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Are you a CRO looking for insights and ideas from your peers?
Are you a Revenue Leader with aspirations to become a Chief Revenue Officer?
Are you a CEO looking to appoint a CRO to scale your business?
Welcome to the CRO Spotlight podcast, a weekly show featuring insights from Chief Revenue Officers, B2B Revenue Leaders, and CEOs.
Hosted by Warren Zenna, Founder and CEO of The CRO Collective, the show goes deep behind the scenes with the people who have been there, done that, and have seen the results.
The CRO Spotlight Podcast is an open, free-form conversation that digs into real issues that Revenue Leaders and CROs grapple with everyday.
Hi. I'm Warren Zena, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO spotlight podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of chief revenue officers. Each week, we have an open frank and free form conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on BDD businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs, and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or wanna support their CRO to succeed.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. Hello. Welcome to this episode of the CRO spotlight podcast. This is Warren Zen.
Speaker 1:I'm the founder of the CRO Collective. And, you know, one of the things, as you know, that I talk about almost half the time is getting the right CRO role and how to find the right CRO role, how to be a fit for that role, and how to actually massage the role to be the role that you will succeed in. And this is not an easy thing to do. And I was introduced to a really smart gentleman named of Andy Moad, who has an amazing company called Whispered. And they do the same sort of thing, but they do it in a brilliant way.
Speaker 1:And I thought it's time to talk to Andy and find out a little bit more about this. So we have him here. So, Andy, thank you so much for being here today and I really look forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Warren. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:A lot of things about the chief revenue officer role in general in terms of like your perspective on it would be really interesting to hear from but what you're doing. But more importantly, I'd love to hear a bit more about your amazing background and how you kinda ended up here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'll tell that story, I think there's a lot of fun discussions specifically about the CRO side. So I've run RevOps and other parts of GTM at four unicorns. I'm I had this time in the wilderness before. And I guess I would say everybody gets punched in the face at some point in their career.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, the first time
Speaker 1:Many many times sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. With yes. Exactly. Hopefully not too many. Otherwise, it really just starts to become painful, those punches don't heal.
Speaker 2:But, you know, you you can't follow a a former colleague anymore. You you're not being recruited out. It's much easier when you're sitting there just evaluating things, and they're and you're in a position of power. But when you leave a company and you're actively, proactively searching, it can be tough. Right?
Speaker 2:And so that can happen for any number of reasons. I see a lot of people, maybe for the first time in their careers, like their 40s and 50s, get punched in the face. In some ways, I got lucky. I got punched in the face at 25. Right?
Speaker 2:I graduated from Stanford Business School in 02/2001. I partied like crazy and I forgot to network for a job. When I went in in 'ninety nine, it was hot. When I came out, there was nothing. And I hadn't bothered to really think about that stuff.
Speaker 2:Was like, hey, this is it's 1999. Things are happening. There's infinite stuff. And so I had to learn a lot of the lessons really early. How to get specific, how to network, how to do all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of people have always pinged me and been like, Andy, you're really good at it. Maybe it's because I got punched in the face twice really early. So in 'one and 'eight, I was without a job. Like two recessions that were quite brutal. And I got really good at it.
Speaker 2:And so I've kind of gone unicorn and then tried something really fun and then I've got to tack back into it. So three or four years ago when I was wrapping up my last startup, I was crap. I'm a 50 year old, failed CEO. This is scary. This is going to be hard.
Speaker 2:And so what I did is I'm like, I'm going to do this better than anybody else. And so I called all my friends and I asked them two basic questions. One is when you interview with a company, what do you do with that information? And what I was seeking was I want to find the breakout companies, the hot companies, because they're different than they were four years ago. And they're like, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I just kind of throw it away or it's in a little Google Sheet. Was like, great. You're giving that to me. So for the last three and a half years, people have been whispering me confidential insights on companies. So we built this massive database of insights on companies, and I can talk more about how people can use that to spot the breakouts.
Speaker 2:But also, there are a lot of toxic situations. And, you know, particularly if you're a CRO, there's a lot of interesting dynamics with CEOs, and we can talk along about that.
Speaker 1:Indeed.
Speaker 2:The second thing I started asking people was, hey, when a recruiter hits you up, can you send me the role? And they started doing that. And so we built this massive database of unposted roles. So we now have the deepest database anywhere of go to market leadership roles in North America. We have not gone outside of North America yet, and we are staying firmly focused in go to market.
Speaker 2:But a lot of executives will send us those roles, and, you know, the people that are it's we believe that there's so much we can do to help people beyond just the rules. Whisper is a lot more than just the rules. I think the other thing that we've built is this massive network of top execs that are all givers and helpers, and they've all connected their LinkedIns and their email graphs to us. So then we can say, listen, if you can articulate the companies you want to be at, we can likely open the door to get in. There's still a lot you have to do to land the job, we can make those doors open as easily as possible.
Speaker 2:So happy to go in any direction, but that's kind of my story Mhmm. And kind of what spawned Whispered.
Speaker 1:It's great. I love it. So like a almost like a like a secret c c suite executive broker of a marketplace of roles that are out there that no one knows about.
