CRO or CSO… What’s the Difference?

A question often asked is, “Do I need a Chief Revenue Officer or a Chief Sales Officer?

Let’s start with a description of the typical Chief Sales Officer role. CSO’s are the highest ranking individual in a business unit specifically responsible for direct new business sales. This includes all types and levels of new business Sales hunter roles such as Account Executive, Inside Sales Representative, Outside Sales Representative, Enterprise Sales Executive, SMB sales, Strategic sales, and roles such as Sales Development Representative, Business Development Representative, and appointment setters. The common denominator being that none of the targets are existing clients, and typically not channel partners.

Similar to Chief Revenue Officers, CSOs are strategic in that they can see the market in broad terms and plot a course forward often in concert with other functional leaders. For example, Chief Sales Officers often collaborate with Marketing and Product to refine Ideal Customer Profile(s) (ICP); Relative competitive product and solution positioning as it relates to messaging; All facets and aspects of Sales Enablement such as data and platforms required to achieve new business sales productivity. CSOs also collaborate with other functional leaders such as HR/People, to define full time equivalent (FTE) headcount plans, human capital talent models, job descriptions, sales compensation plans for each type of sales resource, and performance measures. In addition, Chief Sales Officers direct operational visibility and transparency in such forms of dashboards, work flows, and various notifications to ensure accountability, productivity and cross functional communication.

From the standpoint of organization structure, Chief Sales Officers mostly report at the C-Level and in smaller organizations could report at the Board level although those instances are rare. Most common is that CSOs report to CEOs. Somewhat common is that CSO reports to the President of a business or business unit. That said, when a business or business unit is large enough to sustain both a Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Sales Officer, the CSO most often reports into the CRO.

It is the responsibility of the Chief Sales Officer, or someone reporting to them, to analyze pipeline development activity, funnel metrics, velocity, and stage conversion through the sales process from high funnel to closed won or closed lost.

As mentioned above, Chief Sales Officers are responsible for determining the human capital model required to deliver the new business revenue target. For example, if sales pipeline development is bifurcated, how many Sales Account Executives and how many Business Development Executives are required and what are the metrics which drive hire decisions. Collaboration with the HR/People Department with respect to recruiting is also important. Chief Sales Officers are responsible for determining territories, vertical markets, and the ways in which sales resources are deployed and focused.

Chief Revenue Officers have a broader and typically higher level mandate. It is within the CRO’s organization that all revenue activity occurs (new business, channel sales, client renewals, client upsells and expansions). These added lines of revenue add operational complexity. For example, close collaboration with the head(s) of Client Services is required to ensure that robust and proactive account management processes and practices are in place which provide the foundation for client renewals and upsells. This therefore encompasses definition around Account Management roles and levels, compensation plans, operational client services roles, and visibility into client support statistics and trends.

In addition, in smaller organizations that do not have a Chief Marketing Officer, the Marketing function often reports into the CRO. Among other reasons, this alignment given the Chief Revenue Officer responsibility for major event budgets and execution such as trade shows and related translation of pre-show and post-show conversion. Once a CMO is present, the function is best aligned with the CEO or most senior C-level executive within the business or business unit. That said, the question regarding whether CMOs should report to CEOs or CROs is a topic of frequent debate.

Regardless, the Chief Revenue Officer is more likely than the Chief Sales Officer to be positioned externally as a subject matter expert. As such, it is not uncommon to see CRO press statements and speaking events.

According to recent data from Salary.com, the average annual salary for a Chief Revenue Officer is $325,912, with a typical range between $254,747 and $413,192.

Source: Salary.com

The average annual salary for a Chief Sales Officer is $320,890, with a typical range between $270,220 and $388,070.

Source: Salary.com

For more about Treeline, please visit https://www.treelineinc.com/sales-recruiting/fractional-cro-service/