The CRO Spotlight Podcast

In this episode, Warren speaks with Dr. Grant Van Ulbrich, the world’s first doctor of Sales Transformation. They discuss a critical gap in the modern revenue landscape: while other business functions have deep academic rigor, sales education has remained largely stagnant since the 1980s. Grant explains why traditional "tips and tricks" no longer work on informed buyers and why a shift from transactional interactions to genuine value alignment is necessary for business survival.The conversation dives into the psychology of change and Grant’s "Scared So What" methodology. Most leaders manage operations, not emotions, yet sales is fundamentally an act of imposing change. Grant breaks down how understanding personal reactions to change allows revenue leaders to move from simply telling teams what to do to empowering them through transformational leadership. This approach helps teams navigate the fear of new strategies and structures.Grant shares insights from the global cruise industry, revealing how shifting focus from internal agendas to customer needs dramatically improved sales effectiveness. He highlights the dangers of "product dumping" and the importance of co-creation. By treating sales as a coaching opportunity rather than a coercion tactic, organizations can align internal culture with the external customer experience to ensure a consistent brand promise across all channels.Finally, the discussion offers actionable advice for CEOs and CROs on navigating organizational restructuring. They explore why high-performing individual contributors often struggle in leadership roles without the right psychological tools. This episode is essential for executives looking to modernize their go-to-market strategy, foster a culture of ownership among their teams, and utilize science-backed frameworks to drive sustainable revenue growth.

In this episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast, Warren Zenna sits down with Amy Osmond Cook, Co-Founder and CMO at Fullcast, to tackle the pressing challenge of balancing AI innovation with authentic human connection. As revenue leaders race to adopt AI-native strategies, the risk of losing trust through impersonal automation grows. Amy shares her perspective on why technology should enhance, not replace, the creative human element in Go-To-Market motions, setting the stage for a discussion on modern leadership.Amy details the evolution of Fullcast into a comprehensive Revenue Operations platform through strategic acquisitions like Ebsta and Copy.ai. She explains how these moves allowed the company to build a fully AI-native sales performance management solution. By integrating territory planning, forecasting, and analytics, Fullcast aims to solve the fragmented tech stack issue. Amy outlines the vision behind merging these capabilities to support mid-market and enterprise revenue teams effectively.Integrating multiple companies is a complex operational challenge. Amy discusses the nuances of merging distinct cultures and leadership styles into one cohesive organization. She emphasizes the importance of clear communication, defined playbooks, and celebrating wins to align distributed teams. Her insights provide a practical blueprint for leaders managing growth through acquisition while striving to maintain a unified company identity and shared purpose across international borders.Finally, the dialogue covers the evolving landscape for revenue leaders. Warren and Amy examine the pressure on CROs to adopt AI strategies while relying on experience to guide decision-making. Amy explains how Fullcast meets customers where they are, offering flexible solutions for their specific needs. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the skills required to lead in the current market and how to navigate the intersection of data and intuition successfully.

Mike Price, Chief Revenue Officer at DTEX Systems, brings his rich background in sales and business leadership to the discussion. He emphasizes the transition from being a functional salesperson to a holistic business leader. Mike offers crucial insights on vetting CRO roles, advising executives to ask why they need a CRO at this moment. He warns against falling into VP of Sales traps and promotes the importance of a broader business understanding. Additionally, he highlights the necessity of allowing teams autonomy and shifting from control to collaboration for true executive success.

In this episode of CRO Spotlight, Warren Zenna sits down with Christian Gerron, Chief Revenue Officer at StackAdapt. They dive into the complexities of the programmatic ad tech space, a market saturated with thousands of players. Christian explains how StackAdapt differentiates itself by moving beyond a simple DSP to become a unified "operating system," helping marketers reduce friction and increase ROI by integrating first-party data, programmatic, and measurement tools in one platform.Christian shares his unconventional journey into the C-suite, starting his career in finance at Microsoft before transitioning to sales and operations. He defines the CRO role not as a "super seller" but as an operator responsible for building and tuning the entire revenue "machine." This connected ecosystem includes sales, client services, analytics, and RevOps, all working in unison. He discusses why the authority to execute and drive impact is the true motivator for top revenue leaders.How do you execute in such a cutthroat market? Christian details the GTM transformation at StackAdapt. He describes moving the team from a generalist approach—where everyone targeted the same high-value territories—to a specialized and segmented model. By implementing focused territories, specializing by vertical (like B2B or healthcare), and splitting teams into "hunters" (new business) and "farmers" (account growth), the revenue org achieved faster, more efficient growth.Christian emphasizes that talent and culture are the ultimate differentiators. At StackAdapt, the hiring process is designed to find functional competency while actively filtering out "politics players" to protect a culture of trust and speed. He concludes with powerful advice for both aspiring CROs (focus on operational rigor and talent) and the CEOs hiring them (find a true "business leader" who thinks in systems, and then give them the autonomy to build the machine).