Speaker 2:And Yeah. We do say to people a lot of people are like, I just want the rules. And I'm like, then you're not a candidate for Whisper. At least not because there's so much more you need to be able to get the roles. Just knowing the role exists.
Speaker 2:100 Yeah. Many people, I'm shocked at how many people badly position themselves. Many, isn't it? Five playbooks. Like if you show up to somebody like, Hey, I'm Andy, you know, do you have any roles?
Speaker 2:You're gonna be screwed. But if you're like, hey, I'm Andy. All I do is run RevOps at Unicorns for low ACV, high velocity models that are data driven, and I'm talking to people like Zapier and X and Y and Z, someone's going to remember you. And so having that clarity of what the heck you're good at and the value you bring, it's there. And I think the other thing we're looking for is if you're just looking to take and just see roles, you're not looking to contribute, like, you don't get into Whisper.
Speaker 2:But I think a lot of people describe us as a marketplace. We've really resisted that because we think the constraint on our growth is not more roles. Like, we have tons of roles, but, you know, 40% to 50% of people will find it from a role that comes. The rest of people will use the Whispered Network, the insights, everything else like that to go get their role. So for us, it's less of a marketplace and more like a platform to help you do your search much better.
Speaker 1:No. It's great. I love it. So so here's some interesting things. Right?
Speaker 1:So like we're very aligned in this respect. I think the obvious one is first finding the right role. And we'll let's talk a bit about the CRO role specifically because of its strange nuances. One is the obvious, which is that the role is ambiguous. The job descriptions are varied.
Speaker 1:You know, you could see five different versions of this role, which is strange. The underlying reason I started this whole thing was to solve that problem and create more precision with which the role is defined so that people look for the same things. And then the second part is there's two parts of the competencies that the role requires in the in the manner that I'm defining it. And two is the company's competencies in making that role successful, which is the harder part. Right?
Speaker 1:It's it's not just you being great at the job. It's also the company has to know what to do with you. You know? And Yeah. You know, if you hire a lot of salespeople, you have a lot of muscle memory on how to get salespeople into your organization.
Speaker 1:Although it may not not be perfect, at least there's a process. There's certainly an understanding of what it is they're supposed to be doing. You know? There's no ambiguity about that. Even marketing people, you know, even though that role has gotten a little bit strange lately, still people understand the general premise of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Chief revenue officer role is is one that, you know, the first thing is, is it even a role that is correctly defined? Is it one you should pursue? Is it the right job even though the title might be on the top of the job description? And then how do you evaluate that?
Speaker 1:How do you know that? And then on the part, like you said, very much is now how do you do one of two things? How do you challenge their perception? So I just had a conversation today with a client of mine whom I'm I'm sharing with her this idea that, you know, there may be jobs, for example, that you find out about that you'd like because maybe they're ancillary or they're adjacent to your current industry or you feel like you have a certain competency where you'd be really good fit there or there are aspects about the job that you are attracted to because of the mission that they're on or the product that they sell and you want that job but you could also see that the CRO position that they've described is one that's a little bit off kilter And so I help them recalibrate a communication with this company where they can maybe engage the discussion about maybe thinking about the role differently and why they should. And that's a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1:If you could do that persuasively, you you've already made a difference in the way that you're talking to these people. So these are the sort of things I'm interested in getting your thoughts on in terms of how you see these things in your you're doing this a lot more than me. So what are your thoughts on some of those?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm gonna rip into the 100 directions and happy to have you got three thoughts that I can take and then we can go in any direction. One is literally, we just dropped this week a phenomenal podcast with Mike Weir, the former CRO at G2, CRF and LS. Mike went really deep into the concept, the differences between CRO and CSO. I thought it was one of the most insightful things I'd heard in a long time.
Speaker 2:Right? He said and I'll paraphrase, but we can definitely find more insights for your listeners as well, too. But he basically said he was in I mean, he's been a CRO at a lot of places. He was interviewing with a very with a rocket ship company. And the CEO is like, no, we are not hiring a CRO.
Speaker 2:We're hiring our CSO. And Mike basically pushed him on that. And I think he had one of most thoughtful answers he had, which is I want you focused solely on revenue, not on retention and not on customers. And so I think having CEOs that really understand these differences is so critically important. And so what the CEO came back with, even said that you want the candidates that are going to push on this stuff.
Speaker 2:And I think what the CEO came back with, one is it, as a CEO, you say that, you're assuming you're inheriting more responsibilities, right? So spend a lot of time thinking who is the decider across revenue, right? Is that the, do you have a CRO, CMO and CCO? Then you have a CEO has to be a decider. I'm a much bigger fan of the CRO that has marketing, CS, because then I think the CEO personally is too busy.
Speaker 2:Agree. A I personally would not go work with and for a CRO that only had sales because then my job is generally, like, cross GTM rev ops. And so then I end up having to deal with like a bad decision matrix. So personally, I'm a big fan of that. I love it when CEOs are naive and it's like, my board told me this.
