Speaker 1Hi, I'm Warren Zena, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of chief revenue officers. Each week, we have an open, frank, and free-form conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs, and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. Mr. Steele. Mr. Zeta. How are you, sir?
Speaker 2Doing great. Happy New Year.
Speaker 1You too. You too. So you are the first guest of 2026.
Speaker 2Wow. That's an honor. I love it.
Speaker 1I'm kicking off the new year with a close colleague, friend, and recipient of the CRO Collective work. And it's great to talk to you. Good to see you. And how was your new year? Was it good?
Speaker 2It was great. A lot of time for reflection, time with family, closing out a strong year. It was great. We're feeling very grateful and excited about 2026. How about you, my friend?
Speaker 1Good. Really good. I mean, similarly, right? I mean, it's been a really amazing transition for us over here. As you know, my kids are sort of all grown up, so we have a little bit of a different sort of vibe, which we're still getting used to. But at the same time, you know, it's a we have a lot of interesting things planned for this year for the business and which I'll be sharing a lot more with everybody. But, you know, you and I have had an opportunity to chat a couple of times over the last couple of months. And, you know, we discussed some of the amazing transformations you're making since you and I started working together. How it's been now, like two years or so, maybe more, right?
Speaker 2I think almost, I think we're approaching three years.
Speaker 1Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2We're closely together. Yep. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1So so as I might have mentioned to the audience, I'll share again. So Eric is the chief revenue officer of a company called S.I.B. It's a, you know, fixed cost. If you don't mind, how do you how do you like define the business? If you're sure.
Speaker 2Yeah. Cost reduction. We make reducing costs as easy as spending money. The premise of our whole business is that it's never been easier ever in history to spend money today for companies. But we turn the tables on spending. We give our clients tools or weapons to use to fight back against the spend more world.
Speaker 1Gotcha. So ostensibly you're you're performing triage on an organization spend and you're figuring out where they're wasting money and you're finding it for them.
Speaker 2Exactly. We find it. We save the money. It's a self-funding relationship in that when we build a a brain or an ontology for a company to detect invoices, we're not going to be able to find the money. We're not going to be able to get the money. All of that is funded by the savings that we achieve and the cost reduction that that is the ultimate outcome of the partnership. And so it's it's all right to the bottom line, helps companies be more profitable, improve margins. And hopefully in doing that, they can hire more people. They can invest in technology. They can make acquisitions. They can get promoted. You know, it's it's a fun kind of north star for us because when we help save money, it tends to help companies save money. Tends to help companies grow.
Speaker 1Great. So it's obviously a very vitally important thing for companies, particularly now. Right. I mean, you can imagine what's going on today in terms of like, you know, efficiencies and whatnot being pushed down. But what I wanted to do is talk a bit about first your story. Like so when you and I first met, you're at another organization. You took the CRO accelerator course. You know, we had a good connection and you ended up as a result of working in that course. Continuing to work with us to help you with a transition to this role. And I'd love to hear a bit that journey. I think it's a really important thing to see, like what it's like for someone in your situation uniquely who's gone through this whole process and the things you learned, what you did differently, et cetera, et cetera. Just it's a great story. I'd like the audience to hear what it's like to kind of feel the reality of this sort of journey.
