Every Company Needs a CRO, a Chief Revenue Officer
CEO, are you aware that thousands, if not millions of dollars your company's dollars are being wasted? Your company currently suffers millions of dollars of waste that aris...

CEO, are you aware that thousands, if not millions of dollars your company's dollars are being wasted?

Your company currently suffers millions of dollars of waste that arises from a single simple source - the lack of integration among function groups like product development, customer operations, marketing, sales and corporate communications.

Most of the work or people involved in these five broad function groups interact with your prospects and customers every day. This is where the rubber of your investments and efforts meets the road of purchase decisions.

To the extent that all these interactions don't work together to form and accumulate a common and single value proposition that is consistently developing and consolidating preference over competitive products in the minds and hearts of their prospects and customers - to that extent, there is waste. Systemic waste.

And to the extent there isn't someone in the company who is responsible and accountable for all the functions in the company that can directly influence revenues, you are going to maintain this systemic source of waste.

You're thinking. I already do this. I am already this someone. No. This someone you cannot be you. You are accountable for a lot more than this. As the CEO, you are primarily accountable for increasing the value of your company's stock. The value of your company's stock is determined primarily by the market analysts that cover the product category your company is in. And while the likelihood that your company will continue to keep increasing revenues in future contributes to their evaluation, there is another important factor they consider toward their judgment of your company's profitability into the future.

Market analysts recommendations regarding your company's stock price is determined primarily by their judgment of the likelihood that your company will be able to ensure profit increases on a sustainable basis. And profits are not determined by revenues alone. Profits are determined by both revenues and expenses, i.e., the costs incurred by your company. So, to do your job well, you have to stay focused on costs just as you are focused on revenues.

Other than costs, revenues are the most important single determinant of your company's profits for years to come. But right now, no single function in your company is responsible for revenues. Right now, there are at least five functions in your company that directly influence customers' perception of the relative value of your offerings vis a vis those of your competitors. And most of these functions are not even being held accountable for your company's revenues.

Currently, Sales is held accountable for revenues, while the other four functions are thought to be accountable for other deliverables, such as 'making the best products', solving customer problems, facilitating product access and competitiveness, and building the most favorable image for the company. Surely you can see that this is not enough to integrate all the functions that directly influence revenues - to work optimally together.

We recommend that you institute a new function in your company with the mandate to oversee and integrate all these functions to work together to put an end to all the value perception loss resulting from the inconsistent perception residues left in customers' minds by each those functions. And we recommend calling this new function - Chief Revenue Officer.

The Chief Revenue Officer, or CRO, being accountable to you for increasing your company's revenues over the next few years, will be compelled to make sure that all of the functions involved in the generation of revenues work consistently and seamlessly together, and this will at minimum reduce the likelihood that the functions that directly interact with customers, and therefore influence revenues, might be working at cross-purposes to one another.

To make sure that your new CRO will be able to perform well from the outset, it is also useful to regard all functions that directly influence revenues as having a second functional impact: namely, the inherent communications function that forms and accumulates to become the value perception of your offerings in the minds of existing and prospective customers.

In order to perform this new integrated function well, your new CRO must understand two things:

1. The perceptual residue being generated by all company functions that interact with existing or prospective customers are the primary driver of their preference for your offerings, determine your revenues.

2. She or he has to reorganize your revenue maximizing efforts according to their sources, i.e., as revenues obtained through existing customers, and revenues obtained from converting the customers of your competitors.

Such a re-organization of revenue sources will enable you to be sure that the brand-communications impact of the former five company oriented-functions are integrated in a customer-oriented way that optimizes customers' and prospects' value perception of your offerings - and maximizes their preference for them.

Go on, be a breakthrough pioneer. Get or develop a Chief Revenue Officer for your company, if only so you can stop worrying about all that waste that your existing structure is sucking out of your own performance as a CEO.