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CROs Who Succeed
The GTM Operating Partners' Guide to Identifying the Traits That Matter
Contributors
We interviewed 18 GTM Operating Partners and advisors from a diverse range of venture capital and private equity funds.
Edwin Abl, Operating Partner & Due Diligence, Mercia Asset Management
James Bagan, Operating Partner, Frog Capital
Andy Champion, Board and GTM Advisor, Rothschild Five Arrows
Mandy Cole, Partner, Stage 2 Capital
Matt Gallagher, Portfolio CRO, HG
Anjai "AJ" Gandhi, ex Chief Growth Officer, Marlin Equity Partners
Michelle Johnson, Senior Vice President, Insight Partners
John E. Lepto IV, ex-Operating Partner - GTM, Crown Capital
James LiVigni, Operating Advisor, JMI Equity
Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer & Partner, Sagard
Carol Meyers, Advisor, Glasswing Ventures
Stephen Millard, Partner, Notion Capital
JD Miller, Operating Advisor (independent), Rothschild & Co
Steve Pace, Operating Advisor, Thoma Bravo
Marc Schiekofer, Operating Partner, Triton Partners
Mike Slater, Growth Operating Partner, The Carlyle Group
Luca Smuraglia, GTM Operating Partner with various Large Cap & Mid-Market Buyout Funds
Patrick Thorp, Independent Operating Partner, Growth Partners
Foreword
At Bullingstone Associates, we appoint Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) and their direct reports into high-growth B2B SaaS businesses. Over the past 12 months, our conversations with CROs have consistently highlighted the evolving nature of their challenges: from navigating increasingly complex go-to-market strategies to adapting to the changing expectations of their investor partners.
Concurrently, we noticed both the increasing abundance and the growing influence of the Go-To-Market (GTM) Operating Partner. These experts, embedded within venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funds, are reshaping how portfolio companies approach revenue generation, sales operations, and market expansion. Their remit is unique, acting as a hybrid of coach, strategist, and accountability partner, often focusing on GTM team structure, process refinement, and leadership development to de-risk the fund's investment and accelerate growth. The unique position, bridging the gap between investment strategy and operational execution, has created a new dynamic in the relationship between investors and their portfolio companies.
This white paper was born from our desire to understand this evolution more deeply and share this with the CROs we speak with. We recognised that whilst CROs are adapting to work alongside these operating partners, there was limited research exploring their perspectives, methodologies, and impact on the businesses they support.
Our methodology centred on conducting in-depth interviews with 18 leading GTM Operating Partners from a diverse range of venture capital and private equity funds. Sometimes they have a different job title but with a similar remit. For simplicity we refer to them all under this collective term. These conversations provided unprecedented insight into their approaches, the challenges they face, and the value they create for both their funds and portfolio companies. The research spans different fund sizes, investment stages, and geographical markets, ensuring a comprehensive view of this emerging discipline.
We are immensely grateful to the 18 operating partners who generously shared their time, expertise, and candour with us. Their willingness to discuss not only their successes but also their challenges and learnings has made this research possible. Without their openness, we could not have captured the nuanced reality of their increasingly influential role.
The analysis that follows represents our attempt to synthesise these insights and provide a clearer understanding of how GTM Operating Partners are shaping the future of revenue generation in the B2B SaaS landscape, and what this means for Chief Revenue Officers and those who hire them.
Wayne Starritt, Managing Director & Founder, Bullingstone Associates
[H2] Executive Summary
The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role faces a persistent crisis: the average tenure hovers around 18 months (CRO Insights Report 2025, Revenue Operations Alliance), creating costly disruption across high-growth B2B SaaS companies. This revolving door of CRO failure represents more than individual missteps; it signals a systematic breakdown in how organisations conceptualise revenue leadership. Traditional hiring approaches, focused on past achievements and impressive logos, have failed to solve this fundamental problem.
Go-to-Market Operating Partners occupy a unique vantage point in this landscape. Unlike external consultants or individual executives focused on singular challenges, these professionals observe revenue leadership patterns across dozens of portfolio companies simultaneously. Their position at the intersection of strategic oversight and operational reality provides unprecedented insight into what separates exceptional CROs from those destined to fail.
This white paper presents a counterintuitive thesis based on extensive interviews with 18 leading GTM Operating Partners: the traditional CRO role is fundamentally broken because it overvalues past achievements whilst underestimating foundational leadership traits. The most successful revenue leaders are not inherently those with the most impressive CVs, but those who demonstrate intellectual humility, adaptive intelligence, and genuine hunger to learn and evolve.
The research reveals a new blueprint for CRO success built on six foundational traits: strategic acumen combined with data-driven rigour, leadership excellence focused on talent development, growth mindset with adaptive intelligence, communication mastery across stakeholder groups, modern technical fluency including AI integration, and emotional resilience.
Operating Partners have developed systematic approaches to identify, assess, and develop this talent. Their methods move beyond traditional interview theatrics to competency-based evaluation, supporting organisations to hire first-time CROs with confidence whilst expanding diversity in revenue leadership roles. Most significantly, they create support ecosystems that transform individual executive performance into sustainable organisational capability.
This paper provides senior executives, investors, and aspiring revenue leaders with a new framework for hiring, developing, and succeeding in revenue leadership roles, grounded in the unique insights of those best positioned to observe what actually drives commercial success.
[H2] Introduction
In the executive suites of private equity and venture capital firms, a quiet revolution is unfolding. Behind the scenes of portfolio company boardrooms, a new breed of operational expert has emerged: the Go-to-Market Operating Partner. These seasoned practitioners occupy a unique position in the investment ecosystem, one that grants them an extraordinary view into the mechanics of revenue generation across dozens of companies simultaneously.
The GTM Operating Partner role has experienced substantial growth over the last two to three years, becoming a value-add function and competitive advantage for investment firms both during the acquisition process and during the value creation phase. This emergence represents an opportunity to learn how to overcome one of the most persistent challenges facing growth-stage companies: the revolving door of Chief Revenue Officers.
A note on scope: one persistent challenge in revenue leadership is the lack of consensus about what the CRO role should encompass. Chapter 3 examines this tension in depth, including the debate over whether marketing and customer success belong under the CRO's remit. Throughout this paper, unless otherwise specified, we use "CRO" to refer to a revenue leader responsible for Sales, Marketing (particularly growth marketing), Customer Success, and Revenue Operations in B2B SaaS companies, typically operating across EMEA and North America with $10M-$200M in ARR. This represents the most common configuration among the portfolio companies our Operating Partners work with, though we acknowledge significant variation exists both in role scope and company scale within this range.
The 18 partners interviewed for this research represent a diverse group of professionals, including both seasoned veterans with decades of experience as operating partners and recent entrants to the role. Their backgrounds are equally varied, ranging from long-tenured CROs to professionals who have taken different career paths to reach their current positions.