In this CRO Spotlight episode, host Warren Zenna sits down with Steven Birdsall, CRO at Alteryx, to unpack a sweeping leadership transition and how a newly formed C‑suite aligned on product and go‑to‑market. Steven shares how a product‑centric CEO and a servant‑leader CRO combine to create clarity of mandate, performance culture, and human‑first execution across sales, CS, partners, and solutions engineering.The conversation dives deep into Alteryx’s evolution from workflows feeding BI to becoming the governed “canvas” for AI and agent use cases. Steven explains how business users can blend structured and unstructured data, enforce governance and access controls, and then safely bring LLMs into the same environment—pushing compute down to cloud data platforms like BigQuery, Databricks, and Snowflake.For CROs, Steven details practical AI operationalization: SDR personalization at scale, three‑dimensional agents trained on company knowledge, and revenue insights built directly on internal data. He outlines how to raise sales efficiency without scaling opex linearly, and why fast experimentation with new AI tools is now core to modern GTM orchestration.Steven closes with hiring and leadership principles for today’s CRO: prioritize grit, perseverance, and customer centricity over pedigree; remove roadblocks for the field; and mentor generously. He shares how to balance data‑driven rigor with empathy, build alignment with marketing regardless of reporting lines, and stay entrepreneurial—even inside a large, complex organization.

In this episode of the CRO Spotlight, Warren Zenna welcomes Mike Genstil, CEO at ValueCore, to discuss a critical inefficiency in modern sales: the "value gap." Mike explains that too often, sellers rush to provide a price quote while buyers remain fixated on features, rather than starting the conversation by aligning on the specific problems the organization faces and what those problems are costing them.Warren and Mike explore why "value engineering" isn't commonplace. Mike contrasts the role with the ubiquitous Sales Engineer. While organizations readily invest in Sales Engineers for technical validation, the Value Engineer—who handles the business validation—is often scarce and stretched thin. Mike argues this function is critical for justifying high-ticket solutions to a buying committee and proving impact beyond just features.The conversation shifts to the process of value engineering, which Mike describes as the most effective form of sales discovery. He outlines the four key buckets that Value Engineers analyze to build a business case that resonates with a CFO: hard cost savings, team productivity gains, revenue acceleration (such as customer acquisition or retention), and strategic risk mitigation. This diligence helps the buyer champion the solution internally.Finally, Mike discusses how technology platforms are making value engineering more scalable and integrated. He explains how AI can rapidly analyze public data, case studies, and even call recordings to build robust models. This technology allows pre-sales and post-sales teams to collaborate on value. They also cover how a strong value framework is essential for managing Proof of Concepts (POCs), preventing "tire-kickers" by agreeing on success metrics upfront.

Warren Zenna sits down with Michael Maimone, CRO at LucidLink, to unpack his journey from BDR to enterprise sales leader to CRO. Michael shares how his time at IBM, Marketo, Adobe, and ZoomInfo shaped a systems mindset, enabling him to translate big-company rigor into agile, early-stage execution without stifling momentum.They dive into the first 30-60-90 days in the seat: observe, diagnose, implement. Michael explains how he sequenced quick wins—enablement, RevOps guardrails, hiring profiles, interview kits—before rolling out robust territory, account, and opportunity planning. He emphasizes credibility through results and the art of modulation when change-managing seasoned teams.Michael details LucidLink’s category-defining approach to distributed cloud file access for massive media and design workflows, and how that expands into broader enterprise use cases. He outlines direct and channel motions, global team structure, and the zero-knowledge security model that unlocks collaboration without compromising control.The conversation closes with pragmatic AI adoption across Gong, ZoomInfo, dialers, website conversion, and Gemini-driven planning. Michael shares early signal lifts, how to beat tool fatigue, why human analysts still matter, and advice to aspiring CROs: lead cross-functionally, stay humble, build lieutenants, and align every motion to predictable, scalable revenue.

