The CRO Spotlight Podcast

How do you prospect in a declining market? Prospecting is evolving. Top of funnel pipeline creation is essential to enabling growth but the strategies that worked yesterday need to change in order to be successful in 2023 and beyond. During this episode of the CRO Spotlight Show, Warren is joined by Mike Schumann, who is the CRO at Revenue Base and has spent the last decade as a revenue leader for venture-backed companies. Mike shares his background and how he became a CRO.Main Takeaways from the Podcast:The ideal CRO should be a steward of revenue and functions that participate in revenue generation from marketing, sales, customer success, etc.They need to be a steward to the CEO and watch out for the company's interestsThe CRO should possess strong business acumen, high technical skills as it relates to reporting and metrics, and professional skillsProfessional skills refer to being a steward of people, setting a tone for the team, and being of service to the companyA successful CRO should bring energy to the team and help the people around them level up their gamesWhen interviewing a potential CRO, the ideal candidate should possess incredible personal and professional skills, be a great leader, a great coach, and a great visionaryTechnical skills can be taught, but professional skills are more about who you are, and a CRO who lacks professional skills can make people uncomfortable and suck the life out of the team.The conversation also delves into the balance between technical expertise and leadership qualities, with the Mike advocating for the importance of the latter. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30Growth Forum is a place to Connect, Learn and Grow. Launching February 2023 Growth Forum has a new prospecting program to help Sellers take control of their pipeline. The program is usually valued at $2500 but if you sign up to Growth Forum now you will receive access to this program for free! https://www.growthforum.io/

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30What's fundamentally different about selling a service vs selling a product? Let's find out. In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Greg Lewis, Chief Growth Officer - Communications at Syneos Health Communications. They take a deep dive on what's different about selling a service vs a product, from go-to-market strategy to the sales cycle. They also cover the value of relationship building, and how to insulate your sales function from staff turnover. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Greg on LinkedIn.You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Be CRO-ready from day 1 with Warren's CRO Accelerator course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30It's time to talk about some likely neglected parts of your revenue engine, and how they help you turn dreams into reality. In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Eddie Reynolds, CEO and Revenue Operations Strategy Consultant at Union Square Strategy, and host of the RevOps Corner podcast. They tackle the topics with no easy answers including: why we don't do things we know are important, why planning, testing and proving with data are fundamental to whole-of-businesssuccess, the art of getting leadership buy-in on that, aligning your revenue silos, the perils of cold outreach, where RevOps fits into the C-Suite, and the barriers that tops people from doing things differently. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Eddie on LinkedIn, or at the Union Square Consulting website. You'll also find Union Square Consulting on YouTube and TikTok. Listen to the RevOps Corner podcast here. You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Be CRO-ready from day 1 with Warren's CRO Accelerator course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30CRO is a new job title, but that doesn't mean there's a lack of knowledge on how to succeed as one. In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Scott Stouffer, CEO and Founder at scaleMatters. Join them as they discuss a key thing sales-centric CROs are often light on (and what landed them in that CRO seat), how to stop throwing money away by finding your product-market-message fit faster, the problem with data, bringing the whole team in on experimenting, what we're forgetting when we embrace failure, why you need a safe environment to improve the company, and the two things Scott would ask when interviewing for a CRO role. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Scott on LinkedIn, or by email. scaleMatters' podcasts are The Data Room, and Go To Market Excellence. You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Be CRO-ready from day 1 with Warren's CRO Accelerator course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30Metrics are essential to measure, manage, and predict performance in revenue. But when almost everything is trackable these days, exactly what do you need to keep your finger on? In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Ray Rike, Founder and CEO (Chief Evangelism Officer) at RevOps Squared. They discuss the staple and expanded metrics sets for every CRO, explain how you can use metrics to help better understand and align your revenue teams (and why CEOs are responsible for clearing that path), three actions to include during your CRO-prep years, how to transition your metrics, who should be a CRO's right hand person on metrics, plus why you need to check you're collecting and actioning your metrics right. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Ray on LinkedIn. Find out more about SaaS Metrics Palooza here. You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Be CRO ready from day 1 with Warren's CRO Accelerator course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30Regardless of your department, stepping up and out of it into the C-Suite puts you in a lot of new territory. You wouldn't have taken it if you didn't want a challenge, but you still want to avoid any missteps you can–you're about to find out how. In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Stephanie Valenti, CRO at SmartBug Media. Follow her adventurous footsteps to the CRO role (featuring networking, touring via alternate perspectives, and growing as a leader), how to stay in your lane so you succeed at your job, where to start when you land behind the desk, and protecting yourself from becoming a CRO In Title Only. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Stephanie on LinkedIn.You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Be CRO ready from day 1 with Warren's CRO Accelerator course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30The more your company scales in size, the more it needs to scale in every other way too–especially stability. In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Nancy Maluso who is VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester. Join them as they consider why alignment needs to be the first thing you get right, tips to structure your week for success, the other 'S word' to think about as you grow, and why delegation and data are the ex-sales CRO's best friends. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Nancy on LinkedIn.You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Want to be a CRO? Join Warren's CRO Accelerator course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30Although it's hotly debated, sales leadership seems to be emerging as a staple position in the career path to CRO. But at what cost? In this episode, Warren and Lupe are joined by Serkan Honeine, Chief Revenue Officer @ Certn. They chat about how deeply roles other than sales leadership can uniquely qualify you to lead revenue, how leading an international team from the other side of the world can be simple, the biggest challenge CROs face (and the cause), why you need to find metrics that matter, and the power of saying thank you in the remote-first world. 🔗 LINKSConnect with Serkan on LinkedIn, or at the Certn website.You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Empower your sales team to transform their sales. Find out more about the Create Pipeline course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30

This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30Marketers today have more power in revenue than ever before, with their wealth of data key to identifying how buyers behave. This data is a double-edged sword though, with attribution-anxiety sometimes disincentivising the marketing team from pushing into new territory. How do you strike the right balance? This week Warren and Lupe are joined by The Marketing Starter Tim Hines. Tim is an iCMO, founder, author, speaker, podcast host, and all round expert in all things marketing. In this episode they look at marketing as it enters the post-digital era, from how marketing can claim their space at the table using data, and the importance of communication, to why marketing should be viewed as a laboratory, not a factory.🔗 LINKSConnect with Tim on LinkedIn, or at his website, or at GrowPowerful.ai. His podcast is called The Marketing Starter Podcast, and his book is called The Marketing Starter.You can listen to Warren on Tim's podcast here. You'll find Warren and Lupe on LinkedIn too. Empower your sales team to transform their sales. Find out more about the Create Pipeline course here. This episode is brought to you by Growth Forum - sign up for 30-days free, use the code: GROW30