Traditional executive search processes and conventional wisdom about revenue leadership have proven inadequate to address this crisis. What is needed is a different perspective: one that can see beyond individual company circumstances to identify the deeper patterns at play.
GTM Operating Partners possess precisely this perspective. Unlike external consultants who parachute into situations with theoretical frameworks, these professionals bring credibility rooted in real-world, hands-on operational experience rather than purely theoretical knowledge. Many have occupied the CRO chair, felt the pressure of missed quarters, and navigated the complex dynamics between sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
More crucially, they observe these challenges replicated across their portfolios with remarkable consistency. Where others might view each struggling CRO as an isolated case of poor fit or execution, GTM Operating Partners recognise systematic patterns. They observe the same underlying misunderstandings about the role playing out across different industries, company stages, and market conditions. This pattern recognition capability, honed through exposure to multiple parallel experiments in revenue leadership, represents their most valuable asset.
The impact of this insight extends beyond mere observation. The presence of GTM Operating Partners gives CEOs more confidence to hire less experienced or first time CROs, many interviewees agreed. The Operating Partner model creates a safety net that allows for more innovative hiring decisions whilst providing the ongoing support that an inexperienced CRO would benefit from.
This support philosophy distinguishes Operating Partners from other advisory roles. "We are just here to support you," explains Michelle Johnson, a simple statement that encapsulates a fundamentally different approach to executive development. Rather than swooping in to fix problems or impose solutions, they embed themselves as trusted advisers who understand both the strategic imperatives driving revenue growth and the operational realities of executing against those imperatives.
From this privileged vantage point, a new understanding of revenue leadership is emerging, one that challenges conventional wisdom and offers a path forward for CROs to succeed personally, and for organisations serious about breaking the cycle of CRO failure.
[H2] Chapter 1: The Operating Partner Advantage — A Unique View of Revenue Leadership
The GTM Operating Partner role defies simple categorisation. Far from following a standardised job description, these professionals have carved out positions that reflect both their firm's investment thesis and their own unique expertise. Yet what surfaces from conversations with leading practitioners reveals something more significant than job description diversity: it exposes the systematic data collection and pattern recognition opportunities that these professionals possess.
[H3] A Role Defined by Diversity
The modern GTM Operating Partner role has evolved into several distinct archetypes, each reflecting different strengths and firm requirements. Some partners present as deep strategists, others as hands-on implementers, whilst many specialise in particular aspects of the commercial function such as diligence or talent development.
These archetypes represent genuine differences in how partners approach their work. AJ Gandhi exemplifies the balanced strategist, allocating 30% of his time to due diligence, 60% to portfolio company improvement, and 10% to community building. In contrast, Patrick Thorp embodies the implementer archetype, describing his approach as "20% strategy, 80% implementation," focused on building "sales-led businesses that have institutionalised a sales process."
Early-stage specialists like Carol Meyers concentrate on assessing how emerging companies think about go-to-market fundamentals, whilst growth-focused partners such as James LiVigni target "optimising execution" in companies with established product-market fit.
This adaptability extends across the investment spectrum and reflects how the role adapts to different firm strategies and market segments. JD Miller notes that the role is "very different in different businesses". Yet beneath this surface diversity, common patterns emerge in how the most effective practitioners structure their work to gather intelligence on revenue leadership effectiveness.
"I like the variety… it's like a puzzle every time. And I still see things that I've never seen before." Matt Gallagher
[H3] The Five Pillars of Focus
Five core activity areas consistently emerge across the most effective practitioners. These activities serve a dual purpose: driving immediate value for portfolio companies whilst systematically collecting data on what distinguishes successful revenue leaders from those destined to fail.
1. Diligence and Assessment forms the foundation of pattern recognition. Johnson at Insight prioritizes due diligence, often clearing her schedule to support deal teams with comprehensive founder interviews covering ideal customer profile (ICP), value proposition, and coverage models, whilst simultaneously assessing the quality and capability of existing commercial leadership. Gandhi has developed comprehensive assessment methodologies that elevate due diligence beyond traditional approaches, whilst Marc Schiekofer conducts comprehensive GTM audits investigating the maturity of go-to-market strategy, operations, and infrastructure to identify value creation potential. James Bagan has built a dedicated due diligence service, getting involved long before investments are made to build rapport with management teams and evaluate their commercial capabilities. This systematic assessment across dozens of companies annually creates an unparalleled database of leadership competencies and their correlation with subsequent performance.
2. Hiring and Executive Talent provides the deepest insight into what actually predicts revenue leadership success. Partners frequently find themselves at the centre of executive search and assessment processes, leveraging their deep networks and understanding of what drives commercial success. Jonathan Metrick has been involved in hiring over 20 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), noting that founders often lack experience in this vital area. Johnson has conducted at least 30-35 VP Sales and CRO candidate interviews over the past 12 to 18 months, helping CEOs define the required competencies for roles rather than focusing merely on titles. This intensive involvement in executive selection creates unique insight into the disconnect between traditional hiring criteria and actual performance outcomes.
3. Hands-on Portfolio Improvement and Implementation exposes the gap between strategic capability and execution excellence. This work moves beyond advisory guidance to hands-on operational engagement. Mike Slater works directly with CEOs and CROs to unlock what's holding them back, implementing new sales processes and ensuring the machinery to scale. Mandy Cole helps founders identify the three biggest opportunities for revenue impact within 90 days, ensuring they have modern processes for sales fundamentals. The emphasis on execution over strategy provides direct observation of which leaders can translate vision into results and which struggle with operational realities.
4. Coaching, Mentoring, and Leadership Development reveals the learning agility that separates adaptive leaders from those trapped by past success. Gandhi coaches CROs and CMOs on strategy rollout, whilst Miller focuses specifically on helping commercial leaders break down growth numbers and communicate effectively with boards. Cole's team dedicates an hour weekly with VPs of Sales and CEOs to achieve specific goals. Stephen Millard has formalised this with a "high potential leadership programme" for emerging executives across the portfolio. This intensive coaching engagement provides unfiltered insight into which executives demonstrate growth mindset versus those who resist feedback or cling to outdated approaches.
5. Community Building and Knowledge Sharing leverages the portfolio advantage to stress-test leadership assumptions across multiple contexts simultaneously. Metrick sees much of his work as "connecting the dots" between companies through think tanks and webinars. Edwin Abl proactively shares best practices and conducts live workshops on current topics like artificial intelligence (AI) in GTM. Johnson highlights how portfolio companies frequently request peer introductions, with Insight facilitating this through CEO summits and roundtables. These interactions reveal which leaders actively seek learning opportunities and which remain isolated in their existing approaches.
[H3] The Language of Partnership
How these professionals describe themselves reveals the collaborative approach that enables deep access to leadership dynamics. They consistently position themselves as helpers and supporters.