Warren Zenna hosts Ryan Staley, Founder and CEO at Whale Boss, to separate AI spectacle from strategic value for revenue leaders. They explore where the technology truly helps CROs versus where demos overpromise, and how practitioners can spot durable use cases. Ryan frames adoption as a pragmatic process focused on measurable outcomes rather than chasing every shiny new feature.They map three practical stages of AI adoption—augmentation, targeted automation, and cross‑functional orchestration—and show how each raises team capacity. Ryan gives concrete examples like automated call scoring that produces next‑best actions, converting call transcripts into playbook inputs, and feeding live sales insights to marketing and product to guide priorities and messaging.The conversation tackles workforce impact and essential skills: which roles are most exposed, where leaders should retool, and why structured prompting remains a competitive advantage. Ryan stresses validating outputs to reduce hallucinations and recommends methods—multiple source checks and reverse‑engineering high‑performing content—to ensure AI-driven recommendations are reliable before operationalizing them.For CROs and CEOs ready to move, Ryan advises starting with daily personal use, identifying a few high‑value pilots, and scaling proven projects across teams. Warren and Ryan outline a practical rollout cadence that builds momentum without disruption. Listeners leave with a clear roadmap to integrate AI into revenue operations and pointers to connect with Ryan on LinkedIn for prompts and resources.

In this episode of CRO Spotlight, host Warren Zenna sits down with Andy Mowat, Founder of Whispered, to explore the challenges of landing the ideal Chief Revenue Officer role. Andy shares his journey from running revenue operations at multiple unicorns to building a platform that uncovers unposted executive opportunities. They discuss the ambiguities in CRO job descriptions and the importance of aligning personal strengths with company needs. Warren and Andy emphasize how aspiring and current CROs can evaluate roles by challenging perceptions and ensuring a strategic fit, drawing from real-world examples of successful transitions.Andy delves into the critical differences between CRO and CSO positions, highlighting how CEOs' understanding of these roles impacts hiring decisions. The conversation covers the value of pushing back during interviews to clarify responsibilities, such as owning marketing, sales, and customer success under one leader. They explore why CROs should avoid fragmented reporting structures and seek environments where they can drive unified revenue strategies. For CEOs building teams, the discussion offers insights on recognizing when a company is ready for a CRO, typically around significant operational complexity.The duo addresses common pitfalls, like accepting roles at mismatched company stages or overlooking red flags in CEO dynamics. Andy introduces practical tools, such as maintaining a personal user manual to foster better working relationships from day one. They stress the need for CROs to conduct thorough due diligence, including board conversations, to avoid short tenures that harm careers. This episode provides actionable advice for revenue leaders on positioning themselves effectively and building networks that open doors to high-potential opportunities.Finally, Warren and Andy highlight Whispered's role in empowering executives through insights, connections, and community support. They encourage CROs to gain clarity on their unique value propositions before pursuing roles, whether through shared databases or collaborative networks. For CEOs aiming to hire or support top revenue talent, the talk underscores the benefits of mature leadership that values alignment over quick fixes. Tune in for an enlightening dialogue that equips listeners with strategies to thrive in the evolving world of revenue leadership.

Warren Zenna sits down with Amy Hsuan, Chief Customer & Revenue Officer at Mixpanel, to unpack what a truly unified revenue engine looks like. Amy shares how org design must follow strategy, why GTM is a core differentiator, and how aligning marketing, sales, success, and services creates consistent end‑to‑end customer experiences that actually win.Amy traces her path from journalism to BCG to Mixpanel, revealing how curiosity, cross‑functional leadership, and a customer‑first mindset shaped her Chief Customer & Revenue Officer role. She explains the shift from “hard” product differentiation to human‑driven trust, and how relationships, not features, become defensible moats in crowded markets.They dig into practical playbooks: orchestrating handoffs, clarifying tone across touchpoints, and reducing executive silos to move faster. Amy outlines a strategy‑to‑execution flywheel, her 80/20 time model for long‑ vs short‑term, and how consistent advisory through complex, multi‑stakeholder cycles sustains momentum and predictability.Amy also shares a grounded view on AI: use it to accelerate research, analysis, and context so leaders increase decision velocity—while humans own listening, rapport, creative adaptation, and navigating org dynamics. If you’re a CRO, aspiring CRO, or CEO aiming to modernize revenue leadership, this conversation is a blueprint.