Speaker 2:That's shitty. I think when but that that section and I'll send it to you, Orin, is I thought it was just brilliantly said, you know, and the intuition Mike had to pull it out and then the fact that the CEO had the maturity to be able to articulate why they didn't why they wanted a CSO rather than a CRO. It actually made Yeah. So that's one. The next one I'd say is I think a lot about stage of company and where roles are.
Speaker 2:Like, we've got this really
Speaker 1:Massively important. Massively important part of it. No doubt.
Speaker 2:So we've got this fun playbook we've written on, like, what stages do specific titles get hired? And so if you say, I'm interviewing to be a CRO at a million dollar revenue company, somebody's naive in that equation.
Speaker 1:Agree. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yep. And so we can talk more about that. And the other one I think a lot about is I see a lot of people that like, you know, 5 or 6,000,000, they have the CRO title, but it's a shitty little company. And I just one of the playbooks we've written on is should you go take the CRO role?
Speaker 2:A lot of people are like, my career is building to a CRO. It's gotta be CRO. It's gotta be CRO. And they pick shitty company after shitty company. And then they wake up and they're 45 and they're really struggling.
Speaker 2:Right? And so we different people, different ways. But I sometimes will see personas be like, Listen, if you consider the number two role, any big company? And so that one's interesting to me. Yep.
Speaker 2:And then the other thought, see a lot of like and again, I'm not picking on a company here, but just I'll name one that I've seen the pattern happen. Like great VPs of sales at LinkedIn struggle mightily to be CROs at smaller companies because they think that they're good, but they've not built, you know, they've not built these things from the ground up. They don't they've lived with a world class enablement function for a very long time. And so I've got a lot of thoughts on like, how do you make sure these people are successful? So I'm happy to go in any direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I love all three of these things. It's so great. And I I I've been saying I feel like I've been saying this recently more than I have lately, and I'm happy to say that it'll so great to hear people who I probably smarter than me repeating things I'm saying, which makes me realize, I guess, I'm on the right track here because I've doing this for a long time, and it's great. You're echoing everything I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about all those things. I think they're all important. So the first one is the one you brought up, which the obvious and I think you and I get the obvious difference between a CSO and a CRO. And and and instances where a, it's it's situation a, like you might have said, I'd love to talk to this gentleman, Mike, is when in fact it may be that the company does know the difference and they just want a CSO for specific strategic reasons, and that's fine. That that might be a decision they've made, and it's an educated one.
Speaker 1:It's not a mistake. And that that is something to understand. And then the second part is when they're just don't know the difference, and they think that they know the difference. And the way that they're positioning the role, you and I easily would look at this and see a traffic accident happening in about six months, and the candidate doesn't. And so these are the sort of things I think would be really cool to kind of unpack a bit because, you know, you you said something in the beginning of this conversation.
Speaker 1:Where you get punched in the face a couple times and everyone did. I got punched the face more than twice, frankly. Here's what I looked at it and the way I talk to my clients about this is I say to them, look, respectfully, let's just have a different frame. You punched yourself in the face. And the reason is because there are so many signals out there that you didn't have the knowledge or experience to recognize.
Speaker 1:And because of that, that's why you got punched in the face.
Speaker 2:Dude, I'm I'm literally scribbling that down on my pad. It is the greatest quote. The dumb mistakes by candidates are are off the charts.
Speaker 1:Yes. And so what I what I'm trying to train and this is like probably half of my training with my clients is how to make them so that they don't punch themselves in the face. Because what I don't like, and I see this a lot, is probably 70% of the people that call me for to work with me come to me with the I got punched in the face story and I have to sort of have this long conversation where they come to the realization that they, yes, you know what? You're right. I did punch myself in the face.
Speaker 1:And it's either a, you've given me insights that didn't see before. And if I had known that, I wouldn't have done it. Or frankly, Andy, a lot of times, it's, you know what? I knew all that. And I said yes anyway.
Speaker 1:So I really punched myself in the face.
Speaker 2:You know what? Sometimes they're calculated risks. I can I have two points to risk? So one, in addition to, like, helping people find roles and get into roles, we also wanna make sure people make the right decisions. So we had a woman who had a VP offer at a $170,000,000 company going IPO.
Speaker 2:And there was the signals on the CEO that he was a unique individual. And so we just called two board members for this person. And we said, Listen, we need we have this really impressive person, but we need to know. Like, what's the story? And the story came back, which was this person's not a jerk.
Speaker 2:They just tick this way. And so if you run the book, The First ninety Day Playbook, you won't make it past day 50. But if you are, if you understand how to roll up your sleeves and execute on this way, that would be good. And so know who you are know that that person did and that person accepted and that person was promoted within four or five months.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's a great distinction. You have to sort of know the risks and, you know, sort of understand like if you're gonna jump out of the plane, who packed your parachute? You know, how is it packed and so you know the risks and when you do it, you can compensate necessarily and I agree with you. There are times where I'll say to somebody, you know what?
Speaker 1:This isn't the right exact thing but given the situation, you could make it the best thing if you do these things and you should go for it. And then you can make it work. But there's a plan there. There's a strategy. That's not hope and pray.