"Our job is to bring a perspective and to cultivate a conversation with the people that we are entrusted to work with. Our job is to help them come to smarter conclusions and solutions than perhaps they would do in a vacuum." Andy Champion
Johnson summarises what many described when she said "The pull versus push advisory model where companies actively seek support proves most effective."
Crucially, they reject the traditional consultant model. Thorp explicitly describes himself as an implementer rather than providing "ivory tower strategic advisory," whilst Cole emphasizes being hands-on. This positioning creates trust that enables unprecedented access to executive decision-making processes and leadership challenges.
The role continues evolving rapidly. Gandhi notes it was "fairly unusual" when he started, whilst Pace describes himself as "blazing the trail" with the remit he has at his firm. Metrick describes the role as "pretty nascent" at the end of the last decade, but it has now matured into something mainstream.
"Sometimes you just need to be there. Be the right person in the right room at the right time, who's actually listening." Patrick Thorp
[H3] The Systematic Intelligence Machine
The real power of Operating Partners lies in their ability to see across the portfolio. Where individual executives focus on their singular challenge, Operating Partners maintain a panoramic view of what works and what doesn't across dozens of companies. They conduct best practice sessions across portfolios, creating a continuous feedback loop of learning and refinement. This pattern recognition becomes invaluable: they can spot the early warning signs of a failing sales strategy or identify the subtle indicators that suggest a CRO is about to hit a wall.
What emerges from these conversations is not a picture of isolated incidents, but a clear trend of repeated mistakes. It is this unique, pattern-level insight that informs a perspective on leadership that often runs counter to conventional wisdom, a perspective we will explore in the next chapter.
[H2] Chapter 2: Breaking the Broken Model — Why Experience Isn't Everything
One revelation from the Operating Partners stood out. The default assumption remains that a seasoned CRO with multiple exits and a well-worn playbook represents the safest bet. But the Operating Partners have watched this assumption backfire, not because experience itself is worthless, but because the inability to adapt that experience to radically new realities creates a dangerous blind spot.
Operating Partners do value experience. Bagan emphasizes the importance of experiential depth, whilst LiVigni notes that certain insights only come from having navigated similar challenges before.
Millard says "I'm all for hiring somebody smart, hungry, humble, driven, open-minded, but not someone who's unproven, not somebody who hasn't….been through a similar kind of stage" although that experience need not have been gained as the CRO or even VP Sales.
Millard values experience but not in the way one might expect. "Ideally, I want people who've worked in multiple different types of go-to-market models. I like that and tell you why. It's because they know there's no single answer."
[H3] The Logo Trap: When Credentials Become Liabilities
Traditional CRO hiring suffers from what we might call the "logo trap": the dangerous assumption that impressive company names guarantee future success. Matt Gallagher, who has overseen dozens of senior commercial hires, insists; "we focus on what we need in this role rather than what logos they were at before, or what schools they went to." This philosophy shift represents more than a semantic difference; it's a re-evaluation of how revenue leadership capability should be assessed, given that past headline achievements offer increasingly limited predictive value.
The challenge is particularly acute because, as multiple partners observe and Slater notes, "Most CROs have never been trained on how to hire." This creates a compounding effect where inexperienced hiring practices perpetuate themselves across the revenue leadership community. When you combine untrained CROs with founders who lack direct experience in senior commercial roles, the result is a systematic failure in talent assessment that undermines entire go-to-market strategies.
[H3] First-Time CRO Success
"The most successful CRO journeys as a single project, have come from first-time CROs." Steve Pace
First-time CROs tackle their role differently. They question everything, test assumptions relentlessly, and remain hyper-responsive to feedback from customers and teams. They lack the confidence to dismiss warning signals that contradict their existing beliefs because they haven't yet developed the certainty that experience can breed.
Some veteran CROs have been seen to arrive with 'solution in search of a problem' syndrome. They implement familiar strategies before fully understanding the unique dynamics of their new environment, mistaking activity for progress whilst missing critical market signals. Smuraglia and Champion, among others, emphasize the vital importance of proper diagnosis before implementation, warning that playbooks which haven't evolved with market realities will struggle. Lepto identifies executives who remain rigidly attached to their established methodologies and vendor relationships as particularly vulnerable, whilst Abl notes that leaders unwilling to reassess their learned experiences face inevitable failure in today's rapidly changing environment.
When pressed on why first-time CRO candidates in his mind outperform seasoned veterans, Pace's view was that "the single biggest reason is hunger and determination".
First-time CROs often succeed precisely because they bring drive and motivation without what Gandhi calls the "bravado" that can plague experienced executives who rely on outdated playbooks. The partners repeatedly emphasize the importance of intellectual humility and adaptability. In an environment where approaches that succeeded even recently may no longer be effective, successful CROs demonstrate a growth mindset: the willingness to continuously learn and evolve their approaches based on new data and changing market conditions.
Winning CROs are "incredibly curious" people, explains Millard, who are prepared to "let go of what [they] used to do," adds Miller. "It's great to have strong ideas, but the most powerful executives hold on to those strong ideas very lightly," explains Champion. They maintain enough conviction to provide clear direction whilst remaining open to new data and changing circumstances.
However, success for first-time CROs is not guaranteed, and promoting a successful VP of Sales without thorough evaluation is not the solution. The competencies that made someone successful as a sales director or VP may become liabilities at the CRO level. Those with what Bagan calls a "hero complex," who LiVigni describes as wanting "to control and manage every deal," may be "fantastic salespeople who've gotten promoted, but really don't know how to think strategically about the business, how to structure their team," according to Meyers.
[H3] The Growth Mindset Indicators
The Operating Partners have refined their ability to identify the psychological traits that predict CRO success. They seek candidates who demonstrate intellectual humility, those who ask probing questions about what hasn't worked rather than immediately proposing what should be tried. They seek evidence of recent learning, of strategies abandoned when data proved them wrong.
"Old dogs or 30-year marketing veterans who are living in the past with outdated playbooks will struggle," explains Gandhi. The issue isn't age or experience per se, but cognitive flexibility. Operating Partners are learning to distinguish between executives who have 15 years of experience and those who have one year of experience repeated 15 times.
Abl suggests "hire sponges and develop sponges." The priority is candidates who can articulate how their thinking has evolved, who display comfort with uncertainty, and who show evidence of building systems for continuous learning rather than relying on instinctive decision-making.
[H3] The Systematic Assessment Revolution
The most sophisticated Operating Partners have developed comprehensive methodologies that move far beyond gut instinct and traditional interview theatrics. Many Operating Partners expressed concerns about personality-focused interviewing. "Most average sales people are quite good at presenting," notes Slater, and that results in interviewers being "snake charmed," adds Bagan. The answer is a "clinical process," explains Slater.
Gandhi has created a systematic framework including "16 quantitative analyses" paired with detailed interview guides designed to uncover authentic capability not just surface-level competence. This level of rigour reflects an understanding that revenue leadership success depends on measurable competencies that can be systematically assessed rather than intuitive judgements about "executive presence".