Speaker 2Sure. And we've been on a great journey together. And I I've told you, Warren, many times you you've been an incredible mentor and advisor, and I certainly wouldn't be where I am today. And I strongly recommend and I do this with with my colleagues and peers and folks in my network, I send them your way whenever I can, because I think there's a lot of value that you provide and you've provided for me, but my journey started, you know, I was at Forrester for 15 years, an iconic brand, great B to B research and advisory firm that, you know, has been at Forrester for 15 years. And I still have a great deal of respect for and I learned professional sales and marketing there. I, you know, was surrounded by great leaders, great visionaries like George Colony and incredible sales leadership from Kelly Hipler, Mike Morehart, Greg Nelson and others. And so I had this this baseline of understanding what good looks like. And at a certain point, I really felt called to this new. Role of the CRO, and I credit you because I think you were the first voice that I heard defining what this role was. And this goes back years ago when when I was an early listener to your podcast and the notion that a CRO owns the whole go to market engine, sales, marketing, client success, revenue alignment that spoke to me. And at the time, I I'm pretty sure you were the only person talking about. That and I there's something about my whole life. I've always wanted to seek out. The preeminent expert in something and follow them, and that's been a theme of my life. And and so you you know, what's the old saying? When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Speaker 1Right. I guess. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2And so, yeah, I think I reached out directly to you years ago and learned about the CRO. Collective I had made the decision at that point in my career that I wanted to become a CRO, and I knew that my path probably would be a little different. I wouldn't stay where I was and climb the ladder. I needed to go take on a challenge. And the reality is, and you and I talked about this when you get your first CRO role, a lot of times it's a role that others don't want or there's a reason you're getting that role. Maybe it's a real challenge. Maybe it's it's not the sexiest role, but I always would recommend someone to take that leap. If that's the thing that you know you want to do, there's no way to learn it other than to experience it. And so I joined the CRO collective, started to really deeply understand revenue alignment, the role, the frameworks, the structure, the system that you talk about, and I believe right before I completed that course, I got my first CRO role. And so the timing was really fortuitous, and you and I then worked together in really the first 90 days as I took that role to expedite my ramp, to do a variety of assessments, to get an early read on the engine, what was working, what wasn't, where was there misalignment, and that helped me a great deal. And that opportunity. And that opportunity opened up a door later to the current firm that I'm with and with the incredible opportunity that I'm at now. And yet again, you were there early on as we did some of those same assessments and sort of diagnosed what was happening within the business. And the net result for us is we've grown dramatically and have grown organically, rebranded, gone up market, increased average deal size and rep productivity. And, you know, taken marketing impact to revenue from virtually zero to north of 20% and built an incredible engine that isn't about me. It's about an incredible team that you actually introduced me to our dynamic marketing leader, Yu Yang Pei, who has been extraordinary and the great group that I'm surrounded by that's been able to achieve this. But it's. It the journey wasn't clear or linear. It was very much a roller coaster, but I'm so I wouldn't do anything differently. I think, you know, these these doors open for a reason. People enter enter your life for a reason. And I'm immensely grateful for those experiences and for the people that like you that I've been able to work with.
Speaker 1It's a great story, and you mentioned something that's really important to discuss, and that is like that first CRO role. I deal with this all the time. So a lot of my clients. Clients are they're aspiring CROs like you were right, and they want to do the role and they want to get that first job. and i sort of give them a little bit of a warning i'm like look you know like you said it really articulated it well you know someone that hires a cro that hasn't been one before there's a lot of reasons for that you have to sort of accept that you know and you're right it could be you know they can't afford the one they want or it's a just a lousy situation or it's a challenging situation or maybe it could be a situation where the company's really early stage and they sort of want to see there's a lot of things that make that initial role obviously not ideal however as you and i discussed you can equip yourself to get the best out of it and i think if you get the competitive advantage like that you can turn this first role into one that either a is successful or b you can learn so much more from if you sort of apply certain principles to it as opposed to being at the almost all at the effect of things and so this is where you know since i've even worked with you right we've evolved to what we do even more so we expanded out to interviewing and like how to look for the role and how to interview for the role vet the role and how to set yourself up in the role these are things that are really important that as you can appreciate when someone's looking for a job like this they don't think about that stuff they just want the job and they will say yes to everything which again i'm not faulting that i understand it the impulses for that they're understandable but they're also dangerous so you'd be curious to what you think about like the transition that you made from that situation because you know you're growth has been amazing. And just like, even the way you articulate things and your comfort level has changed, it's kind of neat to see that happen
Speaker 2in real time. Well, you've articulated it very well. Sometimes you walk into these roles and you don't have the leverage. You don't have the experience to ask for or properly vet, but sometimes that's okay. And you recognize that this is going to be an opportunity for you to learn, for you to grow, for you to adapt and give it everything you've got. And when the dust settles, if it's successful or not, you have learned exactly what works, exactly what doesn't, what you will do again, what you won't. And you start to build, as you said, first principles and you build. And I was having lunch with a friend recently. That said, you know, Eric, the most important thing that we do in our careers is the impact we have on people and the wake of careers that we impact, right? And that is on my mind a lot now. It's like the team that I'm developing, the people that are coming with me, the careers that we can grow and develop. It is really important to me and something that more than ever in my career, I'm very conscious of now. But I think, you know, those initial roles, you have to come in with a plan. You have to acknowledge that more often than not, that situation won't be ideal for you. They're probably not ready for a CRO, or maybe there's confusion about what a CRO does. You may not have, as you always say, Warren, you need, you know, resources, runway, authority, and autonomy. I may not have said them in the right order, but I always remember them.