Speaker 1:You know, that's like, okay, I'm survey the environment and I'm gonna put on different shoes and I'm gonna get through that area and I'll get it the other side and that's a difference than I think someone who just says, you know what? Just we'll see what happens. I'll I'll make it work. You know, that that's not always necessarily a good strategy. You have to.
Speaker 2:I like I like that. One thing we always say to people is, do not take a role assuming it will become something different. Right? Like, don't get married to somebody assuming that they will change.
Speaker 3:Exact same analogy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Hey, everyone. I wanna thank you again for listening. Get great comments across LinkedIn and
Speaker 3:other channels about the show, and it's really gratifying to see that we're having an impact on you. Another thing I wanted to
Speaker 1:let everybody know is that we also produce events. About two and a half years ago, we started the CRO roundtables predicated on the idea that well, two premises. One is CROs are looking for other CROs to talk to, which is really true. It's a very lonely job. How do we get a bunch of CROs in a room where they're not being, let's say, disintermediated by panel discussions and sponsorship events and demos and stuff and really give them a chance to talk to each other.
Speaker 1:So we created a roundtable event that is essentially that. It's a three and a half, four hour discussion between between twenty and thirty chief revenue officers, and these are amazing events. The format took off. People love em and I get requests all the time as to when when is your next CRO event. So, to that end, I want to just let you all know that we have a roundup of them coming over the next number of months over the remainder of
Speaker 3:the year. So, the next one
Speaker 1:is in Boston on August 20. Following that, we have two events in September in San Francisco, one on September 16, which is a dinner, and then we have another roundtable in San Francisco on the seventeenth. And then we're gonna have one in New York in October, probably mid to late October. And then I have one in November in Chicago, November 18. So if anyone is interested in attending any of these events, if you're a chief revenue officer working for a company over a 150 to 200 people in your in your organization, just send me a DM on LinkedIn and ask me about which event, and I'll provide you with either the information or the links.
Speaker 3:But, again, it's August 20 in Boston, two in September on September.
Speaker 1:New York in October, late October, and then again in November in Chicago. So sign up for the CRO roundtables. They're amazing events, and I hope to see you there. It's great. So so there's that one.
Speaker 1:And I think that there's a really great thing about what I'm seeing now. Maybe I'd like to get your perspective on this. Do you see this? Because I certainly when I first started doing this, I I started the CRO Collective about two thousand eighteen, 02/2019. At that time, virtually every single chief revenue officer was ahead of sales.
Speaker 1:I mean, I didn't see any out there. If anybody else who didn't kind of run a sales organization and and I started, you know, kind
Speaker 3:of screaming at the top
Speaker 1:of my lungs about the fact that this is just a broken system. You said it very well before, which is why would you dump all that responsibility on a chief executive officer? It doesn't make any sense. And also all this bifurcation or trifurcation of these c suite roles in the revenue operation just creates more drag, more politics, and a lack of alignment and consistency across processes and data that doesn't work anymore. You have to stop this shit already.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, that that seemed to catch on. I don't know if I was responsible for it, but certainly, maybe the world caught up with me. And by two years or three years into it, I'm seeing more and more CRO roles now absolutely reflect that. And lately, I'm seeing almost all of them seem to be leaning more in the direction of having the CRO be someone whom they want to run revenue. Now whether or not they're doing it at the right stage is a whole other conversation, and we can we can discuss that.
Speaker 1:That's the other mistake. But I wanna know, do you see that too? Do you think the CRO role is sort of becoming more into a little more clarity and less fuzziness, or do you still see it as muddled as always?
Speaker 2:I think it's what we've touched on a little bit. It's the maturity of the CEO. And do they understand what the role really is? And so I don't think there's a macro. I tend to think less in macro, more in micro.
Speaker 2:Right? Like Okay. For that company, does that CEO have a good clarity of what that role is? Again, like Mike was certainly, you've got to ask these questions. And if you're not a if you're a crappy CRO, we'll just take the role.
Speaker 2:They're like, oh, it sounds cool.
Speaker 1:It's like they gave me.
Speaker 2:Going figure it out. A great one will be like, great. You've got the you've given me the offer. Let's just go spend two weeks just figuring out, like, what does this thing really look like? So I'll give you an example of Carta.
Speaker 2:I got the the COO happened to run all of revenue. The CRO, CMO and myself all reported to this and CCO also reported
Speaker 1:And to this
Speaker 2:I got the offer and I'm like, terrific. Like, let's just spend a little bit of time talking about how do we tick what is the vision of the org, and is my org designed correctly, right? So I think if I was somebody would be cool, great, I'll take it, I'll figure it all out, is not a mature approach, right? And so I think I would guide people like make because you're going to pay for it with your career if you have a six to nine month deal. Those just look terrible on the resumes.
Speaker 2:And so it's okay if it's like a so I would spend the extra two weeks and it always is, there's a time in an interview process where they're evaluating you, and then it shifts and you're evaluating them. You have a lot of power at that point in time to take a moment, take a pause, you know, can I talk to three board members? I mean, those things are good. And if they push back on that stuff, Warren, that might be time to run away.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh. Yep. I I look. I I had the same exact way in which I talked to my clients. The perfect way you described it is you need to have a sort of like a come to Jesus conversation after you both sort of determine that you probably think you made a basic match here.