"Focus more on the ability of the CRO without worrying about what their resume says," notes Steve Pace. Johnson takes this competency-focused principle further by helping CEOs define required competencies for roles instead of focusing on titles or impressive-sounding attributes.
This is not to say that experience is worthless. On the contrary, the right kind of experience is what forges the very traits the Operating Partners identified as critical: grit, resilience, and adaptability. The crucial distinction is between experience that creates a rigid playbook and experience that cultivates a dynamic, first-principles approach to problem-solving. The latter is invaluable; the former is a liability.
This convergence of evidence exposes the cardinal flaw in how organisations conceptualise revenue leadership: they mistake past performance for future potential, optimising for experience in contexts that no longer exist rather than adaptive capacity for challenges that have never been encountered. The broken model isn't just ineffective; it systematically selects against the very qualities that predict success in rapidly evolving markets.
[H2] Chapter 3: The CRO Blueprint — Remit, Reality, and the Traits That Truly Matter
[H3] The Ideal Remit vs. a Difficult Reality
The GTM Operating Partners speak with near, but not total, consensus when describing their vision for the modern Chief Revenue Officer. In their ideal world, the CRO oversees a holistic commercial engine encompassing sales, marketing, and customer success, creating what they term a unified go-to-market function with synchronised objectives and systems that ultimately benefit the customer.
The logic behind integration is compelling. As Metrick observes, "The best businesses that I see have a single commercial leader" with what he calls "full revenue, full funnel" ownership.
When commercial functions operate in silos, misaligned goals and suboptimal resource allocation become inevitable. A unified CRO can make critical trade-off decisions about where to deploy capital and talent, ensure marketing-generated leads convert effectively through the entire customer journey, and align what Champion describes as "shared objectives, shared measurements, and aligned reward systems" across all revenue-generating activities. In SaaS environments where net revenue retention (NRR) is a key driver of valuation, the case for bringing customer success under the CRO's remit feels particularly strong.
Yet dissenting voices emerged, challenging not the strategic logic but the practical execution of this model. The concern centres on a dangerous dynamic: CROs with deep sales backgrounds but limited appreciation for marketing's strategic value or customer success's operational complexity. As Bagan observes, many CROs "don't understand marketing or even more worryingly, don't care enough." This core misunderstanding becomes particularly problematic when a sales-focused leader attempts to manage the strategic, long-term brand-building aspects of marketing, which operate on different timelines and metrics than quarterly-driven sales culture. The result, according to Meyers, is often "tunnel vision on demand gen"—marketing becomes subordinated to short-term lead generation rather than leveraged for its broader strategic value in shaping the buyer's journey.
Smuraglia warns that combining multiple functions like Sales, Marketing and Customer Success can be "counterproductive if the CRO is not able to rely on competent functional leaders or adopt the right situational leadership style." This observation points to a critical success factor: the quality of the leadership layer immediately below the CRO. Multiple partners emphasized that the integrated model only works when the CRO surrounds themselves with brilliant functional leaders—what Bagan calls "tiptop" executives who can own their domains while coordinating across functions. Without this exceptional bench strength, the CRO becomes spread too thin, making superficial decisions across functions they don't deeply understand.
This reveals a deeper challenge lurking beneath the idealistic vision: finding an individual with genuine expertise across all three functions is extraordinarily rare. Gandhi describes such candidates as "unicorns," whilst Metrick uses the analogy of "a bit like a triathlete" who will "always be noticeably weaker at one of the events." The talent pool capable of executing the integrated remit effectively remains frustratingly shallow, creating a fundamental tension between strategic ideal and operational reality.
[H3] The Talent Constraint
The practical reality proves far more complex than the theoretical ideal. The partners are candid about the fundamental challenge: whilst the integrated remit makes strategic sense, the talent pool capable of executing it effectively remains frustratingly shallow.
The core difficulty lies in the divergent skill sets and mindsets required across functions. The preceding analysis detailed the pitfalls when sales-focused CROs attempt to lead marketing and customer success. But the inverse presents equal challenges: candidates with marketing backgrounds often lack the operational instincts required to manage high-velocity sales teams.
As Gandhi asks, "Are they gonna understand hiring salespeople…. how to do big deals?....channel strategy?....compensation?" Successful integration requires not just functional competence but genuine understanding and respect for each discipline's unique contribution—a combination that proves exceptionally rare.
The intellectual and leadership demands compound the challenge significantly. Cole captures the scope of what's required: someone who can "be a coach, can think through strategy, can be operational, can be data driven; it can be really hard." This isn't simply about possessing multiple skills—it's about maintaining strategic vision whilst executing operational excellence across fundamentally different commercial functions, each with its own culture, metrics, and rhythms.
Two contrasting perspectives emerged on whether the challenge is fundamentally intellectual or executional. Gandhi frames the requirement as "deep business acumen, learning and desire" to own all pieces effectively, emphasizing the cognitive demands of navigating modern revenue generation's complexity. Smuraglia offers a different view: "I don't think intellectually the job of a CRO is that complicated. What matters more than anything is execution." He explains that "more often than not it is about getting people to do their job." His perspective suggests that the primary challenge isn't intellectual horsepower but rather the rare leadership ability to drive consistent execution across diverse commercial teams—getting people to do their jobs effectively at scale.
The qualification challenge creates a final constraint. As Johnson observes, "Backchannels help to derisk the hire, but nuanced questioning is warranted in that backchannel to understand if prior success is translatable to the context faced in the role to be filled" This uncertainty in identifying genuine capability across such broad functional scope makes the hiring process particularly high-risk.
The partners also recognize that the ideal CRO configuration may not be static across a company's evolution. Johnson observes that "as companies start to get larger, when things start to break down and the individual departments just get too big, I think that's when you start to see the introductions, like your CMOs and your CCOs." This suggests a more nuanced conclusion: the choice between an integrated model and specialized roles may be less about which is inherently superior and more about organizational lifecycle, operational complexity, and the available talent at a given moment. The debate, in other words, may be asking the wrong question—seeking a universal answer to a contextual problem.
[H3] The Traits That Matter Most
Yet despite these practical challenges around remit and scope, the Operating Partners have reached a remarkably strong consensus on something arguably more important: the foundational traits that truly predict CRO success. Whether a CRO oversees all three functions or operates within a more focused remit, these essential characteristics consistently separate exceptional performers from the merely adequate.
[H3] Strategic Acumen and Data-Driven Rigour
"Being good with data is not a nice-to-have, it's table-stakes. Period." JD Miller
The partners universally emphasise that great CROs must be "super strategic" and "data driven." Miller illustrates this with a practical example: a successful CRO should be able to take a vague growth target and break it down into a "one-page plan" detailing specific revenue sources and pathways. This strategic clarity, combined with what Champion terms "operational rigour," forms the foundation for building predictable, repeatable GTM motions.
