The CRO’s Role in Agentic GTM

Julia Nimchinski:
And we are transitioning to our next session. We’re welcoming Warren Zena, CRO whisperer and founder of the CRO Collective. And when it comes to the intersection of Agentech, GTM, AI systems, and the CRO role, it’s hard to find anyone better than you are. And to speak to this transition, systems of action, systems of record. Let’s go.
How are we doing?

Warren Zenna:
I’m great. I’m great. Let’s, let’s make it happen. I can share my screen, I assume, correct?

Julia Nimchinski:
Yeah.

Warren Zenna:
Alright, I’m gonna do that. you know, as way of introduction here, I’m just gonna kinda… Toot my own horn a bit. took the frame for this conversation, right?
So… you know, you’ve heard a lot today about tools, some of them are really amazing platforms and stuff, but this is going to be a bit of a departure in that I’m really going to share more about, like, a very specific vantage point, which is unique to, you know, what’s going on here because of the work that we do with CROs.
So we work with hundreds of CROs directly through roundtables, consulting work, etc. about 100-plus founders and CEOs who are navigating the CRO hire and trying to operationalize this role.
We have about 9 of these role, events a year, where they’re populated only with Chief Revenue offers, where we have, like, 4 or 5 hours worth of conversations with them, and all the engagements that we do, and all the research that we do.
So, we got a lot of information and insights from CROs about the particular situation related to how the CRO role is incorporating AI right now.
So, basically, first, let’s just agree on what a CRO is for this conversation, so it’s sort of… we’ll get into that a bit, but it really… it’s the revenue leader, it runs all functions of the revenue cycle, from the customer journey, from awareness all the way to advocacy, as opposed to the traditional sales leader, which we’ll get into in a sec.
So basically, the evolution of the role was quite interesting, because from, like, around 2000 to 2019 or so, it was really a sales role. When I first started this business in 2019, every CRO ran a sales organization. And, there might have been a couple departures, maybe they had a little bit more of a larger scope at part enterprise companies.
But for the most part, CROs really were sales leaders, and this is where we. saw a break in the way that that role was being deployed, mainly because a confluence of factors, which I can get into in a lot more detail some other time. resulted in this trifurcation of the business, where you had essentially three businesses in one.
You had a marketing business, a sales business, and a customer success business, all sort of fighting for turf control. And that breakdown created all sorts of problems that compound themselves across the organization, particularly as the organization gets more and more complex.
And we determined that the CRO really needs to lead this revenue operation so that that trifurcation is removed, and there’s really one more point of failure, one neck to choke, if you want to call it. And it also builds a much better line through for the customer.
If you look at it more customer-centric, the CRO really follows the customer through the journey, as opposed to the dollar, which is a much different way of looking at the business. And then from 2019 till around now, we really have what we call the builder CROs.
These are CROs that are coming in with a much, much, much larger scope you know, they’re really handling a lot more. The job has changed a lot in this respect. We’re seeing probably close to 30-40% of CRO remits right now, kind of define it this way.
They really want somebody to come in and sit on top of the initial growth stage leadership and run and build an engine. We call it the engine builder.
And they’re doing it most of the time with the standard tech stack that we’re accustomed to, building blocks of various vertically-oriented components that you stack together, usually on top of a CRM. Like, we all know what we’re talking about. But that’s pretty much still what’s going on right now. It hasn’t really changed all that much.
And then now, and I think probably next year, we’re moving more into, like, this thing called the revenue architect. And the reason why the architect is a new term here is mainly because we… talking about this, like, 3 years ago.
Is that the future is really presenting an opportunity for Building blocks that aren’t constrained by technological boundaries, and really more of almost like a lake or a cloud. Where there’s an actual, true, single point of truth across the entire organization, because AI is, frankly, going to be able to bring that to case.
And I was… working in the holding company organizations, the main problem we had was attribution. Attribution across internal teams. How did marketing know that it contributed to sales, et cetera, et cetera? And how do we know a customer clicked on an ad? How do we get credit to where it came from?
all that stuff is gonna go away pretty soon, because it’s gonna be much easier for these tools to talk to each other and create one source of truth.
And when that happens, the CRO role is interestingly going to both expand And shrink at the same time, because the scope of the role will be more broader because of the vision that the organization has on things, which is going to make it seem larger. But it’s gonna shrink because the size of the team is going to get smaller, human beings.
I think you’ll have a lot more agents. So it’s a really fascinating time, and the competencies of the CRO are changing dramatically as well.
So the traditional sales leader CRO quite frankly, isn’t really as good of a fit for this revenue architect as it once was, and we’re seeing a lot more of the change in that, so I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. So basically, what’s happening now is most CROs are stuck in the fundamentals still, alright?