Speaker 1:And it's that last mile that if you don't take it, you end up with the job you're given, and then you're stuck with the ham sandwich that you were given as opposed to saying, let's bake the let's open up the bread. Let's take a look at what we got in here. And maybe we can reconfigure a little bit because I have some thoughts on this. The way I tell my clients is, look. You know, they're not hiring you to be some, you know, salesperson.
Speaker 1:You're being brought in to be the chief revenue officer of this company, which means you need to come in with a point of view. They need to be willing to listen to that point of view. They're not just hiring a functionary. They're hiring someone who has a point of view and a perspective and is gonna bring new thinking into And the sooner you do that, the more you're demonstrating, a, that you can demonstrate that. And two, will they listen to you?
Speaker 1:Are they gonna even be receptive to your point of view? Because if they're not in the interview, which is they're supposed to be the nicest to you at that point, they're certainly not gonna be six months later when it gets really the heat turns up. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:The the founder says, like, okay. Okay. Whatever. I don't really care. Just go get revenue higher.
Speaker 2:Run away.
Speaker 1:Run away.
Speaker 2:Right. Like yeah. One of the tactics I use is I write my maintain my user manual.
Speaker 1:It's I'm sorry. Say that again.
Speaker 2:You're what? I write and maintain my user manual.
Speaker 1:So Gotcha.
Speaker 2:How to work with Andy. His good parts, his bad parts. I'm always updating it. And so when I joined Carta, I sent to the COO. Was like, here's my user.
Speaker 2:I don't expect you to write your own, but would you read mine and could we have a coffee about it? And he's like, great. So we spent three hours talking about it, understanding And it's like and the CEO would say, know, I don't really fucking give a shit. You know? Like, that would be another red flag for me to run away.
Speaker 1:It would. Yeah. If you don't mind, I mean, I'd love that. Would you be open to sharing a couple bullet points on that? Like,
Speaker 2:on my LinkedIn. I'll I'll send it to you. It's it's there, and I give the the template for other people.
Speaker 1:What are, like, maybe, like, two or three samples of things that you would tell people that you how you work? I just think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:Well, it's both for people above me, and I'm pulling it up as we speak.
Speaker 3:Okay. Both for people
Speaker 2:above me and people below me. Right? So when I take over imagine if you're a CRO and you're taking over a team. You have nuances in how you tick, right? If people don't understand those and have to spend the first sixty, ninety days figuring that out, that's going to be a mess.
Speaker 2:And also so I'll read a couple. One for me is I'm passionate about alignment, right? Like, maybe oversteer a little bit on that, but I don't care if I'm right, but I care deeply that we are aligned and we're making decisions together, right? And so that's something that's like, if if someone say, I don't really care. It's all about get shit done.
Speaker 2:Like, I'm fine with people breaking each other and like running over each other. That's not the place for me. Focused and clarity wins. I'm a big fan of only be there I or somebody else who will own the empty space. Right?
Speaker 2:So if there's a quietness, like if we're sitting there both looking at the cookie, like, I'm just going to go take the cookie. And so the other one is like, I'm insanely assertive, but I and that oftentimes gets misread as Andy doesn't want other opinions. But if I can verbalize that one, I can help people understand that, no, they do need to speak up. And so that's something where if I don't say that to you, Andy will come across as over intense and not listening, but that's not actually the case. Or I always I'm always on time and I always have time.
Speaker 2:Right? And so a lot of people, like I figure and I've got a bunch of others too, but those are things where I'm really, really clear on those upfront. And then I I'm always adjusting my style to fit somebody. But why should we waste six to nine months figuring out that? Or if you just don't click with me, like, we should figure that out early, both for people to report to me and for people I report to.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's great. I'm actually now, like, formulating because I realize that we probably at this stage in our careers, we'll probably all have that list, but it's in our head. We never wrote it down, you know, because I certainly know what I would tell people if I was to put one together. And I think it's a great exercise.
Speaker 1:In fact, I would say, and if I maybe don't need to say because some people probably listening to this already thinking this, but it's probably good for everybody to write that down because I think it's a really great document to have. Particularly, it's almost like a, I don't know, like a user manual, you know, for Warren Zena or a user manual for Andy Moat. Right? Like, how do you work with me? Because this is the way I work, and it's let's get this up front, and I could whack off a whole bunch of things right now that are the case.
Speaker 1:But I would articulate these things as almost combination of, let's say, personality types, preferences, modalities. And also, some of them are, like, terms. Like, these are just hills I will die on. You know what I mean? And you should know that I die on these hills so that when the hill is being surmounted, it's likely that it's one you're gonna encounter me operating a certain way because of that hill that I'm on.
Speaker 1:You know? And there are not many of them, but they're important for you to know what those are. Right? And it's kind of an interesting way to frame getting a sense of people organizing themselves around your leadership. It's great.
Speaker 1:Great exercise. Thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. For sure.