Financial literacy emerges as equally critical. Thorp notes that effective CROs possess the ability to "think two quarters ahead" and understand capital flows, skills that enable them to navigate the complex financial dynamics of modern revenue generation whilst maintaining both short-term execution and long-term strategic vision. This forward-thinking capability becomes essential for building what the partners consistently describe as essential: a repeatable, predictable and scalable revenue engine.
[H3] Leadership Excellence and People Development
"It's not how smart I am. It's how smart you are when I leave" James LiVigni
The human element proves paramount in the partners' assessment criteria, with hiring and talent development representing perhaps the most critical CRO capabilities. Slater emphasises that "the ability to hire great people" stands as a fundamental requirement. But hiring represents only the beginning of the leadership challenge; successful CROs must also excel as coaches, continuously developing their teams and fostering growth at every level.
"I believe, the number one skill for a CRO is to hire brilliantly," notes Bagan. He emphasises that the best CROs understand that their success ultimately depends on the quality and development of their people. The coaching dimension becomes particularly important when managing diverse functions with different cultures, metrics, and success criteria, requiring leaders who can adapt their development approach to various personality types and functional backgrounds.
The emotional intelligence required extends far beyond basic management competencies. The best CROs cultivate teams where people "want to follow them into battle," explains Bagan, building loyalty and commitment that transcends typical employment relationships. But it is also about making people better. LiVigni says a great CRO's mindset is, "it's not how smart I am. It's how smart I can help make you."
This philosophy of empowerment, of embedding processes and knowledge, is what creates a truly scalable and resilient revenue engine. This level of leadership becomes essential when navigating the inevitable tensions that arise between different functions, requiring a leader who can maintain team cohesion whilst driving performance across diverse disciplines.
"When your people don't follow you, you're not going to win the war." Steve Pace
The partners consistently note that exceptional CROs create what Champion calls "talent magnets;" organisations that attract high-quality people because of the leader's reputation for developing careers and creating opportunities for growth. This talent development capability becomes particularly crucial in a competitive market for commercial talent, where the ability to hire, retain, and develop exceptional people often determines long-term success more than any specific functional strategy.
Furthermore, the coaching aspect extends beyond individual development to encompass team dynamics and cross-functional collaboration. Meyers raises a red flag if CROs lack "good stories about collaborating with other executives" and are not "contributing to the strategic dialogue of the (whole) company". The most effective CROs serve as facilitators and arbitrators, helping different functions understand and appreciate each other's contributions whilst maintaining focus on shared objectives and outcomes. This requires sophisticated interpersonal skills and the emotional intelligence to navigate complex stakeholder relationships both within and beyond the commercial organisation.
[H3] Growth Mindset and Adaptive Intelligence
"The core competency... they've got to have a growth mindset…" Michelle Johnson
Perhaps most critically, the partners consistently highlight that successful CROs demonstrate intellectual humility paired with insatiable curiosity. These aren't abstract qualities but observable behaviors that predict success in rapidly evolving markets where yesterday's playbook becomes tomorrow's liability.
The most effective revenue leaders approach their role with a fundamental understanding that past success doesn't guarantee future performance. "It's about mindset... I've been in software for 30 years... and I know I don't know the answers," explains Millard, capturing the paradox of executive confidence balanced with intellectual humility. This self-awareness enables leaders to question their assumptions rather than imposing familiar solutions on new problems.
Operating Partners have refined their ability to identify these psychological traits through specific behavioral indicators. They seek candidates who demonstrate a growth mindset and willingness to rethink how they might build things differently. This manifests in executives who actively seek feedback, acknowledge knowledge gaps, and show genuine excitement about learning from unexpected sources. The best candidates respond to challenging questions with intellectual curiosity rather than defensiveness—saying things like "You're absolutely right, I need to go think about this"—and can articulate not just what they've achieved but why their approaches have been successful. This self-awareness and willingness to deconstruct their own success patterns distinguishes adaptive leaders from those relying on unreflective habit.
The correlation between curiosity and scope of responsibility proves particularly revealing. Andy Champion observes that "the bigger the job, the bigger the size of revenue, the more the curious scale goes up," suggesting that intellectual curiosity becomes increasingly critical.
[H3] Communication Mastery and Stakeholder Management
"People don't lose their jobs because they deliver bad news. People lose their jobs because people aren't expecting the bad news" JD Miller
"A really good CRO has to paint a vision that rallies everyone around some kind of an unknown future," explains Miller. The ability to communicate complex ideas clearly across different audiences emerges as another distinguishing trait. Great CROs function as great storytellers, capable of articulating vision, strategy, and performance to boards, teams, and broader organisations with equal effectiveness. They must communicate with exceptional clarity, not just about results, but about the strategic rationale behind their approaches and the trade-offs inherent in commercial decision-making.
Crucially, they excel at managing expectations upwards and downwards. "People don't lose their jobs because they deliver bad news. People lose their jobs because people aren't expecting the bad news," notes Miller. This requires sophisticated stakeholder management skills and the emotional intelligence to navigate difficult conversations whilst maintaining trust and credibility across multiple constituencies. Smuraglia says they must "leave no room for interpretation or doubt."
The communication challenge extends to translating between different functional languages and perspectives. Effective CROs serve as interpreters, helping sales teams understand marketing strategies, enabling marketing teams to appreciate sales realities, and ensuring customer success insights inform broader commercial strategies. This translation capability becomes particularly important in integrated CRO models where cross-functional collaboration determines overall success.
[H3] Modern Technical Fluency
"If you aren't good at AI, you're going to be left behind" JD Miller
The partners increasingly emphasise the need for what Johnson calls AI fluency and systems thinking. Modern CROs must understand how technology can augment human efforts, constantly asking, as Johnson suggests, "what should be human led? What should be AI led?" This technical awareness, combined with systems thinking, enables CROs to build scalable, technology-enhanced revenue engines that leverage automation while preserving the human elements that drive relationship-building and complex decision-making.
[H3] Resilience and Emotional Fortitude
"You're going to come under board pressure, investor pressure. And the ability to keep picking yourself up off the canvas is so important." James Bagan
Finally, the partners consistently highlight the psychological demands of the role. The modern CRO faces immense pressure from multiple directions: board expectations, team performance, market dynamics, and competitive pressures. They must demonstrate significant resilience whilst maintaining decision-making quality under stress without becoming flustered by the inevitable challenges of revenue leadership.
Bagan says "the thing that I look for, perhaps more than anything else, is resilience, because I think that is by far the most important characteristic. You're going to have shitty quarters. You're going to lose deals. You're going to churn customers. You're going to come under board pressure, investor pressure. And the ability to keep picking yourself up off the canvas is so important."
This resilience extends beyond personal stress management to encompass the ability to maintain team morale and performance during difficult periods. Pace says it is important to "lead from the front". The best CROs serve as emotional anchors for their organisations, and Lepto says they show "a decent amount of empathy". They must provide stability and confidence even when facing significant challenges or uncertainty personally.