I’m gonna… I’m gonna switch over to, another screen here. I hope you can see it. I’m gonna try and bring it up. Just… can you see that? Julio? Okay, great. So, basically, look at the bottom here, alright? So this is sort of what’s going on. Alright. In the world of the Chief Revenue Officer.
So you’ve got… when a Chief Revenue Officer gets a role in the organization. They’re confronted with organizational, cultural, operational issues that they have to deal with, regardless of how well they’re good at technology. It doesn’t really matter. And if they don’t get these three levels of authority and mandate and systemic control together.
It doesn’t matter what technology they have, because if they don’t have this, none of the stuff that we’re all talking about are really going to be able to kind of trickle down through the organization in a way that we want. And so, most CROs, even with all the tools available to them today.
are really battling with the first mandate, which is, when they get the role, they need to have the proper authority, autonomy, resources, and runway to do the job. And those are difficult to get. It’s not like you just get hired and granted those things.
You have to even explain to the organization what that means, what are the, like, MSAs, et cetera, et cetera. And they take time to develop, and also trust. And also, when you think about the mandate that a CRO has in an organization that never had one before.
This is a highly disruptive thing, to bring a CRO in that’s going to run a lot of organizations that were already owned by different people, and many times, they don’t really want to do that. And the problem here is that if the CRO does not have that level of autonomy, the CRO role won’t actually work.
Because it’ll become, sort of, again, bifurcated.
And, we just see this time and time again, where any attempt to try to remove any of the components of authority of the Chief Revenue Officer, the Chief Revenue Officer eventually always succumbs either to They have to be a sales leader to take care of short-term goals, or they get kicked out because they can’t handle the strategic remit that’s given to them.
This is really, really important. We just see this failure choke all the time, this 17-month window, is because of this. It’s because the system that they inherit isn’t working? They were hired to fix it, but they’re not given the authority to do anything about it. It’s the classic CRO conundrum, and we see this all the time.
So, that alone takes a lot of work. And then, now you’ve got the mandate, which is, okay, you’ve been given all these authorities and powers and resources, now let’s agree on what that looks like. What is that Architecture you’re gonna build, or what’s… what are you building for us? And how do I need to move the pieces around?
What are the decisions we have to make? How fast do we have to do it? Particularly when the CRO is battling two fronts at the same time.
One is they have to handle all the short-term goals that they were hired into, their immediate goals, mostly they’re usually revenue goals, and then there’s the structural infrastructure that they know needs to be built.
Now, if I’m being brought on as a CRO and I have to do both of those at the same time, that’s a really, really difficult way to navigate those two parameters, because they’re not the same. They conflict with each other, in fact. And the CRO has to manage that.
And then, let’s take a look at this broken system that I’ve inherited, and how do I have to fix it? So there’s a lot of research and requirements. Now, the good news is, at that top layer on number 3, the AI systems have given CROs an incredible advantage of being able to figure that out.
So we’re really at a point where, when they actually are evaluating the broken system that they have, AI has been an incredible tool to accelerate the process of fixing it, because of the way in which you can analyze things very quickly. And it’s been a game changer.
So, it does get the CRO through these three stages much faster, however, most of them are stuck here. This is where they are right now, okay? Now, we’re saying, oh, we’re gonna get into data intelligence, and AI optimization, and customer-based agents, and agent orchestration.
You can see how These things almost look like a luxury to a lot of the people we’re dealing with right now. They love to have all these things implemented, but they have to deal and fight all these political and operational battles before they can even get to implementing these things. So, they do have to kind of come in thinking about this stuff.
But they have to understand, they have to get through all of these things. Now, here’s the interesting pressure that they’re dealing with. They’re being asked to do this already anyway, so when they’re being hired, they’re actually being hired to become, like, agentic orchestrators.
without taking into account the fact that they have to get through all this stuff first. And they’re not being given the mandate to do this, but they’re being asked to do this, which, by the way, is difficult because there’s no playbook for it yet.
It’s not like there’s some… you know, CRO architecture playbook out there that’s been fixed, everyone’s making it up as they go along. And so, because we’re in this interesting time right now, where this stuff really hasn’t been figured out, everybody’s experimenting.
And everyone’s experimenting, and of course, as everyone sees, showing off these really cool case studies and amazing, you know, magical things that they’re having done. And it creates this perception in the marketplace that all this amazing stuff can get accomplished, when in fact, really. everyone’s really mired in this shit right now.
