Definition

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is an executive leader responsible for all revenue-generating activities across an organization, aligning and optimizing the full customer experience to maximize revenue growth.

What is a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?

The Chief Revenue Officer role emerged in the early 2000s, primarily in technology and SaaS companies, as organizations recognized the need for strategic alignment across traditionally siloed revenue functions. Unlike the traditional separation between sales, marketing, and customer success leadership, the CRO role was created to provide unified oversight of the entire revenue generation process.

Today, the CRO position has evolved into a strategic executive role focused on orchestrating sustainable revenue growth across multiple channels and customer touchpoints. Modern CROs typically lead with data-driven approaches, leveraging comprehensive analytics to guide decision-making and resource allocation. Sales intelligence platforms like Saber support CROs by providing integrated visibility across the entire customer journey, enabling more accurate forecasting, identifying growth opportunities, and highlighting optimization opportunities throughout the revenue generation process.

How Chief Revenue Officers Work

CROs drive organizational alignment and strategic focus on revenue growth through cross-functional leadership and data-driven decision-making.

• Strategic Alignment: CROs ensure consistency across all revenue-generating functions including marketing, sales, customer success, and sometimes pricing and revenue operations, creating a seamless customer experience.

• Revenue Modeling: CROs develop and maintain comprehensive revenue models that account for various growth levers including new customer acquisition, expansion, retention, and pricing optimization.

• Resource Allocation: Based on data and strategic priorities, CROs make decisions about where to invest resources across departments to maximize revenue impact and efficiency.

• Performance Management: CROs establish key performance indicators across the revenue organization, implementing accountability systems and ensuring teams meet growth objectives.

• Growth Strategy: Working closely with other executive leaders, CROs help shape organizational strategy regarding market expansion, product development priorities, pricing models, and acquisition opportunities.

Example of a Chief Revenue Officer

Sarah, the CRO of a mid-sized B2B software company, leads a 120-person revenue team across marketing, sales, customer success, and revenue operations. After analyzing performance data, she identifies that while new customer acquisition is strong, the company's revenue growth is limited by lower-than-industry-average expansion rates within existing accounts. Sarah restructures the organization to create a dedicated account development team focused on expansion opportunities, implements a new customer health scoring system to identify growth potential earlier, and realigns incentives to reward cross-sells and upsells. She collaborates with the product team to prioritize features that current customers have requested and works with marketing to create targeted campaigns for specific expansion use cases. Simultaneously, she implements quarterly business reviews with strategic accounts led by senior leaders. Six months after these changes, the company's net revenue retention increases from 105% to 118%, significantly accelerating overall growth despite maintaining the same level of new customer acquisition.

Why Chief Revenue Officers Matter in B2B Sales

The CRO role has become increasingly critical as customer journeys grow more complex and traditional departmental boundaries become potential points of friction. By providing unified leadership across the entire revenue process, CROs ensure consistent customer experiences, eliminate operational silos, and optimize resource allocation for maximum growth impact. For sales organizations specifically, having a CRO elevates revenue generation to the highest strategic level, ensuring sales priorities align with broader organizational objectives. Companies with effective CROs typically demonstrate advantages in forecasting accuracy, revenue predictability, and growth efficiency. As subscription and recurring revenue models become more prevalent, the strategic alignment provided by a CRO becomes even more valuable, focusing the organization not just on closing deals but on creating sustainable customer relationships that drive long-term revenue growth.