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The CEO Challenge for May 2009
“I have people who handle marketing
and sales. What’s a Chief Revenue Officer
and do I really need one?”
You have a sales team and a marketing director, but they’re in constant combat. Your revenue
growth is flat. Margins are shrinking. And whether you realize it or not, you’re drastically
overpaying for results. It’s a common problem, but the companies who solve it can remove 10‐15
points of cost while driving their top line to generate predictable results.
How can you solve this problem? By becoming a Chief Revenue Officer, or CRO. No, you don’t
necessarily need to hire a CRO – you just need to add “CRO Thinking” to your own job description
and “act like a CRO.”
WHAT’S A CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER?
The best way to think about a CRO and CRO Thinking is to look at roles we already know. For
example, almost every company that achieves success uses “Chief Financial Officer Thinking” to
address strategic issues like raising capital and exit strategy. They may not have a full‐time CFO,
but they’re using CFO Thinking to fuel their business for future growth.
The next thing they do is to apply “Controller Thinking” by saying, okay, we know where we’re
going financially. Now what kind of software do we need, what kind of reports, how do we
comply with our bank and investors ‐‐ questions that make the financial strategy work. Then they
hire people for payroll, receivables and so on.
The CEO Challenge for May 2009 – page 2 of 5
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