That’s really what’s going on. And, you know, to get up here, you know, you have to have a really incredibly nimble organization. So this is another conundrum. Startups and smaller businesses can do this a lot faster. They have a lot less of this shit, right?
You can just get right through this stuff really fast and start getting into this stuff, right? But the bigger organizations that are really complicated and more like the early enterprise. you know, getting through this, you need a hand-to-hand combat, you know, with weapons and stuff like that before you get into here.
But they’re the ones that have the money and the resources to invest in this stuff. It’s a very, very, very interesting time for the Chief Revenue Officer, and one of the things we’re seeing also is The CROs, when they’re interviewing for these jobs now, they’re actually being asked to do vibe coding and stuff in these interviews.
They actually build us models, show us the way in which you’re able to, you know, utilize these tools, showcase your own personal propensity and competencies with these things, want to know that you’re fluent with them.
you know, it’s a must-have, so if you’re a CRO, you need to be in this stuff, and most I’m working with are, but again, they’re solving, sort of, you know, dashboard-based problems, and taking this stuff and turning it into an orchestration is a much different thing, particularly because like, think about it.
If I’m… if I’m working on my own, and I’m using AI to help me on my day-to-day, and I’m really, really good at it, that’s a much different paradigm than now me inheriting an organization that I don’t know anything about, and figuring a way to now put that into that organization.
I mean, it’s not going to happen, because I press a button, everyone does a login and an onboarding process. I need to learn a lot about this company before I know the exact bespoke version this AI platform is going to make a difference in this organization.
I need to be given all the data, I have to analyze it, and so… it’s a battle right now for a lot of vertically-oriented solutions to be the ones to kind of come in and figure all these things out. And there’s a lot of them that have done a really good job at this, but they haven’t really come together.
So, as you can see, right, the CRO role right now is extremely complicated because of the pressures that come in from just the normal day-to-day, let’s say, analog stuff they’re dealing with. And now all this new non-analog stuff is being mandated on them, and a lot is being asked of them.
So, to some degree, when we’re talking to our clients who are hiring seros, we want to make that company aware That this is what that person’s gonna face, and that they need to be managed appropriately. And you can’t hire a CRO to be a hero. They’re not going to heroically solve this. This is an organizational problem. This is a company problem.
Everyone has to dig their hands in, and they have to bring in somebody who has the general competencies. So, let’s talk about that. competencies of a CRO. It’s changed quite a bit. Right now, really, we’re talking about people who, in my view, are really more RevOps-oriented people. So it’s a really interesting, sort of, profile for a CRO today.
And I’m not saying that someone who ran a sales organization really successfully can’t be a good CRO, at least most certainly can, mainly because differentiates really, really amazing sales leaders is they tend to have really great leadership skills, because you have to, you know, it’s almost like you’re a general running an organization into battle.
And if you know how to kind of round the troops up, and you can also communicate clearly and build all those sort of persuasive arguments. And also mandate things to grow and get people to make commitments and drive that sort of growth. You’ll likely have one of the key skills for a CRO, which are the leadership skills. Right?
The communication skills, and the ability to stand up in front of a board, and know how to deliver a message to that board, and manage that board, and manage your CEO, and manage a team, and all the other functionaries in your organization. And then it’s also a RevOps person, whom, if I may. RevOps people tend to be more heads down, right?
They’re very detail-oriented, they’re very data-driven, they tend to be very introverted. And so, you know, trying to find someone who’s good at these two things is not easy, and so… but the competencies do require that, right?
So, one of the things that we’re seeing now is one of the mandates is when a CRO gets the job, we do a really deep profile.
We have some really crazy tools that we use and analyze these people to determine how they’re competency stack is, so that when they interview for jobs, they know exactly the types of staffing and the types of people they need in their teams to compensate for the areas in those leadership skills where they lack.
So we think the CRO and the CRO and the CFO and the RevOps person, probably the 3 most important people. You got the money person, you got the data intelligence person, and you got the revenue person. And these are the 3 people that are probably going to have the finger on the pulse of the business as most they can.
And so we’re starting to, like, really recruit… we don’t recruit, we’re not recruiters, but we do work hand-in-hand with people who are trying to move into the next role. And we’re really identifying the ways in which we can get people into this role a lot more effectively.
So, you know, I think that, you know, there’s… I threw together a whole bunch of slides, but… I talked anyway. So, you know, Julia, I don’t know if you want, but we could, you know, have a discussion with some of the people, have questions, or I have more stuff I could share. What’s your thoughts on… I’m gonna shut my mouth now. What do you think?

