What Is a Chief Revenue Officer?
According to a recent report, chief revenue officer has turned into the fastest-growing job title in the entire country. There aren't too many CROs in the U.S. just yet. But that's expected to change very soon as more businesses begin to bring them into the mix.
So, what is a chief revenue officer? What does one do? And why should you consider hiring a CRO to work for your business?
In this article, we're going to set out to explain what a CRO is. We're also going to touch on why it's going to be important for you to bring one on board if you're interested in growing your business. It'll help illustrate the connection that exists between chief revenue officers and business growth.
Continue reading to learn more about this important role.
What Is a Chief Revenue Officer?
When you first start a new business, you'll have just one goal in mind. You'll want to see your business begin to grow sooner or later.
As it does, you'll initially be able to handle dealing with this business growth on your own. But if everything goes according to plan, your business growth will eventually put you in a position where you'll have a hard time keeping up with everything that needs to get done. If you don't bring in reinforcements to help you, it could limit your future growth and even cause regression if you're not careful.
For this reason, you'll want to put together a revenue operations, or RevOps, team at some point. This team will work side-by-side with your sales, marketing, and service teams to continue growing your business and increasing your revenue.
The leader of this team will be your chief revenue officer. A CRO will be a high-level executive who will be in charge of aligning your different teams and getting them all moving in the same direction so that you're able to maximize your company's revenue.
There are some companies that will try to get away with only having, say, a Vice President of Sales as opposed to both a VP of Sales and a CRO. But it's important to put a CRO in place if you can since they'll be focused on more than just sales. Their main mission is going to be bringing your various teams together to ensure they're all helping your company experience the necessary business growth.
What Does a Chief Revenue Officer Do?
Now that you know the answer to the question, "What is a chief revenue officer?", let's get into talking about what it is that a CRO will actually do on a daily basis to benefit your company and help you achieve business growth.
Generally speaking, a chief revenue officer is going to have a hand in every single business-related activity that could potentially lead to revenue generation. In some cases, this will mean figuring out ways to streamline the sales process so that your company's sales team is operating in an efficient manner. In other instances, it'll mean coming up with more effective ways to market your company's products and/or services.
But at the end of the day, your CRO will really serve as the lynchpin that will hold all your different departments together and make sure they're communicating and working well together. Without a CRO overseeing your operation, you might find that your different departments will turn into silos that don't collaborate as effectively as they should.
Ultimately, you'll be able to have some say over how involved you would like a CRO to be with these other departments. But more often than not, you'll want them to have their fingerprints all over everything to maximize revenue potential across the board.
What Are the Responsibilities of a Chief Revenue Officer?
The responsibilities of a chief revenue officer will typically vary from one company to the next. Everything from the size of a company to the age of a company to the average annual revenue of a company will affect what role a CRO will play within a company.
But there are some basic responsibilities that almost all CROs will be in charge of within their respective companies. Here are several of the responsibilities that a CRO will take on:
Aligning the different teams that make up a company
Communicating with the leaders of different teams on a regular basis
Analyzing data to make smart decisions related to revenue
Providing departments with the tools and resources they need to be successful
Keeping in touch with other high-level executives about everything related to revenue
A CRO will also work closely with each department and aim to perfect the approaches they take. For example, they might help the sales department to create a more effective sales playbook. They might also help the marketing department come up with stronger campaigns that target the right customers.
A great CRO will demonstrate a versatility that most of the other employees within a company won't need to have. They might have to jump from a sales meeting to a marketing meeting before meeting the owner of a company to discuss revenue all before lunch.
What Qualities Should a Chief Revenue Officer Have?
As we just alluded to, it's very important for a chief revenue officer to be versatile. Since a CRO will have a hand in so many different aspects of a business, they must be able to bounce around a lot without skipping a beat.
They also need to have other qualities that'll help them do their jobs. For instance, they'll need to be highly trained within their specific field with at least an MBA. They'll also need to have a wealth of experience within their field and understand it from every angle.
Here are other qualities that you'll find in every great CRO:
An ability to digest large amounts of data and use it to make smart decisions
A knack for leading large teams of people while also knowing how to communicate effectively with individuals when necessary
A comfortability when it comes to speaking with executives and other stakeholders and providing them with important revenue-related information
The confidence to create detailed business strategies and set out to execute them
The desire to learn about new forms of technology that could put them in a position to bring in more revenue
Outside of having all these qualities, a CRO also needs to be a forward-thinking person who always has one eye on the future. There won't be much time for a CRO to celebrate their successes. There will always be new challenges they'll face just around the corner.
How Can Your Business Benefit From Having a Chief Revenue Officer?
Back at the very beginning, we touched on how brand-new businesses might be able to get away with operating without a chief revenue officer. The sales, marketing, and service teams will often still be on the smaller side. And as the CEO of your company, you will be able to play the role of the CRO for the time being.
But as you experience business growth, it won't be possible for you to do this anymore. You'll need to put an actual CRO in place to continue to succeed. It'll provide you with a long list of benefits.
Here are several of the biggest benefits of hiring a CRO for your company:
They'll bring your company's different departments closer rather than allowing them to drift apart
They'll come up with innovative strategies that'll enable your company to keep on increasing its annual revenue
They'll pinpoint potential problems within your company that could lead to reduced revenue
They'll allow your company to take full advantage of any and all data that is available to you
They'll help you and any other executives within your company understand where your revenue stands at any given moment
When you consider these benefits, hiring a CRO will make all the sense in the world. You'll be more than happy to bring someone on board who can keep your company moving in the right direction.
Hire a Chief Revenue Officer to Help Your Business Grow
The chief revenue officer job title hasn't been around for all that long. But after finding out the answer to the question, "What is a chief revenue officer?", and learning more about what CROs do, you can see how important they've become.
Could your business benefit from hiring a CRO? It would be well worth exploring this opportunity now. The right CRO can help you take your company to the next level in no time.
Contact us today to get more invaluable insight on increasing your company's revenue.
