Companies seeking sustained growth must reimagine the traditional C-Suite structure – which is why the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) has become one of the most critical hires for strategic growth. Going beyond a senior sales leader, CROs orchestrate an organization’s entire revenue engine spanning marketing, sales, partnerships, and customer success levers. It’s about aligning efforts to grow sustainably and strategically, no matter the market.
It’s important to evaluate all the factors to hiring the right CRO, including knowing the different growth stage styles and defining what success looks like post-hire. Well-suited CROs accelerate valuation, investor confidence, and invite market leadership, while CROs incongruent to a business’s values and ideals can cause stagnation and costly turnover.
This, in addition to compensation models and understanding key industry experiences, soft skills, and hard skills, will help you avoid the most common hiring missteps moving forward with your CRO.
Mounting expectations for the modern CRO
While sales leaders’ responsibilities previously revolved around hitting quotas and driving immediate revenue, today’s CRO role is much more multifaceted. CROs must do more with less and be capable of pivoting unexpectedly – all while achieving consistent, repeatable success and scaling revenue growth long-term.
Nowadays, CROs function as the critical link to investors and boards, as they’re often viewed as the C-Suite member most accountable for predictable growth. In PE and VC-backed businesses, this role has become synonymous with valuation multiplier.
When looking for a CRO, candidates who can effectively demonstrate these skills are sure to add confidence and credibility for stakeholders. This is especially important for companies experiencing major restructures or changes, as it can ensure stability during a time of constant flux and uncertainty.
Today’s CROs must:
- Simultaneously strategize multiple go-to-market functions
- Align marketing demand generation with sales execution
- Create tight feedback loops with product
- Ensure customer success is structured to reduce churn and maximize both short- and long-term value
The financial windfalls and strategy value adds are a few of many reasons why it’s critical to find the right CRO fit for your organization.
How to find the right CRO for your business
To make a great hiring match, it’s important to understand what strength areas you need from a CRO. For example, if you’re a startup, you’ll want to prioritize leaders who demonstrate a “ground up” builder mentality – while a big brand name will want to lean on predictability and stakeholder alignment. Your organization’s growth trajectory will determine the hiring criteria needed to make the intended impact over time. Is it year-over-year growth, or change management protocols for sales
Understanding that first will help you make the most informed hiring decision possible. A mismatch in culture or executive alignment is sure to lead to missed revenue targets.
If your goal is for the CRO to lead growth, you’ll want to find a builder who excels in agility and change management, while a larger enterprise will need a CRO with a proven history of governance, forecasting, and leading successful partnerships.
The three types of CROs to be aware of are:
- Early-stage builders: These CROs thrive in ambiguity and are hands-on leaders who build from scratch, from sales playbooks, pricing strategies, and early teams. They’re often comfortable self-serving and closing deals, all while simultaneously hiring and training the first sales reps. This builder type is critical for companies establishing product-market fit.
- Mid-stage scalers: At this stage, need shifts from building to optimizing and scaling. The scaler introduces structure, data-driven metrics, RevOps functions, and starts expanding into new territories and channels. They excel in creating repeatable revenue engines that can support rapid growth.
- Late-stage operators: Here, predictability, governance, and investor communications become paramount. The Operator CRO is skilled in running large teams (hundreds of sellers globally), managing forecasts with precision, and navigating enterprise-level partnerships.
When’s the best time to hire a CRO?
Timing matters when you bring on a CRO (or any executive for that matter). Hiring too early can overburden the business with costs before revenue justifies the role, while hiring too late risks losing momentum and weakening investor confidence.
Common signs it’s time to hire a CRO include:
- Hitting a revenue plateau despite strong market demand
- Founders are stretched too thin from leading sales directly
- Expansion into new regions, verticals, or customer segments
- Investor or board mandates for accelerated growth
The key question CEOs and boards must ask is whether you need someone to build, scale, or operate. This answer determines not only timing but helps inform the type of CRO required.
Key success criteria for CROs
When evaluating executives, several skills separate the truly transformative CROs from the average:
- Proven track record of growth: Measurable results such as ARR growth, new market penetration, or successful exits in scenarios similar to your business’s needs
- Team leadership: Ability to recruit, inspire, and scale large teams. CROs are equal parts culture builders and revenue drivers
- Strategic acumen: Strong GTM design, partnerships, and pricing strategy
Using a structured scorecard during the hiring process allows decision-makers to objectively evaluate candidates against clear success criteria, reducing the risk of bias or overemphasis on prestige logos.
Clarifying success drivers for CROs
Depending on the aforementioned business stages means success will look different for every onboarding CRO. Have the team outline key success drivers, or measurable outcomes such as pipeline coverage, retention metrics, and expansion revenue to be communicated before day one. This ensures alignment and accountability around what’s expected, as tasks may require pilot projects and multi-phase implementations.
Crafting an onboarding plan that specifies immediate priorities, including (but not limited to) talent assessments, pipeline health checks, and GTM strategy reviews can act as a helpful reference point to tracking the same success metrics.
Equally important is top-down alignment from the C-Suite. The CEO, board, and CRO must share a unified definition of success. Without this understanding and culture fit, even high-performing CROs can struggle to deliver.
Having strategic compensation package models
It’s no accident that CRO compensation is among the highest in the C-Suite. These compensation packages are designed to not only attract top talent, but also to connect incentives directly with business outcomes.
Rather than thinking about numbers, think in terms of what model best fits:
- Base and variable model: A mix of stable salary and incentive compensation tied to revenue outcomes, margin growth, and retention
- Equity model: Critical for high-growth and investor-backed companies, where long-term value creation matters more than short-term cash
- Milestone model: Designed for earlier-stage firms, linking upside to specific funding, expansion, or revenue milestones
- Retention/exit model: Common in PE-backed companies, where incentives are aligned with 3–5 year horizons and exit events
The most successful companies align compensation design with both their business model and their growth horizon.
How heavily should you weigh a CRO’s industry experience?
Industry experience is a double-edged sword. In some contexts, such as healthcare, life sciences, or highly regulated industries, it can be a critical success factor. Knowledge of compliance, relationships, and credibility with decision-makers are pivotal when staying agile and resilient.
However, overemphasis on industry familiarity can narrow the candidate pool unnecessarily. Many of the most successful CROs bring transferable skills in building scalable systems, entering new markets, or leading global salesforces. The right question to ask isn’t about the amount of industry experience, but rather if industry-specific knowledge is needed? Demonstrating proof of growth expertise can be the more valuable skill to identify when seeking the right CRO for your organization.
Hiring pitfalls to avoid
We’ve seen companies experience hiring misalignment for CROs by:
- Overvaluing brand logos: Hiring from large enterprises for a startup rarely translates well
- Confusing CRO responsibilities with the VP of Sales: The CRO’s mandate is broader, spanning sales, marketing, and customer success, not just the sales funnel
- Neglecting cultural fit: This is one of main reasons CRO hires fail, by not aligning with the CEO or board
- Underestimating compensation models: Poorly structured incentives can lead to underperformance or failed closes
- Rushing: Pressure from investors can push companies to shortcut process – leading to bad hires that cost far more than a few months of search time
Is it the right time to hire a CRO?
The right CRO translates directly to an organization’s long-term growth multiplier. The stakes are high. A poor hire costs time and money in lost momentum and market credibility, while the right hire transforms trajectory and valuation.
If you’re still asking whether your business ready for a CRO, the next best step is to evaluate readiness, define success, and begin mapping the right candidate profile. We’ve placed thousands of executives spanning across all industries and would be happy to help. Check out our resources below or contact us to learn more about our executive search service offerings.