Speaker 1:Okay. So anyway, another thing you mentioned too was there was the stage, which I think is a great conversation.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I agree with you that CROs should be hired at a certain stage, but I I have my own opinion about it. I like to know yours. Like, when do you think it's appropriate for a company to think about bringing one up?
Speaker 2:We've got a whole playbook on this with every single word, every single time. Ours currently says, and I and I would love to have you riveting a partner, is stage c. So, like, 15 to 25,000,000 revenue. I feel like the head of sales is brought in at, like, 2,000,000 of revenue. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Head of CS may be, like, between two and five. And so, ideally, your head of sales grows into your CRO. But but sometimes you'll see people layer somebody over that's bringing that experience across everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I agree. A 100%. I say same thing. It's not scientific, but it's between $1,525,000,000 is the way that I sort of, like, look at it is it's a function of operational complexity.
Speaker 1:So when you have enough of that, now you need a organizer, a revenue organizer whom can bring order to confusion, which is a natural, you know, way in which organizations grow. They don't grow in an organized way. They grow in a very inorganically kind of messy way unless you manage them. You know? And the earlier that you bring in that CRO at the stage that you just said, which I completely agree on, it's it's a time that you can catch and build alignment early and build the foundations for when the company becomes larger.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:As opposed to doing it when you're at 150,000,000, which I see a lot. And now the complexity is so overwhelming that it's hard for that CRO to try and bring order to it in a way that they give them enough runway to do it. And I think that's a problem. So there's another thing I talk about too with my clients is like, you know, where are they at? They go, oh, they're a 150,000,000, and they are hiring their first CRO.
Speaker 1:I'd say, well, this would be a lot of complexity for you to deal with as a CRO. You know, have a conversation with them about what their thoughts are on how much leeway they're gonna be able to give you to make things orderly and bring alignment to the organization at that stage when they probably want you to close deals at the same time. And you're gonna have to figure out which master to serve and you know your master is alignment and their master might be top line revenue and you're gonna have to figure out how to make sure that they give you the mandate to work on the machine not try to run the machine while you know, it's a very, very complicated situation.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more. I mean, you always hear that old axiom or whatever it is. VP or a c level of sales should drive an impact within one sales cycle. Yep. Well, to your point, it's a little harder to drive that at a $150,000,000 scale, but at 15, dollars 17,000,000.
Speaker 2:Absolutely damn right they should. Right?
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And so I think it's yeah, there's a whole series I mean, getting product data mapped to the sales function, driving efficiencies, that can take two or three sales cycles on So some of that I think I agree. I think you're really right. But having that convo with the CEO and
Speaker 3:the Have to have it.
Speaker 2:As well, too, to make sure that the things are aligned. I mean, I heard a story this week of a gentleman that left a very large new company moved from one city to another for that role and was out after seven months. Right? That's just that that is going to hurt your career and your emotions and your family. Right?
Speaker 2:Like that's that's just like make take the time to really diligence that stuff.
Speaker 3:Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have, and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free, please, to share the CRO spotlight podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here, and I wanna get the word out to as many people as possible, your your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council.
Speaker 3:The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of six season Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer Board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters Councils, again, they're twice a month, and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own board directors of chief revenue officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have.
Speaker 3:It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other chief revenue officers you can talk to and say, Hey, I'm working on this, or Have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with Chief Revenue Officers. Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role.
Speaker 3:It's a very lonely job, and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and, DM me, masters or Masters Council, and I'll follow-up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there, and thank you.
Speaker 1:A 100%. This is great. I love it. I'm feeling good that my my work is being validated, so thank you so much for this. So Well, me too.
Speaker 2:It's fun to it's fun to hear the
Speaker 1:It's cool. Right? So so and we both arrived to these things organically. Right? So it's not like there's some science because I I you you said something before I wanna just pick your brain on because I I sort of, like, we we seem to be at the same page that there's still this lack of understanding of what the CRO role is in the marketplace.
Speaker 1:Right? You said it before. You look at it more micro. I think the CEO themselves not knowing this. So, I mean, I would pause it.
Speaker 1:I think you'd agree with me that if I went to it that same CEO and I said, tell me what a marketing leader does, they'd know. And if I said, tell me what a CFO
Speaker 2:does No. They would not. They would it would be worse than, say, a CRO.
Speaker 1:Okay. That's interesting to me. So you're saying that there's a general kind of lack of awareness of these things, not specifically with the CRO role?
Speaker 3:You're saying it's more across the board.
Speaker 2:So generally, CEOs are like I think if you look at, like, daughter's vaccine, marketing is really struggling. Yes. CEO like, I think CEOs with sales, it's not rocket science, right? Like it's, do you have the pipeline? Are you converting?
Speaker 2:Definitely. And numbers and you can look at numbers, right? Like marketing is CEOs don't even know, like, do you need a demand gen marketer? Do you need a brand marketer? Do you need a product marketer?
Speaker 2:What is marketing strategy? Marketing strategy can take like two years to do right. And marketing is a wasteland. A CRO is hard. Marketing is even harder.