Julia Nimchinski:
This is phenomenal. Warren, I have so many questions for you. So, first of all, you were talking for years about the transition from, you know, a sales-focused organization for the CRO, and expanding it to marketing and CS. So on top of that, now it’s also RevOps. How do you see it playing out?

Warren Zenna:
Well, so, it’s really interesting, right, because… a couple things happened. So, one was that, you know, the SaaS… the success of the SaaS era, which is kind of ending. it… Sort of medicated all of us into a certain belief about reality. Right?
You can get this free money, and make all of it, and just make, you know, a lot of repetitive, repeatable revenue.
And what it did was it created this whole organization around, let’s just keep on getting more and more and more customers, because it’s really, really efficient to do it this way, and software created this incredible opportunity to do it. And so these organizations really became, really, essentially, acquisition machines.
They weren’t really customer growth machines. They weren’t. And so what ended up happening was the customer sort of got thrown by the wayside. I think everybody remembers back in the early 2000s, you’d get… sign up for something, and then, like, no one talked to you again, you know?
You’re sort of like, they took your credit card, or whatever it was, and you sort of were left in the dust. And the companies that won were really, really good at customer service, or even customer support, particularly Apple was particularly good at this, remember? Their whole model was, like, just amazing when they first started.
Not really good at it anymore, but they were really amazing at this. It was a differentiator. But what ended up happening was, you know, probably later in the 2000s, closer to 2015, 16, 17, was this stuff crashed down.
And it became apparent, obviously, to a lot of the investment community that customers are a better way to grow your business, because it’s cheaper to sell to them, and it’s better because they’re already advocates, so let’s focus on those. But the cost… the organizations weren’t designed for that. They just weren’t.
They were still machines to get acquisitions. So the CRO role has to change, and so what ended up happening was the CRO really needs someone who’s thinking more about getting the customer into the Customer bucket, not the prospect bucket.
And once they’re in that customer bucket, all the insights that come out of the customer relationship drive marketing and drive sales, and they drive advocacy.
So if I’m a CRO, I’m looking more at the customer side of the business than I am on the prospect side of the business, because that’s where the money is, and that’s where the opportunity is, because I can build advocates there. Those advocates actually become my sales force. So how does this relate to your question? I need RevOps for this.
Because I gotta tie all this stuff together. I need someone who has the brain to know how to take marketing data, sales data, customer data, and put it together in a way that I’m able to look all of it and see how it makes sense, as opposed to having a marketing organization have one version of reality.
and a sales organization have another version of reality, which is, you know, that’s the way it is. And so the CRO focus had to change. And so sales-oriented chief revenue officers, when they come into that role, they’re thinking from an acquisition perspective. That’s their brain. That’s how they got this job.
And so if they don’t make that shift, they won’t do… they won’t be good at it. And so, you know, you need someone who sort of removes themselves from a functional role into more of a holistic role. And sales organizations, you know, they tend to be… you know, you get trained that way, that’s the way you think.
Plus, what ends up happening, too, if I come in as a sales leader, as a CRO, I’m likely going to fall back on my sales acumen to save myself when things don’t go well, because who’s not going to like when I close business, right? But it’s not the right answer, it’s just another symptom of a problem.
So that’s why RevOps people are better, because they’re thinking more about data and more about bigger picture, as opposed to trying to just kind of grow, and it’s a… It’s a very weird paradigm, because companies still need to make money.
So, we’re seeing a big shift in the way the gravity is moving across the organization right now, and that was the long answer, but that’s basically what’s going on.

