6 CRITICAL CRO TACTICS TO LAUNCH 2025 WITH MOMENTUM

A warm Happy New Year to all my subscribers and followers! Are you ready for 2025? Have you made your New Year’s Resolutions?

As I reflect on 2024 I’ve seen that CRO’s have been subjected to considerable noise, complexity, conflict and (as a result), stress. And I’ve witnessed these forces across all industries, geographies and a cross section of company sizes. But the one common denominator has been the priority of accelerating revenue growth – to generate sustainable and profitable customers.?

The first week of January is a classic time for reflection. We know that there are a number of critical success factors in creating a successful, growing and customer-centric organization. But, aside from the business-as-usual activities, I want to shine a light on some specific areas that can inject momentum – or act as a reset button to accelerate growth. A turbo boost into 2025 if you like!

Here are some specific leadership topics I want to shout out to provoke thought:

1.?Are you focused on the sweet spots?

In other words, have you got a ruthless, laser-like understanding of, and attention to, the critical areas of growth for your business?

Inevitably, over time, I see a drift away from this focus and into a more “generalist” attack into the market and upon existing customers. You don’t always realize it’s happening. Often it’s because the focus never existed and customer engagement has been left to the whims of individuals in front line teams. Often it’s due to the fact that some customers shout loudest. Whatever the cause, this issue should be a major cause for alarm!?

The benefits of being focused revolve around being able to optimize your precious skills and resources - and maximize the opportunities

2.?What activities and initiatives can you STOP?

Despite the best laid plans, businesses seem to continually generate an array of projects, with well-intended benefits but often without measurable outcomes. And they commonly lack project management while consuming significant amounts of resources.

Equally, front line roles can become hugely diluted by additional admin tasks, customer queries and other non-profit making activities. How purely aligned are individual activities to their job descriptions? Research tells us: “not very”!

So, now is a great time to audit the plethora of initiatives across your teams and the tasks being undertaken in the wrong silos of the organisation. Seek out the busy fools!

The benefits are obvious – focus. By removing the distractions you also remove excuses. You also make life more fun…employee engagement can be expected to rise while tedious non-productive tasks are being removed. And your personal authenticity is increased by reinforcing your ambition with supporting actions.

3.?Are you being ambitious enough?

The lazy CRO will await her or his targets from Finance and cascade them down, perhaps adding a small stretch for cover. Truly ambitious and strategic CROs calculate the full potential of growth on an ‘outside-in’ basis. They see the opportunity from their customer universe and apply some basic conversion assumptions. They ask, “what would it take to blow the doors off?” framing the opportunity and not falling into the trap of building goals based on the current headcount. Which one are you?

4.?Have I got the right squad on the pitch?

I often see ‘talent creep’ and imbalance in relation to teams and resources e.g. certain people gravitating to areas they like, to inappropriate ‘opportunities’ or to overly demanding customers.

We need to continually sanity check the alignment of our precious and expensive resources. Are they aligned to our segmentation model - the sweet spots?

Equally – how fit for purpose are our teams? Have we got complacent? If I look at our aspirations (our vision and advertised goals) will this team get us there? Now is the time to assess the collective skill and will of our team individuals. Now is the time to intervene with either training or adult conversations.

5.?Am I creating a sense of urgency?

Some people mistake urgency for running about quickly. Busy fools. You know who I mean – people who run from meeting to meeting, generate endless lists, speak fast etc. etc. Urgency is not ‘activity’.

Winning CROs have an inner determination to act and win - now. They are highly alert to (and positive about) the opportunities that exist around them. They create a sense of controlled panic.

True urgency is communicated through proactive behaviour but backed up by credible plans and reinforcing mechanisms. And there are some specific tactics you can deploy to generate the right environment e.g. launching ‘fast start’ sales campaigns, creating a war room, hosting deal clinics, resetting KPIs etc. Key to these tactics is the injection of quality to underpin the urgency. It’s about being smarter not faster!

6.?Am I fit for purpose?

It’s not just team skills you might need to beef up. As you digest the transformational requirements for the year ahead you should be diagnosing the gaps in your own capabilities. Just because you’ve reached senior heights in the organisation doesn’t mean you stop your own continual development.

If you need to turbo charge your team then you need to adopt some simple leadership tactics to make it happen. A great template for CRO leadership is my version of the McKinsey “Influence Model of Leading Change” 4 box model (reach out to me [email protected] and I’ll send you a free tool with working examples).

Its all about deploying a simple plan, with simple tactics but with the absolute PERSONAL COMMITMENT to execute. I.e. one of your New Year’s Resolutions!

On Thursday 23rd January I’ll be hosting a webinar to discuss these six critical tactics - and focusing on some great practical and simple working examples to help bring them to life. If you’d like to join me please register here ??

https://optilium.co.uk/webinar-registration/

?