles from their path, challenge them a little, and support them A LOT! Perfect is the enemy of great.

Hire slow and fire fast is a good mantra in every business but in revenue, it takes on a heightened level of importance. If you terminate your sales leader you must plan to lose a year of revenue growth, no matter how much you manufacture a mathematical case that you can mitigate this risk. So when you hear yourself talking about accelerating onboarding for a new revenue leader, or that some percentage of the sales motion is already working well, or that there's enough pipeline to avoid disruption to ARR ... please stop. Plan to lose 4 quarters of growth - period. If you plan for any less disruption than that you're lying to yourself and your stakeholders. Be better.

Now worth a chat?