Speaker 1It's okay. It's all good. You know, four of them, you know.
Speaker 2Yeah. And you're likely not going to have all four of those in that first one. You know, my experience was that we had probably two of those, right? And that's just the reality. And I think if you, if you face it and say, this will be the reality, but I'm going to have a plan to develop relationships internally, to do everything I can to make the best out of this situation. And know that at the end of the day, I have given it my all. I have worked very hard doing the right things that may not have been comfortable at the time, but I know that they were right. Good things will happen. And at the very least, we're going to learn a lot and apply that to the next role. And, you know, for me, it was invaluable. I certainly learned the importance of having day one insight into the engine, the analytics, you know, the view of your ICP, an understanding of your total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, the understanding of your positioning of your brand, the market awareness of the brand, where you are from a SEO, from an awareness perspective, what those gaps are, you know, down to the granularity. To the granular focus on, you know, rep capacity and utilization and productivity and having a scientific way to think about what works, what doesn't, why does it not work? What are we going to do differently? And, you know, you played a huge role in helping us quickly get those insights early in both of these jobs. And, you know, they've been incredibly impactful.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, it's funny. I see one of the things that, you know, having now done this for a while is, yeah, I sort of try to boil things down to some basic things. And what it really is, honestly, and what you said it really well is, it's just making sure that the people who take these initial roles don't end up becoming in this victim kind of mentality, right? Where they delude themselves, or they want things they're never going to get, or they listen to stuff the wrong way. And, you know, they convince themselves of things that are not true. And then six months to a year later, they're complaining, and they're walking around feeling all the stuff that you feel when you're in a leadership position like this. It's tough already. Then on top of it, you know, if you're sort of blaming everything around you, it can be really bad. It can be really toxic. So what I'm trying to do is say, look, yes, you know, your second CRO role will be a lot different, you know, but you have to use this one in the right, you have to look at it the right way and get the right context around it, which is, yes, it's not going to be optimal, but you uniquely now know what optimal is. Most people don't. Okay. So when you're looking at this, they're sort of looking at things, think, I know something's not right here. And I can point to stuff, but I don't know what good looks like. I just know this isn't it. And if you don't know what that is, then you don't know what to shoot for. And it can be really confusing. You're trying to fix a whole bunch of stuff, hoping that some of it works. What I'm trying to do, we're trying to do, is we're trying to fix a whole bunch of stuff, hoping that some of it works. What I'm trying to do, we're trying to do, is we're trying to fix a whole bunch of stuff, hoping to fix a whole bunch of stuff, hoping that some of it works. What I'm trying to do is provide our clients, our customers, with that clarity and a process that they go, okay, I know what good's supposed to be, like you already said, right? I'd love it if I had all that authority and the autonomy that I need. I want the resources that I need. I need the access to the runway that I need, which is the hardest one to get. But I'm not going to get it. So here's what I do have. Here's what I do have. Okay. So how can I make that work? And how can I get some small wins that own me or buy me more? Real estate that I don't have, right? And find out what I can do. And what are the levers I need to pull? What are the right questions I need to ask? What are the questions I don't need to ask? If you don't know that stuff, you're flying really blind. And I want to make sure, like someone who's listening to this right now is like, oh, crap, this sounds like horrible. But I want that first job. Well, because it's the best one, because you're going to learn the most. Success is not a good teacher. Failure is great. You learn everything. I mean, that's how I even started this business is failure. I think it's a cool story. And then, you know, how you were able to then take all that I watched in real time is this new role at SAB and you started off on the right page, you interviewed properly. So I'd be curious to know if you don't mind, we talked about this, be good for everyone here. Like, what was the way that you were able to take the lessons from that first job? And then from the very beginning, when you're interviewing for roles, and how you set this up, like, what are the ways in which you're able to win things through the conversations you had? And the challenges you were in? What are the ways in which you're able to overcome to get those things so that maybe they can maybe borrow some of the, you know, kind of, let's say, knowledge and practical application that you got?