[H3] Synthesis: The Foundation for Success
The consensus among the GTM Operating Partners is clear and remarkably consistent despite the diversity of their portfolios. Whether working with seed-stage startups or companies approaching $500M in revenue, whether advising CROs with narrow sales-focused remits or those overseeing full commercial functions, the partners identified the same foundational traits as predictive of success: strategic thinking, leadership excellence, adaptive intelligence, communication mastery, technical fluency, and emotional resilience. These capabilities transcend functional scope, company scale, and market context—they enable exceptional leaders to navigate complexity and drive results regardless of the specific organizational structure or functional reporting lines they inherit.
More importantly, these traits provide the foundation for continuous learning and adaptation, enabling CROs to develop functional expertise in areas where they may initially lack experience. A leader with strong strategic acumen, exceptional people development skills, and genuine intellectual curiosity can learn to appreciate and manage marketing or customer success effectively, whilst a functionally experienced leader lacking these foundational traits may struggle regardless of their background.
This insight suggests that organisations might be better served focusing their CRO search on candidates who demonstrate these core attributes, even if they require some functional development, rather than seeking the elusive "unicorn" with deep experience across all commercial functions. The key lies in ensuring that such leaders surround themselves with strong functional experts and demonstrate genuine commitment to understanding and appreciating each area's unique contribution to overall commercial success.
[H2] Chapter 4: The GTM Operating Partners' Playbook for CRO Talent
The fundamental challenge facing founders and CEOs extends beyond finding talented CRO candidates—it's knowing how to evaluate them effectively. Most founders and many CEOs lack the experience required to assess senior revenue leadership, having never operated the role themselves or worked closely enough with multiple CROs to develop pattern recognition. Cole observes that founders "make the same mistakes over and over again" because most lack revenue backgrounds and don't naturally think in commercial terms.
This knowledge gap represents a dangerous blind spot that can derail entire go-to-market strategies. GTM Operating Partners address this weakness directly, bringing portfolio-wide expertise in revenue leadership assessment that individual CEOs simply cannot replicate.
[H3] Systematic Assessment Beyond Intuition
The most sophisticated Operating Partners have developed comprehensive methodologies that move far beyond gut instinct and traditional interview theatrics. Rather than relying on prepared success stories, many use exercises that force candidates to demonstrate real-time analytical thinking under pressure. Schiekofer likes to run a case study where he presents "numbers, offering and market motion" and asks them "how would you structure (this) to take it to the next level?" This approach reveals how candidates process incomplete information, communicate complex ideas to diverse stakeholders, and maintain composure when facing the kind of ambiguous challenges that define actual CRO responsibilities.
This systematic approach ensures that assessment criteria align with actual success factors in contrast with generic leadership qualities that fill job descriptions but in reality lack predictive value for revenue outcomes.
[H3] Addressing the Pipeline Problem: A Systematic Approach to Diversity
Perhaps no-one is better placed than the Operating Partners to see the chronic diversity gaps that plague revenue leadership. They believe this isn't simply about good intentions or corporate social responsibility: it's about systematically expanding the talent pool to capture the best available candidates regardless of background.
The underlying problem goes far deeper than simple bias. Traditional hiring processes often rely on subjective assessments of "cultural fit," a seemingly neutral criterion that frequently reinforces homogeneity by favouring candidates who resemble existing leadership teams.
"We aren't going to have more female CROs until we have search processes that say the search is not closed until we have seen a broad spectrum of candidates." JD Miller
Miller specifically cites that before running an outsourced executive search, people in private equity will approach their network, which is often people similar to them. He explains "we aren't going to have more female CROs until we have search processes that say the search is not closed until we have seen a broad spectrum of candidates."
Operating Partners themselves have learned to identify and interrupt this pattern by focusing assessment on objective, capability-based criteria that naturally widens the talent pool. When evaluation centres on demonstrated ability to drive revenue outcomes, communicate with boards, or build scalable processes, the candidate pool expands dramatically beyond the narrow demographic profiles that dominate many C-suites.
Active mentorship also plays a critical role. "Willing, able, engaged mentors," notes Gandhi, are essential for underrepresented candidates, and the Operating Partners take this responsibility seriously themselves. Meyers reflects on her own career trajectory, recalling that she initially declined a VP of Sales role multiple times due to self-doubt before a manager insisted she take it—an experience that shaped her commitment to encouraging the next generation. This pattern of talented professionals, particularly women, requiring external validation and encouragement to pursue senior roles underscores why active sponsorship matters as much as formal process changes.
Operating Partners leverage their cross-portfolio experience to challenge assumptions that limit talent pools. They've observed which characteristics actually predict success versus those which simply feel comfortable to hiring managers and executive search firms. This pattern recognition allows them to guide CEOs toward candidates they might otherwise overlook while building confidence in non-traditional profiles that demonstrate the core competencies required for revenue leadership success.
[H3] Post-Hire Development Architecture
The Operating Partner value proposition extends well beyond the hire itself, addressing a critical gap in executive development. Partners like Miller focus specifically on coaching CROs on board communication, a crucial skill that's rarely developed elsewhere but essential for executive success. This targeted coaching addresses the reality that even experienced CROs face new contexts, stakeholder dynamics, and strategic challenges that benefit from structured development rather than trial-and-error learning.
Millard runs a "high potential leadership programme" for emerging executives, creating structured development pathways that most organisations lack internally. This systematic approach to leadership development operates at portfolio scale, creating advantages that individual companies cannot replicate. The programme identifies and develops future CROs before companies need them, creating a pipeline of prepared candidates who can step into senior roles with greater confidence and lower risk.
This post-hire support challenges the dangerous assumption that senior hires require minimal development. In reality, even the most experienced CROs benefit from coaching on company-specific challenges, industry dynamics, and stakeholder management approaches that determine success in new environments. The OP model creates a development ecosystem that treats leadership capability as an ongoing investment rather than a one-time recruitment decision.
[H3] De-Risking First-Time Leadership
Perhaps most significantly, the Operating Partner model enables CEOs to hire first-time CROs with greater confidence. This de-risking function opens leadership opportunities that traditional hiring approaches would eliminate, expanding the talent pool while providing crucial development scaffolding for emerging leaders. When CEOs know they have access to experienced coaching and pattern recognition from portfolio-wide CRO experience, they can take calculated risks on high-potential candidates who might lack traditional credentials but demonstrate core competencies.
This confidence comes from understanding that the OP support system can help first-time CROs navigate common pitfalls while accelerating their learning curve through structured coaching and peer learning opportunities. The result is a talent development ecosystem that creates opportunities for diverse, high-potential candidates while reducing risk for the companies that hire them.
The cumulative effect is a talent development and assessment system that operates at portfolio scale, creating advantages that individual companies cannot replicate internally. This systematic approach to CRO talent—from bias-aware assessment through structured development—represents one of the most tangible and measurable value drivers in the modern Operating Partner model.
