Hiring a tech CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) for your tech startup is a sign that your team is growing in the right direction, but finding the right candidate who will keep up this momentum and develop your sales motion is critical to success. To help you identify the best talent for this important role, we have compiled a list of key questions to guide your interview process and uncover the perfect unicorn fit for your team.
The Role of the CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) in Tech
The role of a Chief Revenue Officer in a SaaS startup evolves significantly as the company scales up. The CRO is responsible for driving revenue growth, aligning their sales reps with other teams, and ensuring your go-to-market (GTM) strategy is positioning you for success. Early-stage companies often require a hands-on leader who can directly contribute to selling, while later-stage organizations need a more strategic-minded sales executive capable of delegating down to expanding teams and implementing more scalable processes.
Things are changing for C-suite recruiting in tech, however, with a greater burden of proving experience, competency and success for sales and marketing in a given industry, as well as for the ability to empathize with team members. Every SaaS startup is seeking their unicorn seller – an experienced candidate that deeply understands your market and sales motion – and this is even more important when seeking a C-level sales leader. The following questions are designed to help you assess a Chief Revenue Officer candidate’s job history, skill sets, knowledge and strategic vision to ensure they align with your company’s goals.
Questions About Past Roles & Responsibilities
Inquiries into past job history and responsibilities help you dive deeper into your CRO candidate’s level of experience, which should be one of the biggest factors determining your right fit hire. These questions will allow you to better understand their professional journey, and how they have applied their leadership approach and strategic capabilities in past revenue leadership roles:
- Sales Motion & Growth Strategy: Explore your candidate’s track record in developing organizational sales motions within your market space. How have they successfully aligned GTM strategies with specific buyer journeys and scaled revenue operations? Look for candidates who can articulate clear examples of measurable outcomes and strategic thinking.
- Sales Forecasting: Understanding a CRO candidate’s approach to forecasting and pipeline management is crucial to vetting their experience. Explore how they have implemented processes to ensure accurate predictions, and ask what they did to maintain team accountability and drive growth.
- Revenue Channel Management: You should assess your candidate’s experience in managing diverse revenue streams. How do they approach balancing and optimizing new business, expansion and partner channels while ensuring each contributes effectively to overall growth?
- Customer Success Alignment: Evaluate the candidate’s ability to bridge the gap between sales and customer success teams. How do they structure handoff processes and ensure smooth collaboration that maximizes both retention and expansion opportunities?
- Marketing Alignment: Ask your CRO candidate to describe their methodology for aligning sales and marketing efforts. How do they ensure consistent messaging, lead quality and mutual accountability between these critical revenue-driving teams?
- Technology & Tools Optimization: Let the candidate provide their experience implementing and optimizing revenue technology stacks. How have they leveraged these tools to enhance their sales motion and drive measurable improvements in key metrics?
- Retention Strategy: Discuss the candidate’s track record in managing and improving customer retention. How have they identified churn risks, implemented preventive measures, and built systematic approaches to customer expansion?
- Planning Processes: Ask your candidate to walk through their approach to annual revenue planning and execution. How do they balance aggressive growth targets with realistic market conditions while ensuring team buy-in and capability?
Situational Questions for a CRO Candidate
Situational questions allow you to assess the candidate’s problem-solving skills, leadership style and ability to adapt to real-world challenges. These scenarios and hypothetical inquiries can help reveal how the candidate approaches critical aspects of the CRO role:
- Sales Motion Evolution: Present a scenario where the current sales motion is not scaling effectively with growth. How would they diagnose the issues, implement necessary changes, and maintain revenue momentum throughout the transition? Listen for methodical approaches that balance short-term results with long-term scalability.
- Revenue Diversification: Explore how the CRO candidate would handle board pressure to develop new revenue streams beyond the core product. How would they approach identifying and validating these opportunities while protecting and growing existing revenue channels?
- GTM Alignment Challenges: Create a scenario involving significant misalignment between sales and marketing messaging. How would they diagnose root causes, implement solutions, and ensure lasting alignment across the revenue organization?
- Competitive Response: Present a situation where a major competitor has dramatically undercut pricing. How would they adjust the sales motion and revenue strategy to maintain market position without compromising value? Look for strategic thinking that goes beyond price matching.
- Compensation Structuring: Describe a scenario where the current sales compensation structure is being revamped. How would they approach redesigning it to align with your developed sales motion while ensuring fair and motivating incentives?
- Organizational Design: Given your company’s current stage and growth targets, have the candidate outline how they would structure the revenue organization. How would they optimize for both efficiency and scalability while maintaining clear accountability?
- Customer Journey: Create a scenario where significant friction points in the customer journey are impacting conversion rates. How would they prioritize and address these issues across sales, marketing and customer success teams?
- Market Expansion: Present a situation involving expansion into a new market segment. How would they evaluate the opportunity, adapt the current sales motion, and ensure successful execution across the revenue organization?
Partnering with Betts Recruiting to Find Your CRO
Finding the right CRO for your tech startup requires a deep understanding of the talent market and a strategic approach to executive search sourcing. Betts Recruiting specializes in helping orgs like yours with sourcing and hiring a tech CRO who can take your company to the next level – get in touch with our team of expert recruiters today to get started on tracking down your unicorn CRO candidate.
Contact Betts here to learn how we can support your search for the perfect Chief Revenue Officer and help you scale your company.