Insights — Executive Recruitment — 3 min read
When Should a Business Hire a Chief Revenue Officer?
The Chief Revenue Officer mandate only earns its keep once sales, marketing and customer revenue exist as functions genuinely worth unifying.
In short
A business should consider a Chief Revenue Officer when sales, marketing and customer or renewal revenue exist as separate, reasonably mature functions that are working against each other rather than together — typically once a business has grown past the point where one Sales Director can credibly influence marketing and retention as well as sales. Below that point, a strong Sales Director working closely with marketing is usually the better appointment.
The Chief Revenue Officer title is easy to justify on paper and hard to justify in practice. Most businesses that ask about it already have a Sales Director candidate in mind and are testing whether the wider title fits.
The honest answer depends on how many functions genuinely need unifying, not on ambition or market convention.
What actually justifies the CRO mandate?
- Sales, marketing and customer success are led separately, each performs reasonably well in isolation, but the handoffs between them are the weak point.
- Marketing-generated pipeline and sales-reported pipeline tell two different stories, and no one is accountable for reconciling them.
- Renewal or expansion revenue has grown large enough to materially affect the forecast, and it currently sits with a separate leader disconnected from new business sales.
- The board wants a single accountable owner for the total revenue number rather than three separate functional reports.
- Growth has plateaued despite adequate spend and headcount in each function individually — the constraint is coordination, not capability.
What does not justify it?
A wish to signal seniority to investors, a belief that the title attracts stronger candidates than Sales Director, or a single sales team with no separate marketing or customer success function to unify. In our view, these are the three most common reasons a CRO search is opened prematurely.
| Situation | Likely appointment |
|---|---|
| One sales team, informal marketing support, no customer success function | Sales Director |
| Separate sales and marketing leaders who do not trust each other's numbers | Chief Revenue Officer, or a resolved reporting line between the two |
| Renewal revenue is significant and currently orphaned | Chief Revenue Officer |
| Growth has stalled and nobody can say why across functions | A commercial review before either appointment |
What size of business typically supports the role?
There is no fixed threshold, and it varies significantly by sector and revenue model. In our experience, the mandate becomes credible once a business has separate, resourced marketing and customer success functions alongside sales — which in most SMEs coincides with meaningful scale, though technology and subscription businesses often reach that structure earlier than manufacturing or industrial businesses of similar turnover.
What happens if the business appoints one too early?
- The CRO spends their time doing the Sales Director's job because there is nothing else substantial to coordinate.
- Marketing and customer success, if they exist at all, are too small to benefit from a senior coordinating layer above them.
- The cost of the appointment is not matched by a problem large enough for it to solve.
What should happen before the role is created?
- Map every function that would report into or align through the role, and confirm each one currently has a credible leader.
- Identify the specific coordination failure the appointment is meant to fix — not a general sense that growth should be faster.
- Decide whether the requirement is ongoing (permanent), tied to a defined event such as post-investment restructuring (interim), or worth testing part-time before full commitment (fractional).
Considering an executive appointment?
Evans Sales Consultancy recruits eleven executive roles across permanent, interim and fractional engagement models — starting with what the appointment has to deliver.
Related services