[H2] Chapter 5: Embedding Transformation — The Real Value of the Operating Partner
"The primary focus of the CRO shouldn't be on this or next quarter, that's their team's responsibility. They should focus on performance improvement over the next 12 to 24 months." Luca Smuraglia
The quarterly earnings call looms. Numbers are scrutinised. Pressure mounts. In this environment, most executives focus on the immediate: what can be fixed, tweaked, or accelerated to hit the next milestone. Operating Partners, however, see something different. They understand that sustainable value creation requires a perspective that transcends the quarterly rhythm that dominates private equity portfolios. This long-term view directly challenges an inherent flaw in traditional CRO hiring: the assumption that a proven leader with an established playbook can deliver immediate results without investing in systematic organisational change.
"The primary focus of the CRO shouldn't be on this or next quarter, that's their team's responsibility. They should focus on performance improvement over the next 12 to 24 months," explains Smuraglia. This distinction represents a fundamental shift away from the 'hire a hero' mentality that perpetuates CRO failure toward building sustainable revenue generation capabilities.
[H3] The Diagnosis Before the Cure
Operating Partners have learned, often through hard-won experience, that the pressure to deliver immediate results can be counterproductive. Off the record, multiple partners cited a common frustration in PE environments: the tendency to focus exclusively on numbers rather than investing time in proper diagnosis. This rush to solutions, whilst understandable given investor expectations, often creates what amounts to elaborate exercises in treating symptoms instead of addressing root causes.
This deep diagnostic approach directly contradicts any CRO hiring model which assumes that experienced leaders can quickly assess situations and implement familiar solutions. Operating Partners have observed that this assumption leads to costly failures when CROs apply outdated playbooks to new contexts without understanding the underlying dynamics that drive success or failure.
[H3] Building Machinery That Runs
The Operating Partners' ultimate goal isn't to become indispensable to portfolio companies; it's to make themselves redundant. They seek to create what Slater describes as "machinery that just constantly runs": systems, processes, and cultural norms so embedded within the organisation that high performance becomes automatic rather than heroic.
This philosophy represents a sophisticated understanding of organisational behaviour that directly challenges the "great person" theory underlying most CRO hiring. In contrast with relying on individual brilliance or constant oversight, the partners focus on designing environments and cultures which Smuraglia describes as "whereby people will do the right things even when no one is watching" and it becomes intrinsic to the organisation's DNA. The transformation they seek doesn't depend on their continued presence or the energy of a charismatic leader: it's baked into how the business operates.
Slater frames his role as working with leaders to "unlock" what's holding them back through hands-on change management. This isn't about imposing external solutions but about removing the barriers that prevent existing talent from achieving its potential. The partners understand that sustainable transformation must be embraced and owned by the people who will live with it long after the engagement ends.
This embedded approach stands as the antithesis of a CRO model which relies on individual executives to personally drive change through force of will and expertise. Operating Partners have learned that such approaches create dangerous dependencies on individual performance whilst failing to build the organisational capabilities required for sustained success.
[H3] The Tension and the Resolution
Operating Partners navigate an inherent tension: private equity's demand for rapid value creation versus the time required for genuine organisational change. They've learned to manage this by reframing value creation itself. Rather than viewing it as a choice between short-term gains and long-term health, they position sustainable transformation as the most effective path to both.
Schiekofer's work with CEOs on "full potential value creation strategy" exemplifies this reframing. The partners help leadership teams understand that the most valuable transformations are those that compound over time: creating not just better numbers but better businesses.
This reframing directly addresses the pressure that leads to failed CRO hires. Instead of seeking immediate results from proven leaders, the OP model creates patience for building sustainable capabilities whilst providing the support structure that enables less experienced but more adaptable leaders to succeed.
[H3] The Real Value: Embedding Change
What sets Operating Partners apart isn't their ability to diagnose problems or design solutions; consultants can do that. Their unique value lies in what they describe as "embedding change," note Slater and Smuraglia. This means ensuring that improvements don't depend on external support, exceptional circumstances, or the continued attention of senior leadership.
The partners understand that in the private equity context, transformation must be both rapid and durable. They've developed approaches that accelerate the adoption of new ways of working whilst ensuring these changes survive the inevitable pressures, distractions, and personnel changes that affect all organisations.
This embedding capability directly addresses the core problem with traditional CRO hiring: the assumption that individual executives can single-handedly transform revenue operations. Operating Partners have learned that sustainable change requires systematic approaches to capability building, cultural transformation, and process institutionalisation that transcend any individual leader's tenure or expertise.
The hidden truth that Operating Partners see is that genuine transformation isn't about changing what people do for a quarter or a year. It's about changing how they think, how they respond to challenges, and what they consider normal. When this deeper change occurs, the numbers follow, not just in the next quarter, but in the quarters and years that follow. This represents the ultimate repudiation of the playbook-driven, individual-hero model of CRO leadership that has dominated revenue organisations for so long.
[H2] Conclusion: The Operating Partners' Mandate for the Future CRO
The Chief Revenue Officer role suffers from a costly revolving door that undermines entire go-to-market strategies. With average tenures hovering around 18 months, organisations continue making the same expensive hiring mistakes: overvaluing impressive logos and surface-level experience whilst neglecting the deeper qualities that actually predict success in rapidly evolving markets.
GTM Operating Partners, uniquely positioned at the intersection of strategic oversight and operational reality across dozens of portfolio companies, have identified something that individual CEOs and traditional search consultants struggle to see: the foundational traits that actually separate exceptional CROs from those who create high risk of failure. Their pattern recognition across multiple companies, industries, and market conditions has revealed concepts of revenue leadership success that require a re-evaluation of how we assess executive capability.
Rather than seeking executives with the most impressive CVs with similar job titles in similar domains, what has emerged from the interviews is the need to prioritise six foundational traits: strategic acumen combined with data-driven rigour, leadership excellence focused on talent development, growth mindset with adaptive intelligence, communication mastery across stakeholder groups, modern technical fluency including AI integration, and emotional resilience.
These capabilities predict success regardless of functional background, previous company logos, or years of experience, but importantly, they can be cultivated through the right kind of experience. The critical insight from Operating Partners is that experience itself is not the determining factor; what matters is what that experience has developed within the individual. A seasoned CRO who has spent decades reinforcing a rigid playbook without questioning assumptions or adapting to new realities represents a liability, not an asset. Conversely, a first-time CRO who has cultivated intellectual humility, hunger for continuous learning, and adaptive intelligence through their career journey often succeeds precisely because they rely on these foundational traits rather than outdated approaches.
This explains why first-time CROs frequently outperform seasoned veterans in today's environment. They bring fresh perspective, test relentlessly, and remain hyper-responsive to feedback not because they lack experience, but because their experience has fostered the right mindset for navigating unprecedented challenges. They understand that in rapidly changing markets, the ability to learn and adapt matters more than the ability to execute yesterday's playbook.