Julia Nimchinski:
This is great. So, we were talking about a real unicorn here. From one standpoint, you have to deploy and operationalize, as you mentioned, pipe code. any revenue-oriented workflow architected, your acumen has to cover marketing, CS, RevOps, sales, obviously, and now on top of that, we have a shift with business models. Yep.
So what are your thoughts on this SaaSpocalypse and all the agenic billing?

Warren Zenna:
Yeah, so I’ll address that question. It comes up a lot, you know, I get this question, like, well, who is this person? Did you find this mystical creature, you know? And the reality is, you know what? Honestly, it’s not the person, it’s the organization. Because this person is living inside of a system.
If the system is set up right, it’s actually a lot easier to do. The problem is that what the… when you go back down to this piece down here, what they’re doing is they’re contending with a system that was designed in the way that you and I were discussing about 5-10 minutes ago, right?
That’s a system that was designed for a different outcome than the one we were trying to get to. So, a good CRO knows how to make the shift from that system to the new system, but Most of the reason why CROs fail isn’t because they don’t have these competencies.
90% of the CROs that we talked to failed because the system they inherited wasn’t working, and they didn’t have the mandate to fix it. They never had the chance, because the organization didn’t set up the system in a way, and the mandate in a way, that allowed that CRO to do that job. there is a roadmap for this.
We know it, because we created it, and it works. There’s no question about that. It’s just, what we see, the contention is not the person, it’s the system that they inherit, and the organizational unwillingness or inability to allow the mandate authorities and powers of that person to be able to do the job properly.
And so, we actually find that the… despite the fact that the role might have been changing in terms of its competencies. that there’s plenty of people that know how to do this well, it’s just organizations need to reorient themselves around the way they look at revenue organizations to begin with. That’s where we see the big shift.
That’s what the CRO Readiness Program is all about. But how do we get the organization ready for this role, so that they know how to actually get the value out of it? And that’s a whole bigger engine problem that we’re trying to solve. That’s a big part of the equation. Huge one, in fact.

Julia Nimchinski:
Or if, you know, is there any framework or mental model for CRO before in taking on a new position to actually pressure test this system?

Warren Zenna:
Oh, yeah. So, the first thing we have them do is, and this is interesting. you know, we see the CRO, job descriptions that are out in the marketplace right now. And, you know, some of them are really amazing in that they have little artifacts in them that give you a lot of clues as to how they’re thinking about this job.
You know, they’re written in a way that’s kind of in code. And there’s little clues that show that, okay, I see they’re thinking about this and this. I could look at these things now, and I can, like, see through them. I can see the code behind these job descriptions, okay? And it gives you a lot of insights, and they’re usually pretty spot on.
And so those things will arm you to know, likely, where they’re leaning around the way they think about this role. And your job, when you’re in, sort of like, if I would say.
interrogating the role when you’re going for this job, you need to have a diagnostic system to understand how to ask the right questions so that you get the truth out of them about two things. One is, what is their perception and understanding of a chief revenue officer, and is it in line with what we’re talking about?
And then number two is, what is the way in which they will support that person to succeed here? What’s your plan for that? Have you done it before? walk me through it. Most of the time, what it is is, well, we did, but it didn’t work. Okay, well, what didn’t work about it? And they’ll usually blame the candidate.
We didn’t hire the right person, right? And this is maybe partially true, but most of the time, it’s the environment wasn’t correct for that person to succeed in.
What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to… Understand the environment in which you’re likely gonna be… get hired, or potentially get hired into, and most importantly, is how you can influence the organization to actually change so that the role is successful.
You have to be the one to come in and show them how this works, and how it’s supposed to happen.
We have a way in which that incoming… Chief Revenue Officer actually builds the model before they actually sign the acceptance paper, so that it’s mandated in the way that the remit is written out for them, and they’re given the powers and authorities to run that. And if it’s not possible, we usually tell the person, either don’t take the job.
This is not going to work. Or, maybe it’s just a VP of Sales role, dressed up as a CRO, and if you want to be a VP of sales, then, you know, go for it, right? But these are the things we do. We find, actually, on many of the instances, we find the role is, in fact, not designed for the person to succeed in.
And that’s the main thing we’re trying to figure out.

