Think Bigger – Are You Ambitious Enough?

As the custodian of the Revenue Growth agenda, one of the most important traits required by every CRO is…ambition. But what does this mean in reality?? How does a CRO “become ambitious”? Is this a personality ingredient or something that can be engineered? My point of view - both are true.

Just for clarity, here’s what I mean by ambition. It’s a ruthless determination to excel and beat the competition. It’s not gung-ho bravado or optimism, but a positive and considered attitude about the art of the possible for the business.

If I can paint a caricature…the unambitious CRO will await her or his revenue targets from the CFO, cascade them down (perhaps after adding a small stretch for cover) and set about trying to hit the targets. Truly ambitious and strategic CROs calculate the full potential of growth on an ‘outside-in’ basis, seeing the opportunity from their customer universe. They apply some basic assumptions and ask, “what would it take to blow the doors off?” In other words, they see the opportunity first and don’t get restricted by the apparent limits of their budgets and resources. Which one are you?

As a senior leader, it’s also about instilling ambition in everyone else, right across the business. Great CROs do this by using classical leadership techniques such as role modelling, setting an inspiring vision and becoming highly intentional with the questions they ask when walking corridors… “what else could we do?” or “what would it take to double the size of the pipeline?”

Let me provoke some thought with a few ideas to help CROs becoming more ambitious.

???Understand the full potential for the business

In other words, calculate the maximum size of the available revenue opportunity for the business. This should be done irrespective of current resource or budget constraints. Gather the available market data for the relevant geographies (customers, turnovers, revenues, etc.) and apply some basic assumptions on addressability, contractability, conversion rates etc. This is never an exact science, but you should be able to get a decent enough scaling of the available revenue pot.

Secondly, create a simple ready reckoner to decipher what resources and skills would be required to address this opportunity – using simple ROI metrics relevant to your business (revenue per head, sales cycles etc.). By no means does this mean you’re necessarily going to quadruple the size of the team. But, armed with this knowledge, you can have an adult conversation about how, or whether to, address this full potential.

(PS: If you’d like a simple Full Potential Calculator reach out me [email protected] and I’ll send you one for free)

???Think beyond traditional boundaries

Opportunities exist for all businesses beyond core footprint and revenue streams. Diversifying into new geographies or with new propositions are classic ways of generating incremental income. Consider adjacencies to the business i.e. exploring inorganic opportunities such as strategic mergers or acquisitions. ?A great example can be seen in the way Salesforce aggressively expanded its ecosystem by acquiring companies like Tableau and Slack which allowed them to cross-sell solutions (specifically, analytics and collaboration tools) within their customer base. A more integrated suite of cloud solutions expanded revenue streams and led to higher customer retention.

???Leverage the Ecosystem

All businesses sit within vast ecosystems – made up of partners, suppliers, consultants, integrators, competitors and a plethora of other players. These can be leveraged in a variety of ways, both formally and informally.

Informally, we can leverage market or customer intelligence, discover new opportunities and gain introductions simply by building networks. More formally, we can create step change opportunity through sell-with or sell-through relationships.

B2B partnerships present a range of opportunities such as increased market reach, access to new segments, enhanced propositions, shared expertise, scaled-up resources, to name but a few.

???Turbo charge your value proposition

Why not ‘Think Big’ when it comes to individual customer relationships? For example, do you have some good customers with whom you have spot sold a mixture of individual products? Is there an opportunity to offer a managed service, or even an outsourcing service, and take the full addressable white space of services under one contract? You see this approach successfully deployed in a number of industries such as Telecoms, IT and HR.

On a more commercial level, consider the option to expand customer revenues by offering bundled services with longer term contracts. Pricing can be engineered to make this attractive, but also with some imaginative models such as subscription-based pricing.

???Drive Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) as the ultimate metric

Ambition doesn’t stop at quarterly and annual numbers. We need to think big about the supporting infrastructure and processes…the enablers of sustainable revenue growth.

For example, CROs should be ambitious about customer advocacy - turning satisfied customers into brand ambassadors. Because, if we can delight our customers we not only retain them, we grow with them for the long term. In practice this might mean investment, for example in superior onboarding and support capabilities.

I’m regularly amazed at the number of businesses who don’t have any form of customer satisfaction process, let alone formal Net Promoter Scores. Given that customers are the crown jewels of any business, all CROs should treat Customer Lifetime Value as the ultimate metric and the ‘north star’ for ambition!?

In summary, I see CROs as the pioneers of the business. They need to be brave, bold and seize opportunities while others around them may be apprehensive. If CROs don’t paint the big ambitious picture then who will?

??FREE WEBINAR ??

“EMERGENCY REVENUE GROWTH – 10 QUICK WINS”

Discover 10 practical tips for generating quick sustainable revenue growth

? Identify ‘low hanging fruit’ opportunities for growth

? Take away simple tools and techniques to accelerate results

?? Monday, 24th February 2025

? 4:00 pm GMT

Register for webinar here ?? https://optilium.co.uk/webinar-registration/