The Operating Partners are moving beyond identifying these patterns to architecting solutions. They have developed competency-based assessment methodologies that move beyond superficial credentials to evaluate authentic capability. They have pioneered approaches to expand talent pools and increase diversity by focusing on objective traits rather than subjective assumptions about "cultural fit."
Many companies continue hiring CROs using the same criteria that created the 18-month tenure crisis. They persist in seeking candidates who achieved success before with a similar job title in a business with a similar product, without adequately contemplating whether they have the capabilities to adapt to the challenges in the new environment now and in the future.
The mandate is clear...
[H3] For CEOs and Boards
Audit your current CRO assessment criteria. Are you evaluating for the six foundational traits—strategic acumen, leadership excellence, growth mindset, communication mastery, technical fluency, and resilience—or defaulting to logo recognition and years of experience? Before your next CRO hire, implement competency-based evaluation frameworks that test for adaptive intelligence, not just past achievements. Ask candidates to demonstrate how their thinking has evolved, not just what they've accomplished.
[H3] For Current CROs
Honestly assess yourself against these traits. Where are your gaps? Intellectual humility means recognizing that even successful leaders need development. Seek coaching specifically on areas beyond your core strengths. If you're marketing-focused, invest in understanding modern sales operations. If you're sales-native, genuinely learn what drives marketing effectiveness. Build a network of peers who challenge your thinking.
[H3] For Aspiring CROs
Stop waiting for the "perfect" opportunity and start building these foundational capabilities now. Demonstrate growth mindset in your current role. Seek cross-functional projects that expose you to unfamiliar domains. Document how you've adapted strategies based on new data. These traits matter more than tenure at impressive companies.
[H2] Special Report: The AI Revolution in Go-to-Market
An Operating Partners' Guide to Navigating Hype and Reality
"AI... is an augmenter. It's your best researcher. It's your best working colleague. It's your inspiration. It's not just a tool." Stephen Millard
Whilst social media buzzes with AI evangelism and investors seek immediate returns on algorithmic investments, GTM Operating Partners are most able to see through the smoke. Their portfolio companies serve as laboratories, revealing what actually works beyond the marketing materials and keynote demonstrations.
The pressure from above is unmistakable. "Keep costs low. Use AI," has become the investor mantra echoing through portfolio company corridors. But the Operating Partners have learnt to translate this directive into something more nuanced and infinitely more valuable.
[H3] Beyond the Toolbox Mentality
The partners have observed an underlying misunderstanding plaguing most AI adoption efforts. Too many organisations treat artificial intelligence as simply another tool to bolt onto existing processes. "Many AI products are like buying a box of Legos," notes Matt Gallagher, highlighting the substantial human effort and time required to configure and derive genuine value from these systems.
This realisation has led the most astute Operating Partners to reframe the entire conversation. Stephen Millard advocates for viewing AI not as another tool but as a catalyst for fundamentally rethinking GTM functions—treating it as a collaborator that augments human capabilities rather than simply automating tasks. This perspective transforms AI from a cost-cutting exercise into a strategic reimagining of how revenue operations actually function.
[H3] The New Competency Framework
The shift in thinking has created an entirely new assessment criterion for CRO candidates.
Michelle Johnson has begun evaluating potential leaders for AI fluency and systems thinking, a competency that barely existed in executive search criteria just two years ago. This isn't about technical proficiency with specific platforms; it's about understanding how artificial intelligence can reshape the central architecture of go-to-market operations.
The partners are teaching their CROs to ask a deceptively simple but strategically profound question which Johnson frames as: "What should be human led? What should be AI led?" This inquiry forces executives beyond superficial automation and toward genuine operational transformation. It demands that leaders reimagine every customer touchpoint, every data flow, and every decision-making process through the lens of human-AI collaboration.
This strategic view is often lost amid a confusing and crowded market of AI solutions where technical moats prove difficult to build. The partners emphasize focusing on practical augmentation rather than comprehensive transformation: using AI to identify when salespeople need support during the sales cycle and auto-generating contextual assistance, whether that's role-playing an upcoming meeting with an economic buyer or generating relevant questions to ask.
[H3] Pattern Recognition Across Portfolios
Edwin Abl considers strategic AI application a key focus area, conducting live workshops across his portfolio companies to share emerging best practices. These sessions reveal patterns that individual companies might miss but become clear when viewed across multiple implementations.
The partners have identified that successful AI integration requires three critical elements: clear delineation of human versus machine responsibilities, robust change management to help teams adapt to new workflows, and realistic expectations about implementation timelines. Companies that approach AI as a quick fix invariably struggle, whilst those that invest in proper foundational work see meaningful returns.
[H3] The Reality Check Function
Perhaps most valuably, the Operating Partners serve as reality filters in an environment saturated with hyperbole. They've witnessed enough failed implementations to recognise the warning signs: over-ambitious timelines, insufficient training budgets, and leadership teams that confuse purchasing technology with achieving transformation.
Their portfolio companies benefit from this collective wisdom. Rather than falling victim to vendor promises or investor pressure for immediate results, these organisations receive guidance grounded in actual operational experience. The partners help separate genuine innovations from repackaged legacy solutions dressed in contemporary AI terminology.
[H3] Strategic Questions for the AI Era
The most sophisticated Operating Partners are teaching their CROs to approach AI adoption through strategic questioning rather than tactical purchasing. Smuraglia warns that without this discipline, organisations accumulate tools where "none of them really get embedded, none really adds value." They encourage leaders to examine their customer journey maps, identify genuine friction points, and consider, according to Jonathan Metrick, "areas in their workflows that are repeatable, time intensive, costly but impactful to the customer. Those are areas primed for AI adoption."
This approach has proven far more effective than the scatter-gun implementations that characterise many organisations' AI strategies when, as AJ Gandhi notes, "tech stacks are already massively bloated." By starting with strategic intent and working backward to appropriate tools, portfolio companies achieve more focused, measurable outcomes.
[H3] The Partnership Imperative
The Operating Partners' perspective reveals that the AI revolution in GTM isn't about replacing humans with machines: it's about creating more intelligent partnerships between human judgement and artificial capability. Carol Meyers talks about "AI coworkers." Those CROs who grasp this distinction will thrive; those who don't will find themselves managing increasingly obsolete operations in an AI-augmented world.
The partners themselves model this approach. Gallagher dedicates significant time to understanding where AI fits into the workflows of all the roles he supports. This commitment to continuous learning and strategic application, rather than tactical tool adoption, represents the mature approach that separates successful AI integration from expensive experimentation.
The message from the Operating Partners is clear: AI represents a central shift in how go-to-market operations function, but success requires strategic thinking, careful implementation, and realistic expectations about transformation timelines. Those who approach it as a silver bullet will be disappointed; those who treat it as a strategic capability will find competitive advantage.
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