Revenue Disruption: Game-Changing Sales and Marketing Strategies to Accelerate Growth

Chapter 25

Should You Appoint a Chief Revenue Officer?

A primary theme running throughout this entire book has been the need for marketing and sales alignment. This requires that companies create processes that seamlessly span both departments—for example, those that involve lead nurturing, scoring, and recycling. It also means that organizations must team up for other go-to-market activities, as epitomized by the Citrix Systems playbooks described in the previous chapter. But even more important than joint processes and programs are the ways executive sales leaders and their marketing counterparts create personal alliances based on a shared vision of Revenue Performance Management.

In truth, there’s something awkward about this whole construct. I have been struck while writing this book by the number of times I’ve had to use a phrase about how “marketing and sales leaders” need to come together to agree to a plan, review a joint metric, or otherwise coordinate their activities. Of course, cross-functional collaboration is essential to any well-performing business. So on the surface, it may not be surprising that I’ve repeatedly emphasized this need for cooperation.

However, when you dig a little deeper, you start to see that this whole idea is fundamentally off track and simply not sustainable. In a world where the buyer is in control, and where the adoption of Revenue Performance Management strategies has begun to result in seamless processes that flow back and forth between ...