Hiring a (first) CRO – What you need to get right

Lucy Brealy, Partner at Renovata, shares her perspective on one of the most pivotal moments in a SaaS company’s growth: hiring the first Chief Revenue Officer. Drawing on her direct experience supporting founders and investors across Europe, she outlines when the CRO hire truly makes sense, the common mistakes that derail early appointments, and how to assess whether your business is genuinely ready. From founder-led sales to scalable revenue engines, this article explores what needs to be in place to maximise the chances of a successful first CRO hire.

The CRO hire is one of the most critical hires that a SaaS business will make. Different companies make the decision to hire their first CRO at different times. Often in younger start ups sales has been founder led and driven through the early phase of growth, maybe following initial success a small sales team has been established and in time they will likely be operating in multiple markets. Leads may have been largely inbound, as in a true PLG motion and companies may have enjoyed very significant success and growth in this way. But – at some point the increasing complexity, multiple markets, constrained ambitions, diversifying routes to market and other increasing complexities crystallise and it becomes the right moment to hire your first CRO. Sometimes this is foreseen by the founding team and sometimes it is strongly advised / required by incoming investors. In any event, it is usually a significant decision and requires significant investment. Great CROs are not cheap and for companies coming from bootstrapped or just moving into profitability it is a big roll of the dice.

Renovata have spent 20 years supporting founders in taking this step. These are a few of the considerations that we think are important to take into account to maximise the chances of a really successful hire:

Founder appetite to relinquish control on GTM

Many founders are the very genesis of their product, many are the best sales person for their own product and all will know their market intimately.

But as we explored in the prior post this doesn’t substitute for what a CRO can bring. The true benefit in hiring a CRO lies in delivering scalability. You are asking them to build a sales machine that can multiply (and more) the efforts of a single founder or founding team. You are asking them to do that in a way that is structured, measurable and predictable: that give you real forward visibility and confidence in momentum. That visibility and predictability also gives investor confidence to invest.

Investors look for scalabililty and for that, founders need to trust in a specialist commercial leader to deliver.

A senior and proven CRO leader will look for conviction and proof points that the founder is ready to let go and trust in the CRO as a peer to deliver on the number. If they sense that the train set is not fully controllable they are unlikely to commit.

The right CRO for the right model?

It sounds obvious but we often see that companies hire a CRO who is not the right fit for their business model. In SaaS, at its most basic level we look at the customer base and target market across broadly 3 divisions;

Enterprise: Selling large deals in to sizeable businesses £500K+ with long sales cycles 18-24m+
Mid-market: Selling to the mid-market, defined differently for each company but say £50-£1m deals and 6-18m sales cycles.
SMB: Selling into smaller businesses £1-£50K. 1-6 month sales cycles (or quicker).

There is an ability to grab attention with sizeable deals £1m+ to key customers which often grabs attention but in reality, the sales leader who is selling smaller deals to more customers, £20K deals to 20,000 customers is generating similar revenue with a lot more to keep on top of.

The skill set of the best Enterprise sales leader who can qualify, engage and deliver the six figure deal over a year or so, is different but no better than the skill set of a CRO who can look across and manage 20,000 deals to 20,000 customers and keep all of them renewing and engaging and often buying more.

The skill sets are very different and so it is important to recognise and hire based on the customer base and sales motion that you have.

Product market fit?

In young businesses there is always change and there should be. Knowing when you have product market fit is key as is being confident that the product is in demand and delivers for customers.

We often see companies hiring CROs when the PMF is not quite there. The CRO is disabled because the product doesn’t quite work for the target audience. If the PMF isn’t there they will struggle with any GTM plan and this is both expensive and drives cross functional frustrations.

Maturity of commercial function?

A key consideration is what you are bringing in a commercial leader to do. If it is to establish market presence, go after new logos and build out a team as the business scales then the need really is for a player coach profile who will own the number, build upon it and hire as needed to support that (Profile A)

As you scale and gain momentum there is a point at which there is a need to structure more complex teams, across geographies, or product lines or both and the need to bring in someone who can manage through managers and provide a level of structure, systematisation and process. Very often this involves maturing and professionalising the sales function and bringing a level of rigor and sales hygiene to create predictable and sustainable revenue engine that can evolve with the needs of the business (Profile B).

Profile A and Profile B are very different and each will excel in the phase of growth for which they are best suited but likely neither will do well in each other’s environment.

Sometimes, but rarely, Profile A can evolve into Profile B. More often than not when the level of complexity and scale increases, it is time to make a change in commercial leader.

Renovata has 20 years experience in supporting young companies to hire commercial leaders to build high quality revenue engines. We can support at different stages of the journey whether that is first boots on the ground, professionalising and evolving the function or accelerated scaling (0-£25m, £20-50m, £50-100m, £100m+).

For a conversation about identifying and hiring the CRO capability that truly drives value creation, contact Lucy directly at: