The Chief Revenue Officer’s Roadmap to Business Growth
Chief revenue officers (CROs) have a massive job:
Leverage talent, tools, and data to fuel growth across an entire company. In fact, 86% of executives say CROs’ revenue operations are critical to growth goals.
How do these revenue champions do it? After all, the CRO role is still relatively new, with few models of success within reach. That’s why we created this guide, designed specifically for you — the trailblazing CRO.
We studied the latest numbers, interviewed super sellers, and tested tools to give you everything you need to generate predictable growth. What did we learn? In short, the old sales methods won’t work. It’s time to #ThinkOutsidetheQuota.
How do these revenue champions do it? After all, the CRO role is still relatively new, with few models of success within reach. That’s why we created this guide, designed specifically for you — the trailblazing CRO.
We studied the latest numbers, interviewed super sellers, and tested tools to give you everything you need to generate predictable growth. What did we learn? In short, the old sales methods won’t work. It’s time to #ThinkOutsidetheQuota.
The Role of a CRO
A chief revenue officer has three main responsibilities: grow, align, and plan for the future.
- GROW: More than just pushing sales teams to hit quotas, CROs find new revenue channels and build scalable strategies that allow for consistent growth.
- ALIGN: To build customer loyalty and create seamless buying experiences for prospects, CROs focus on aligning the efforts of once-disconnected teams, including marketing, sales, service, and customer success.
- PLAN: Buyer behaviors, selling channels, and products are always changing, which is why CROs are forever thinking about the future. A keen eye on analytics allows them to see trends and patterns and update strategies to keep revenue growth strong.
4 Key Elements to Revenue Growth
DIGITAL-FIRST REVENUE STRATEGIES
TALENT RETENTION & ACQUISITION
SCALABLE PROCESSES
TEAM ALIGNMENT
Create digital-first revenue growth strategies.
The path up the revenue chart is dependent on not just digital-first thinking, but customer-first thinking. Here’s how to bring the two together:
- Optimize the buying and selling experience. Customers want to be able to lead their own purchase experiences, often in digital environments. In-the-know sales reps should be on hand to offer support.
- Build recurring revenue streams on multiple channels. Subscription models and partner selling are increasingly popular, not only because they give customers more ways to buy, but because they ensure predictable revenue.
- Focus on relationship metrics. Quotas, once fired by competition, don’t work as well for disjointed virtual teams. Employee and customer loyalty, however, can generate immense lifetime value.
“Lots of buying is happening online, and it’s really about meeting customers where they are [and] engaging them on their preferences and timelines.”
Learn more about digital-first strategies:
Guide
How to Speed Up Revenue with Subscription and Usage Models
SALESFORCE+ VIDEO
How to Create New Revenue Growth Strategies Based on Data
Article
5 New Sales Metrics Every Sales Leader Should Be Thinking About
Find (and keep) the best talent.
Only 36% of employees in the U.S. are engaged with their work — and most who aren't are looking for other opportunities, according to Gallup. Here are three steps to keep your best talent engaged:
- Coach your team regularly. Not only does this empower employees to succeed, but it increases their job satisfaction. When well-coached talent is satisfied, they stick around to fuel growth.
- Leverage AI. Use workflow automation tools that cut manual admin tasks and analytics platforms that highlight key opportunities, allowing your employees to do what they do best: attract and retain loyal customers.
- Offer professional development opportunities. Give your existing team opportunities to skill up and emphasize training as you look for new, diverse talent. You’ll see engagement soar and performance steadily improve — a win-win-win for company culture, customers, and career-advancing employees.
Learn more about finding and keeping top talent:
Guide
Sales Coaching Workbook
SALESFORCE+ VIDEO
Why Diverse Hiring Leads to Higher Retention and More Revenue
SALES CAREER PATH
Level Up Your Skills with Free Sales Training
Build processes that scale.
Part of revenue growth success depends on building processes that work — and scale — across the company. With these in place, you can grow your customer base without lengthening the sales cycle or disrupting the customer journey.
Here’s how:
- Train your team on the same sales process. With proven, reliable steps, it’s easy to scale up your customer base and train new talent on best practices.
- Keep virtual sales and customer engagement top of mind. Use a cloud-based CRM and real-time analytics platform so you can create and track growth from anywhere.
- Be ready to pivot. Products, sales channels, and customer behaviors are always changing, and predictable revenue growth requires you to change with them. Put systems, tools, and processes in place you can update easily.
Learn more about scaling the best business processes:
Article
How to Build a Sales Process That Lands Deals
Every Time
Guide
Virtual Sales Kickoffs: A Playbook for
Skilling Up Your Teams
SALESFORCE+ VIDEO
Maintain Revenue Growth with Agile Decision-Making and Flexible Processes
Align as one team.
Success takes a village. With team alignment comes a seamless customer journey, faster sales cycles, and streamlined communication. Here’s how to bring your teams together:
- Create processes for the whole company. Marketing efforts should easily feed into sales, sales into service, and so on. The more seamless the connections, the faster the sales cycle.
- Use the right tools to stay connected. With digital communication and collaboration tools like Slack and Quip, closing deals — and resolving in-the-moment customer problems — is easier than ever before.
- Centralize data and account assets. No more disjointed customer relationships or teams that don’t know what’s going on. Keep all key account information in one place, accessible to everyone in the revenue org.
Learn more about how you can align your team:
SALESFORCE+ VIDEO
How to Align Your Marketing And Sales Teams to Drive Revenue
Article
Why Slack Is a Sales Team’s Secret Weapon to Growing Revenue
Article
3 Steps to Clean Up Your CRM's Dirty Data
Connect and engage with the #SuperSeller community.
Need some pointers on strategy development? How about the latest and greatest coaching techniques? Connect with other CROs on the front lines and discover new resources for revenue growth.