Julia Nimchinski:
This is great. Where if… if I’m thinking about a CRO, ultimately, the, I don’t know, the ideal of a CRO in our industry, B2BGM, would be John McMahon.

Warren Zenna:
Okay.

Julia Nimchinski:
Just curious your thoughts. Can you develop a John McMahon I don’t know, out of anyone, is there, like… Because we typically talk about coaching, enablement, and all that when it comes to, you know, the… Teams… people who report to CROs, but speaking of the role itself, do you see this potential.

Warren Zenna:
Yeah, I do. I do think so. I think, like, when you think about it. any of the roles that we currently look at where we have, like, a huge number of superstars, right? How many amazing sales leaders do we know, right? Hundreds of them, right? And there was a time when this role didn’t exist. You know, now there’s a lot of them.
So, what ends up happening over time is that as the role becomes more codified. And there’s more playbooks, and there’s more, like, an understanding of its cadence and how it works, and organizations are set up for it properly. this will expand, and this role will become much more accessible to people.
But the people that are getting the job today are going to be somewhat pioneers right now, you know?
So yes, there will be fewer of them who maybe can do this well, but I would say pretty quickly, you’re going to find, like anything, there’s gonna be a lot of ways in which you can replicate certain cadences, and, you know, there’ll be different versions, right?
I mean, there’s… great sales leaders aren’t all alike, they’re just really good at what they do in different ways. I think the CRO role, without question, is going to emerge as being, like, a very specific skill that’s going to become, compounded over time, and a lot of people will be able to do it.
I just think we’re really in a very interesting time, in a way. And strangely, like, you know, having this business that we have in this time is fascinating. Like, to be at this point when this is happening, it’s really, really interesting.
And because the CRO role, which I believe is going to only increase and expand and become more and more important. That role represents, if you think about it, if in fact you agree with what we’re saying here, that the CRO is really the sort of revenue leader. there’s no more important role in your company, right?
This is the person that’s gonna build your whole business. So, the more businesses sort of, let’s say, surrender to that reality, and start to build the proper organizations for one to succeed, I think that the role will just, like, really just… it’ll just, flourish, right?
But right now, it’s constrained by two paradigms, an old world paradigm and a new world paradigm. And, you know, it’s moving fast enough that I think you’re gonna see a lot of really good superstars emerge. We’re seeing a lot of them right now, who are doing this really well.
But yes, it’s not as easy, but the good news is that there’s a lot of support tools out there to make sure CROs succeed, too. I don’t think this is just, like, I hate to sound sort of, like, kind of wonky, you know, but it sort of does take a village, you know what I mean? It’s a team effort to get a CRO successful.
It’s not just some heroic person that comes in and saves the day. That’s not the right way to look at this job.

Julia Nimchinski:
Definitely. I’m curious, who do you admire as CRO, especially in the age of AI? Any new… I don’t know.

Warren Zenna:

