Many have heard the term T-Shaped leader. Good C-level professionals have T-Level skills. This essentially means they’re well-rounded and able to handle multiple disciplines and functions within business and why, as the saying goes, they get paid “the big bucks.” The “T” illustrates vertically the depth of expertise and horizontally their breadth of expertise. Great leaders have the skills to build an A-Team but it all starts with a Mr. T-Shaped leader.
In fact, according to LinkedIn, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is the fastest-growing job title in the US. It’s also a relatively new position, making it an exciting opportunity for career-minded sales professionals to pursue.
But this fairly new job title also comes with a lot of questions. What exactly are the responsibilities of a CRO? And what skills, attributes, and qualifications will you need to exhibit in order to land this position?
To answer these questions, we scoured LinkedIn job listings to learn what employers are looking for in a CRO, and combining those insights with the years of experience we have working with hundreds of sales teams, we’ve identified the eight competencies that matter most for an aspiring CRO.
Chief revenue officer is an executive position that, as the name implies, is responsible for revenue generation. While similar in some respects to a Chief Sales Officer (CSO), the CRO position has a much broader scope, managing revenue growth for not only sales, but also marketing and customer success.
Typical CRO responsibilities include:
The CRO works across departments to determine overarching strategies for revenue generation within a company. They need to have a wide-ranging skill set, employ strong critical thinking and problem solving abilities, and be an excellent communicator.
Based on our research, these are the competencies most likely to show up as requirements for a CRO position. With enough experience and a mastery of these elements, you’ll have a solid shot at becoming the next CRO.
Revenue is right there in the job title, and driving revenue will be your primary responsibility as CRO. So be sure to focus on demonstrating your track record of revenue generation.
According to LinkedIn, the most common roles people transition from to become a CRO include Sales Operations Manager, Marketing Operations Manager, and Business Operations Manager. Assuming you’re coming from one of these or a similar position, you should be able to point to specific examples of revenue growth that happened under your leadership. And more than just the numbers, be sure to highlight the strategies you developed and implemented in order to deliver on targets and accomplish company objectives.
If you aren’t coming from a role where you were in any way responsible for generating revenue, expect it to be an uphill battle, and consider transitioning to one of those positions first.
CROs must have excellent leadership skills. Although LinkedIn suggests a median 5–6 years of previous experience, the more-recent listings for CRO positions we surveyed almost all asked for 10–15 years of leadership experience.
However, the precise numbers on a job listing tend to be somewhat arbitrary. It doesn’t hurt to apply with slightly less experience—especially if you can make up for that by demonstrating the qualities of a leader. Point to specific examples of how you’ve been able to recruit, retain, coach, inspire, and make an impact on the people you’ve led.
As CRO, you’ll be working closely and cross functionally with the sales and marketing departments, so it’s important to have a thorough working knowledge of both. Most likely, you’ll be coming from a background that was focused in either sales or marketing, but not both—and that’s fine, as long as you’re able to demonstrate an aptitude across the sales–marketing divide.
Ideally, that will mean that as a sales leader, you worked closely with the marketing department, or as a marketing leader, you worked closely with the sales department. Highlight any experience you have with collaboration between the two, and point out how your strategies involved cross-functional cooperation. If you’re a sales leader with little marketing experience or familiarity, look for opportunities to build that competency by collaborating closely with the marketing department at your current job while growing your knowledge through self education.
In addition to working with sales and marketing, the CRO will also be responsible for overseeing the customer journey, building and maintaining customer relationships, and developing strategies to expand the organization’s customer base. So a solid understanding of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is essential.
Be prepared to share your experience working with customers, meeting their needs, and securing their retention. A demonstrated understanding of CRM software systems is also a plus.
Consider how you can formalize your approach and philosophy in this area so you can share a cogent perspective with prospective employers.
As a CRO, you’ll be responsible for cross-functional collaboration between departments within the company, as well as being in frequent contact with external partners, clients, and stakeholders. This means you’ll have to exhibit top-tier communication skills, whether written or verbal, in person or remote, presenting or engaging in dialog.
You’ll need to be able to speak persuasively, establish a good rapport, frame a narrative, mediate conflicts, and ensure that everyone feels heard and understood. Make note of examples where you experienced challenging communication scenarios, and explain how you were able to overcome them.
Critical thinking and the ability to work through unique problems will be essential as CRO. And in many cases, that means being able to first identify the problems that others weren’t able to pinpoint. You’ll need to be able to take in the big picture and all the little details, identify areas that need improvement, articulate the problem, and chart a path toward a solution.
It also means you’ll need to stay up to date on all the latest industry trends, market conditions, new technologies, customer needs, and opportunities that become available. Be adaptable and ready to pivot as needed in order to keep your organization positioned for success.
A CRO must be able to monitor sales performance, develop revenue forecasts, keep an eye on trends, conduct market analysis, and regularly synthesize all this information into reports for the executive team. All of this requires a strong competency in data analysis and reporting.
You’ll need to demonstrate that you can not only create helpful visualizations, but that you really understand which KPIs are of greatest value, how to identify the most relevant insights from sales data, and how to present your findings in a compelling way.
Nearly every aspect of the CRO position will involve using software of one form or another, and some of the software systems you’ll use are more complex than others. You should not only be a quick study when it comes to learning and adopting new software, but have a breadth of experience working with multiple of the following:
Whether you’re a CRO, an aspiring CRO, or in any sales leadership position, It’s important to stay abreast of the latest trends in the industry. And lately, there have been a lot more changes to keep up with than normal.
Factors like the pandemic, inflation, and the rise of generative AI have pushed the sales landscape into new directions few had previously anticipated. Sales leaders must understand the intricacies of today’s sales environment to succeed.
We’ve put together a free ebook, Sales Leadership Trends 2024, in which we identify the most important trends of the year and help you navigate through them.
And to learn more about what Performio can do for your organization, schedule a demo today.