Over the last 12 years I’ve worked with at least 1,000 CROs and revenue leaders. Some have blown my mind, setting the bar so high that it inspired me to devote my career to learning from each of them and helping them surpass this bar. Others have a long way to go before they’re operating at this level.

Many of these CROs own, or owned, all sales, marketing, and CS in +$100M B2B SaaS companies. Others operated in smaller businesses and/or only owned a portion of GTM.

In this article, I want to share what I’ve seen over the last 12 years that separates the best of the best from the rest, specifically in +$100M companies, and what each and every CRO can do to level up.

Let’s get into it.

1. Stop Closing and Start Building

The job of many CROs, and even CEOs, will always involve closing. Even people like Marc Benioff, Steve Jobs, etc personally close(d) deals when they were big enough. But, at scale, this is no longer THE job.

At +$100M in ARR, being the best closer is no longer enough to hit target. It’s enough at $1M, maybe $10M, maybe even $30M or $50M, but at some point, the team needs to drastically outproduce even the best individual. If it doesn’t, the company will stall at this level until someone else comes in.

This is one reason (of many) that CRO tenures are so short. What got you here won’t get you there. At scale, the job of the CRO is to build and orchestrate a GTM Operating Model and a team to execute it, not to dive in and save every deal.

Unfortunately, without this Operating Model, many CROs are left running around with their hair on fire, trying to save every deal. It’s a vicious cycle because it consumes 100% of the time they need to fix the underlying problem.

2. Own the Voice of the Customer

While the CRO doesn’t need to close every deal, they do need to talk to prospects and customers. They’re ultimately responsible for driving revenue by building and managing the entire GTM Engine. They can’t do that without a deep understanding of the customer.

They need to know why they buy, how they buy, and what makes them stick around after the sale. This needs to translate into every piece of marketing content, every sales message, and every CS conversation. It also needs to translate into where and how this communication happens. In other words, it needs to drive how the GTM Engine is designed.

3. Own the Numbers

We can’t redesign an engine without first diagnosing it and we can’t do that without collecting and understanding metrics we can trust. We need to see clearly what’s working and not working to grow revenue, profitably.

We need to see where budgets are invested and what they’re returning across all of GTM. We need to see what deals are closing, what aren’t, and understand why. We need to see what marketing channels are producing revenue profitably, which aren’t, and then decide what to do about it. Lastly, and by far, most importantly, we need to see what’s working and not working to retain and grow customers.

This is one of the primary reasons we have GTM Ops btw. Collecting and analyzing these metrics is a big lift and while it’s the job of the CRO, 90% of the work can and should be done by GTM Ops.

4. Combine the Story with the Metrics

Conversations with customers and prospects provide one-off anecdotal data. GTM Ops provides holistic, but shallow data. It’s the job of the CRO to combine the two into a cohesive narrative.

The metrics might tell us we aren’t closing deals in a certain area. Real conversations tell us why. The same goes for what’s working. We need to combine these two data sets and decide where to place bets. This is really the ONLY job of the CRO. Everything above and below just brings us here.

If the CRO can form a strong opinion about where and how to play, the rest is really just details, albeit important details.

More on GTM Metrics here.

5. Align the Entire Go-to-Market Engine

Those GTM metrics mentioned above are rarely available the day a CRO steps into a new role.

It’s usually siloed in sales, marketing, and CS, sitting in reports that contradict each other, presented in meetings where everyone argues about what the numbers should be, instead of what they could be telling us.

CROs can’t build a better engine without any visibility into how it runs. Fixing this starts with aligning all of GTM on shared definitions, process, metrics, and reports. If everyone can agree on what it means to be an Ideal Customer, a qualified lead, a qualified sales opportunity, a healthy customer, and an expansion opportunity, the CRO and the entire team are way ahead of most. If not, every person and every dollar in GTM will be rowing in different directions and it will be extremely hard to get visibility into it.

Litmus test: Ask a few people in sales, marketing, and CS to define ICP, a qualified lead, a qualified sales opportunity, a healthy customer, and an expansion opportunity. Ask them to show reports for each. See if answers are aligned. Most of the time they’re not.

6. Build a Realistic Plan, Execute, Iterate

If there’s one complaint I’ve heard consistently from CROs, it’s that they often walk into impossible expectations. Part of this……is just the job. But, bringing the CEO back to reality is also part of the job.

Every company has a top-down plan. Fewer have a bottoms-up plan that’s grounded in reality, where leads, opportunities, wins, renewals, and expansion targets are based on actual headcount, actual ramp time, and historic metrics.

Even fewer have a plan to execute and iterate on this plan throughout the year. As Mike Tyson is famous for saying “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” If we expect Close Rate to be 25% and it ends up at 20%, what do we do about that? Answering that question is the job.

More on Annual Planning here.

7. Improve GTM Efficiency

Our Annual Plan is, ultimately, little more than a budget for headcount and spend, coupled with expectations for production rates and conversion rates. Those expectations almost always involve improvement in those production and conversion rates.

As a result, the CRO, being responsible for the number, is ultimately responsible for GTM Efficiency gains. They’re also responsible for investing a large portion of revenue into GTM wisely.

This means carefully measuring and monitoring the metrics across GTM and deciding where to double down on what’s working, where to pull back on what’s not working, and when to invest time and money to improve the motion itself.

This is another primary reason we have GTM Ops, and not just SalesOps or Salesforce Admins. A true GTM Ops leader should be laser focused on improving GTM Efficiency, but they are utterly helpless to do so if the CRO is not equally invested. (We’ve experienced this more times than I’d like to admit.)

More on improving GTM Efficiency here.

8. Build and Lead the Team

Obviously, building the best team possible is critical here, but I’ve listed this last because it’s critical to know what a good team looks like first. If the CRO doesn’t understand the voice of the customer and what the data is telling them, if they haven’t aligned GTM, and at least started to create a realistic plan, they can’t determine the team needed to execute that plan.

The classic example here is trying to double revenue by doubling sales headcount and marketing MQL goals, spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars chasing the wrong customers, on the wrong channels, with the wrong messaging, and the wrong process.

The job of the CRO at this level is more like the conductor of an orchestra, not a relief pitcher. If they’ve built the right plan, the right engine, and hired the right people, they can orchestrate their way to growth. If they haven’t, they will drown in fire drills and saving deals until they’re replaced by a CRO that is prepared to operate at the next level.

The CRO’s Mandate

Each of these responsibilities is critical on its own. Together, they define the mandate of the CRO: to align the GTM machine, drive predictable growth, and build a revenue engine that scales.

This is one reason GTM Ops is critical. We often cite MoneyBall as a helpful visual, with Brad Pitt as the CRO and Jonah Hill as GTM Ops, carefully analyzing the process and the data, bringing insights to leadership, and then helping to decide where to go next. Without this, the CRO is flying blind. With it, the CRO has the visibility, alignment, and execution power to deliver not just another quarter, but the next $100M and beyond.

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