Beyond the Founding Team | A Leadership Playbook for Growth: Sales

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Sales leaders are hired to build repeatable growth at scale, but only half of growth companies keep a CRO in seat at time of IPO.

Of the Chief Revenue Officers who were placed to operationalize a go-to-market function, only a quarter stay on through IPO.

^{Source: 2022 RRA Growth Co Analysis, n = 50 Chief Revenue Officers}

Comparing initially placed CROs vs. CROs in seat at IPO

Backgrounds and Functional Experience of Sales Leaders (% of CROs)

Opportunity for commercial GMs

Most growth sales leaders were previously divisional or regional GMs and were in the CRO role for the first time.

By promoting this type of talent, growth companies showed that they need sales leaders with the proven ability to:

1. Recruit and empower teams of functional experts in sales, channels, services, customer success and revenue operations
2. Gain company-wide support behind a go-to-market vision

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Authors

• Robert Alexander is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Technology Knowledge team. He is based in New York City.
• Agnes Greaves co-leads the firm’s Core & Growth Technology practice globally and the Consumer Digital & Media practice in Europe. She is based in London.
• Tuck Rickards heads the firm’s San Francisco office and co-leads the Core & Growth Technology practice. He is based in San Francisco.

Methodology and Notes

• Analysis of 40 tech/tech-enabled companies that were founded since 2005 and IPO’d 2017-2021, were largest by region according to valuation at time of deal, and achieved ≥20% revenue growth rate over the three-year period prior to IPO
• Industry verticals included: fintech, healthtech, automotive/transportation, eCommerce/marketplace, software/cloud
• Analysis includes only the appointment of non-founder executives
• Major funding rounds: approximate point in time at which each company reached series C/later stage funding
• APAC excluded from study due to data accessibility
• Sources: Pitchbook, Board Ex