Well, I mean, you know, so I… I mean, look, you know, I’m a big fan of Mark, Mark Roberts, you know, I spoke to him, last week, and, you know, I still think, like, he’s… about probably the smartest person I talked to who just understands the scaffolding, you know, and the strategy of this job in a way that’s just really, you know, really pretty incredible.
You know, I think, like, I look at him as, like, this sort of… he’s the architect. You know, he’d be able to do this without knowing what is… what’s going on. So I sort of see, like, anyone who’s sort of in that And that sort of ilk is someone who I look up to. I think, like, these… he’s got it down.
There’s certain people that have a certain brain for that sort of thing. I work with someone right now, my partner, Derek Sather, I mean, he’s… he’s like, you know, he’s the guy, he’s the… he’s the CRO, right? I mean, he can just come in and do this stuff. These people tend to be also, extremely, like, mathematically really smart, right?
They have really good systems brains. They sort of can look at big pictures and put things together in their heads. you know, sort of like the Rain Man, you can drop a bunch of matchsticks on the floor, and you can see how many are there. You know, like, people like this kind of are really good at this job.
But at the same time, too, you know, someone can succeed in this job without those skills if they’re really incredibly good leaders. This is a leadership job. This is someone who is out on the front. You have to know how to really know how to talk to people.
how to tell a story really well, how to create a vision, how to paint a picture, how to direct people properly, what it is they’re supposed to do, and why. That’s a really critically important skill. And that’s the one thing, also, you can’t, outsource that. You know? That’s yours. Like, leadership is not something you could delegate.
I mean, you have to do that, you know? And so, if you don’t have that, you’re kind of screwed, because it’s the one thing that is your thing only, and you have to really be, really, really good at that part of the job.

Julia Nimchinski:
Love that. What’s next for Revenue Collective?

Warren Zenna:
Well, a lot. So we just revamped the entire, course, our CRO Accelerator course, and it’s amazing, like, I’m really proud of this. Very confidently say we have, like, the best CRO education program you can possibly get right now. incredibly in-depth, and it’s amazing, in fact.
And we’re running in a cohort right now, and it’s… I’m very proud of it. It took us, like, about 5 years to get this going the way we wanted to. And then, we also have the CRO in transition program, which I just mentioned to you. This has been incredible. There’s a lot of CROs out there right now who had this job.
And like I mentioned, they’re a victim of that, like, 17-month cliff that they died, you know? And now they’re wondering when their next CRO role is, but they’re sort of beaten up, and they’re a bit bloody, and they’re wondering if the same thing’s gonna happen again. And the reality is that it probably will.
And we can help them transition from their current CRO role to their new one. We have an incredible program for this that’s been incredibly effective. We have 5 people in it right now, and it’s just… it’s amazing. And then we have our CRO Readiness Program, of course, which, like I mentioned, we help the organization.
actually become ready for a Chief Revenue Officer. There’s no other company doing that except us. And so, you know, it’s quite a bit of interesting. And then, of course, if you’re gonna be around in major cities over the course of… we have 10 CRO roundtables coming up, and those are great. Those are 25 to 30 CROs in a room.
We have an amazing format that we created for these conversations, and they sound a lot like this, but less of me talking and other people talking, and, which is good, you know?
And so, you know, it’s a very, it’s a very, very good event, and so, you know, there’s quite a bit, and then there’s a podcast, the CRO Spotlight Podcast, everyone should listen to. It’s, really fun, and we have great guests on. I think, I think, Julia, you were a guest on that once? And, you know, so that’s what’s going on. We have a lot going on.
We’re excited about the future of what we’re doing.

Julia Nimchinski:
That’s an amazing warrant. That will buy, but what’s the best next step? Or should our community go? I know you shared a great qualification, but yeah.

Warren Zenna:
Well, thank you. Yeah, great. So, obviously LinkedIn, I mean, I’m a loudmouth over there, so you just DM me and say you heard the thing, and you want to talk. But another thing is, too, I had sent you a link, I don’t know if you remember, I sent you a link a couple days ago.
So there’s this really great diagnostic that we built that anyone can go into, and it sort of navigates you through where you’re at in the journey, and then it gives you a good sense of where we could help you. And it’s a good starting place.
You can always go to the website, you know, we have a lot of good stuff there, and of course the podcast, but DM me on LinkedIn, I respond to everybody, and I’d love to hear from you.

Julia Nimchinski:
This is awesome. We’ll share the link, and this is a wrap for today. Thank you so much for joining us, Warren. Once again, thank you for all of you watching. We had some amazing demos, showcases, workflows, use cases, and sessions like this. We are coming back in June, June 23rd, 25th, for another Massive AI Summit, so join us and save the date!
Thank you again, Warren.

Warren Zenna:
Julia, thank you so much, I love being here. Thank you.