Speaker 2:CCO, I think I would put in the middle of the two of those. And rev ops, so many CEOs just don't understand the function. Yeah. And so but I found a lot of sympathy for CROs, but no. It's much worse for marketing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I mean, I don't disagree with you. I think you're right. I think that's more a function of the way that marketing has been sort of, you know, twisted and broken up into parts. And the metrics part of marketing was the one that people kept, and the rest of it they threw away.
Speaker 1:But I think that this is more of a outcome of the SaaS industry than anything else. I don't think it's the case elsewhere as much. I think SaaS has been an interesting animal because of its influence on the rest of b to b industries, even service industries. Mainly because of the amount of money that flows into SaaS and the billionaires that were made from SaaS and the studies that are done in SaaS and the sexiness of SaaS and all the there's a huge amount of just a lot of focus on this particular business model. And I think that if you're looking at a recurring revenue business model, it makes sense that everything you'd wanna measure because everything's leading towards some sort of transaction, and marketing sorta got pulled into that by becoming like a metrics driven discipline, which it's not.
Speaker 1:You know, if you look at consumer marketing, it's the opposite. It's all brand. It's all awareness. It's all emotion. It's all feeling.
Speaker 1:It's all persuasion where it works best in my view. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. I would think Doing doing marketing is more magic. You've got to it's hard to describe. It's you've got to the CEO's got to be one to take a risk that may not pay off.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And I think with sales, it's more like, no, are you running great process? Do you have great enablement? Do you are you coaching well? Is the CEO that's another one to run away from. Is the CEO getting on your calls and taking over demos?
Speaker 2:Right? Yep. Run away from those. Sales is a machine and it's metrics driven. Marketing, especially these days, like if you depend upon SEM or SEO or a lot of other things, like those are dying.
Speaker 2:And people don't know what to replace them with. So marketing is really, really hard. I see that one being even worse.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So just a bit of background. I have a marketing agency. I've had it for twenty years and we focus only on organic marketing. We don't do any paid or any performance based stuff and you know, thankfully, we do very well and there is still an understanding from a lot of our client base, which was, is pretty large is that they still know that they need to still enter into the intent mindset of people who are looking for something.
Speaker 1:And they want to do it in a way that's compelling enough. So I think that, yes, it's it's dying but it's also it's dying in a way that it's just changing to a different thing, you know, but it's not going to go away. I mean, people still need to, people are doing research on their own. They're discovering things before they meet you And, you know, I don't want to kind of drift off into a marketing conversation. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's an interesting one. But anyway, so to the points earlier about your about Whisper and I want to hear like a bit more about this. So, you mentioned your marketplace. So, if you don't mind, walk me through a bit more how the whole organization is set up, who your stakeholders are, how they interact, and what your role in it is and how the whole thing works.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I'll take it in direction. Feel free to tap me in any direction. Whispered is, you know, so recruiters work for companies.
Speaker 2:Whisperd works for executives. I think that's the fundamental, thing to think about. We partner we help we are a platform to help executives do four things or to collaborate with other execs on four things. One is insights, right? So we have the deep database of company insights so we can help you make better decisions on companies and also avoid the toxic ones.
Speaker 2:Two is connections, right? Like you can help each other get connected. Three is roles. And then four is just the community support. This is hard.
Speaker 2:We collaborate deeply with a couple of different functions, right? With the VC talent and VC and PE talent partners. Those people are really closely related to us, as are the recruiters. Right? Because they have conversations every day, which are nice to meet you.
Speaker 2:You've got a great background. I don't have any role for you. And so increasingly, they're saying nice to meet you. Don't have
Speaker 1:a great background. I don't
Speaker 2:have a role. You should go check out Whisper. And so our biggest source of talent is from people that meet recruiters and talent partners and join. We do not charge companies anything to share a role with us. And we do that because we want to we deeply believe that there should be no barriers to seeing the roles.
Speaker 2:Now, those roles are fairly locked down, right? So if we were to sell roles in a marketplace, nobody would give us rolls. Right? And so if you go to I won't talk to specific things, but there are other platforms out there that for, you know, 200 a month or $50 for a role, you can go buy them. That means that you're getting shipped people that are seeing those things.
Speaker 2:They're not all people are shipped, but they're And not so our philosophy is we give away a ton for free. Anyone can join the free and you get access to all of our content and playbooks. You can talk to our AI coach. You can use you can actually contribute insights on the company side and get them. But if you want to get access to the unposted roles, the network, and some of the other sides of the equation, like our Deep Recruiter and Talendpart databases, and they kind of get wired in, that is only available to people that meet certain criteria.
Speaker 2:For that, you know, we think a lot about like candidates or people we think we can readily polish. People that are givers and helpers. And so a lot of people will talk you know, most of it gets weeded out by AI if they're not a fit. But sometimes I'll talk to somebody and they'll be like, Great. And it'll be a bad call.
Speaker 2:They'll be like, Great. I'll just go sign up, right? And I'm like, No, it doesn't work. And so we are not a you cannot sign up and buy rules with Whisper. If we did that, all the recruiters and the talent partners and the other people that we trust would not share them
Speaker 1:with us. I understand.
