Veteran CRO Carlos Delatorre prioritizes opportunities with complex products requiring a sophisticated sales motion. This environment allows him to leverage his expertise in building teams that can translate technical features into business value, create demand, and navigate internal customer politics, thereby making the market bigger.

Don't dilute a CRO's value—leadership, hiring, and customer-facing skills—by bogging them down with data analysis. Supplement their strengths with a dedicated RevOps person who manages the data, allowing the CRO to focus on high-leverage activities.

Don't weaken a CRO who excels at leadership and sales by forcing them to become a data analyst. Pair them with a strong RevOps or finance specialist. This '1+1=3' combo lets the CRO focus on their core strengths while ensuring data is used effectively to drive decisions.

When marketing and sales report to one CRO, that leader is accountable for both revenue growth and efficiency. This structure enables objective decisions on resource allocation—whether to invest in a TikTok video, an AE, an SDR, or RevOps—to optimize the entire funnel, eliminating departmental blame games.

Having a CRO oversee both sales and marketing provides the CEO with a single person accountable for revenue. This structure prevents the common scenario where marketing hits its pipeline goal but sales misses its revenue target. It consolidates ownership of pipeline generation and closing under one leader.

In a raw startup, the CRO's main job isn't leading a sales team. It's being on the front lines defining use cases, validating pain points, and determining product fit. They function as a product manager, only transitioning to a traditional sales leader once a repeatable go-to-market motion is established.

A CRO's primary role isn't managing today's revenue but architecting the engine for tomorrow's growth. This requires placing creative, long-term bets on new markets, products, and channels—like government sales—even if they don't generate immediate revenue, to ensure future acceleration.

A new CRO's first job isn't to invent the company's ICP or differentiators. That knowledge already exists within the company's "100-pound brains." The CRO's critical function is to extract that siloed expertise and translate it into a repeatable sales motion for the entire team.

High-profile tech companies like Gong are replacing the "CRO" title with "Chief Revenue Architect." This reflects a fundamental shift in the role's focus: from simply managing revenue outcomes to strategically designing the underlying go-to-market systems, processes, and technology stack for scale.