As a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), your mission is clear—drive revenue growth—but the path to success? That’s not so simple.
Balancing People, Process, and Technology is the name of the game, but getting it right can feel like spinning plates. If one element falters, the whole operation wobbles. Let’s dive into what makes this balancing act so challenging.
CROs and their teams, especially, front-line managers, are stuck in a frustrating loop—scrambling to meet end-of-quarter numbers because the pipeline just isn’t where it needs to be. Starting a quarter with an empty or low-quality pipeline results in repeated fire-drills. As a consequence, sales teams are plagued with recurring inconsistency and low confidence in delivering on forecasts and a dependency on end-of-quarter heroics to make the quarter. It’s exhausting and unsustainable.
Sales management comes in all sizes and flavors with varying levels of grasp and commitment to the organization’s sales processes and methodology. Furthermore, with remote work becoming a norm, teams have become scattered across regions. Ensuring alignment between sales, marketing, account management, and customer success feels like a never-ending battle. How do you keep everyone rowing in the same direction when you’re not even in the same boat?
Let’s face it—while sales technology has come a long way, it’s far from perfect. Most platforms are siloed, focusing on just one part of the sales process. You end up with fragmented data, and it’s up to you to connect the dots. And those dots? They don’t always paint a clear picture. There are subjective and objective differences in how these managers analyze and interpret data, and manage their teams. These differences, no matter how subtle, sow the seeds of misalignment that only get amplified as the organization grows.
Below are the common short-falls of existing sales force automation and revenue intelligence tools we find across early-stage, mid-size and large enterprises:
- Siloed Systems: multiple platforms—one for forecasting, another for pipeline tracking, and maybe even a third for call analysis. The result? A fragmented workflow and 4-5 dashboards that are at best repetitive and more likely to add to the noise.
- Generic Recommendations: every business is unique, yet most tools offer a one-size-fits-all approach. What works for one rep or team might be a complete miss for another and templatized playbooks simply don’t cut it.
- Reactive insights: existing deal-centric tools present sales managers with a lot of metrics on various elements of their business. However, turning these data points into insights and then into coaching conversations requires a great deal of skill, effort and experience.
Imagine having an AI co-pilot to help you steer your team, navigate challenges, and avoid last-minute scrambles. That’s where salesDNA’s AI-powered tool, Ziggy, comes in. Ziggy spots risks early to keep your pipeline healthy, delivers personalized insights and real-time coaching guides to address your team’s specific challenges and meet forecasts consistently. It’s like having a VP of Sales in your pocket.
Let’s be honest: the CRO role isn’t getting any easier. Teams are more dispersed, competition is tougher, and technology—while helpful—often complicates things. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
salesDNA’s Ziggy is designed to help CROs align People, Process, and Technology. It shifts your focus from putting out fires to building a foundation for long-term success.