Speaker 2:We periodically will take a role and that if we have a relationship with the talent partner and the recruiter of the company and they're willing to take candidates directly from us, we'll put that rule out anonymously on the web and allow people to submit their interest but not know the name of the company. And so we do that wherever we can. And then the companies can decide who they wanna reach out to and that works really well. But we are solely built to help executives which a lot of people look at us and they're like, Oh, you're a recruiter. I'm like, No, I'm the exact opposite of a recruiter.
Speaker 3:We work with other recruiters.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Very cool. Well, that's great. I think it's needed. It's excellent.
Speaker 1:I think that there's very unfortunately, there's no other places like what you're doing for this. And I think the other part of it too is that, like I said before, the beginning of this conversation, most CROs that are looking for roles, they the ones they're finding are not the best ones. You know? It's the ones that they can't find are usually the ones they really should be looking at. And so I think there's a nice little synergy there.
Speaker 1:I think it's excellent. So one of the one of
Speaker 2:the best ways to get on our radar is just go to Whisper and and start with share a role. You know? Then we're like, okay. And so we oftentimes can give discounts or if you're in the flow of roles and you're seeing them from other places and they're not a fit for you, we love people sharing those. Anyone can share a role.
Speaker 2:And then when we do engage with people, it's you're like, okay, great. This person's in the flow. They're a giver and a sharer, and we can give discounts on pro membership for people like
Speaker 1:Got you. So it's almost like a crowdsource thing in a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. About 22% of our roles are coming from execs that have never been a member or not an alum that are just sharing roles. And so we have a lot of people that are, you know, I'm not looking right now, but I might be late. And so that's that's a powerful way to go.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the CRO collective communication strategy, and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. Couple things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even a old salty CRO, and you're looking to either become a chief revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a chief revenue officer, we offer the CRO accelerator course.
Speaker 3:It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a fifteen week course that is populated by aspiring chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO, accelerator course. It's, people whom are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now.
Speaker 3:They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C suite or their CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator, and I will set up a time to talk, and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure, of course. So again, CRO accelerator course, fifteen week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs.
Speaker 3:Take advantage of it. It's been great, and you'll see some more information about it on the website. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Amazing. Okay. Great. And so did you just go to whisper.com and sign up or send you a role and that's the way you like to engage with people?
Speaker 1:Is that your
Speaker 2:initial role? Yes. Yes. I always say don't don't intro people to me. A lot of people I probably have like 10 to 15 people try to intro somebody to me
Speaker 1:a week. And I'm like, no, because those people all want to get on a call.
Speaker 2:They're like, okay, just do you have any rules? And that is a disastrous strategy for you as an exec, right? You should do the thinking if you show me do have any rules, it won't work. But if you show up and like, here's what I am. And so we have a playbook on our site around career clarity where we literally have a template.
Speaker 2:Like, get really freaking clear on what you're looking for and you can follow our guides and do that stuff. And so we always say like, don't drop me an email and be like, hey, just want to get on a call with you. Yes, we're really, really wired in. But you're going be much better off if you go spend some time on our playbooks. You use the free resources.
Speaker 2:You understand what Whisper is about and then you apply. And then you can get to me on that side. Yeah, understand. So even though, Warren, you're probably gonna have a and we should definitely talk about it if there are ways are
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there are.
Speaker 2:There's some phone ways are your client. We have a couple other groups like yours where, like the CMO groups and stuff where your clients might be able, we could find a way to do that.
Speaker 1:No doubt.
Speaker 2:But generally, like we work we've been teaching at the Chicago Booth program with the guy that you probably know him. And like he's we've spoken to his team and we've opened stuff up. But what I would say is there's so much cleanup. There's so many ways the game is played
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:That people don't know that we've spent the last four years just writing about that's all free on Whisper.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah. We can. I mean, I I'm familiar with with Dan over at Chicago. I I I was a speaker at that course for front time.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, there's absolutely an alignment there and I think what you're doing is excellent and I also like the fact that you're not just, you know, just being like a connector, but you're actually helping people like me, both of us doing the same thing, is help them understand how to approach the job and, you know, not get not if we say this again, not punch themselves in the face unnecessarily and, you know, get the jobs that they want. It's it's it's crazy. I hear stories all the time like this. So look, I really appreciate this. This is really helpful.
Speaker 1:And very how can I say it was a comfort confirming discussion, and I appreciate it very much? And I guess what people best way I can find you is LinkedIn, I assume. Correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah. LinkedIn and whispered.com.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. And it's whispered it's just spelled the way whispered is. Right? Whispered.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Think about it this way. Your next role won't be posted.
Speaker 2:It'll be Got you. We bought the domainwhispered.com.
Speaker 1:Cool. And
Speaker 2:you find us there.
Speaker 1:Great. Andy, as I suspect, this is great conversation, and I'm we'll be talking more. So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It was confirmed for me as well too. Really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1:the CRO spotlight podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CROs succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO ready organizations. You can find out more information about our services at thecrocollective.com. That's thecrocollective.com. And we look forward to having you join us next time.