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a great question. I think the first thing that comes to mind is financial fluency and alignment with the CFO. To the extent that you get this first role, by nature of being in a C-level role, you will be, you know, you're going to be in a C-level role, you're going to be in a directly aligned to the CEO who becomes your boss. And then of course your peers, the CFO, most revenue leaders probably haven't interacted that closely with, with their CFO. Um, if they're taking on a new role like this and that's, that's a whole new dynamic. And so, uh, I cannot stress enough the importance of that relationship, understanding the language that CFO speaks, um, understanding EBITDA and net operating income and operating cashflow and what the, the margin goals are for the company and, um, what they're tasked with so that everything you're trying to accomplish becomes a teamwork conversation around, look, the goals of the business are X. These are the ways that I'm going to grow revenue. Let's, let's find ways to make this work together. And if you can establish that relationship right out of the gate, rooted in trust, proving to them that you understand their language and that you're, uh, a disciplined steward of the business and trying to accomplish something with their goals in mind, that, that is critical. And it's hard to get that without the experience of having those conversations. every day for a year plus, right? So that's one thing that jumps out. And, you know, I think it's so simple, but when in doubt, just be in the field. Just be with customers. I think there is a danger in stepping into a role where you can be trapped at looking at dashboards, looking at spreadsheets. Every chance you get, break through that. Spend any chance you get in the field virtually or in person with customers, with prospects, because the answers to the test typically are there. You get respect from the troops. You can learn actually what the company does and the value that you provide by being in those rooms. You get to refine what the actual story is and the pitch and identify those gaps and the objectives. You pick up on the objections that the sales folks are hearing and you pick up on positioning and brand nuggets as you're doing that. And so those are two things that come to mind, Warren, that I think maybe they're obvious, but I certainly learn in some cases by doing it, in some cases not doing it and learning the hard way, that those are two critical steps that you gotta take. -
Speaker 1Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the CRO spotlight. The CRO collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we wanna get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. A couple of things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even an old salty CRO, and you're looking to either become a chief revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a chief revenue officer, we offer the CRO Accelerator Course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator Course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have a number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C-suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me, CRO Accelerator, and we'll set up a time to talk. And then I can send you more information and give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO Accelerator Course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great. We'll see some more information about it on the website. Thanks. - Yeah, I want to talk about this a bit because we did another podcast about this with you, Larry. And I think it's important to reiterate again, and I agree with you. I think the CFO is, you know, if I would say that the sort of leadership triumvirate at a company should be like the CFO, CEO, and the CRO. These are the three people who make most decisions for the organization, if it's done properly. Many times it's really locked up between the CFO and the CEO, because as you're going to appreciate, you know, these businesses are being run, like businesses and the CFO tends to have a lot of power, those things. But you also recognize too, you know, I know this is CFOs come with certain skillsets, but they also lack perspective on revenue that our CRO brings. And it's a very important thing, which is like, for example, I see sometimes I've had a couple arguments recently with people who feel that the revenue operations organizations who report to the CFO, right? Which I think is a mistake. I think that the C revenue, a revenue operations person, it's a revenue role. It has the word revenue in it. It should report to the revenue leader, you know? And for a couple of reasons, one, not just semantics, but because it's, that's intended that way, but mostly because a revenue operations function that is managed by a financial leader, they're going to use the tool differently for the business than it's intended to use. Many times we see, for example, revenue leaders, revenue operations leaders, spending a lot of time putting together spreadsheets for the board, board meetings. As opposed to running rev ops and building, you know, models for revenue realization, which is a different thing. And I think that's an important battle. I see fighting a lot, right? So if you were to sort of like, let's say layout, like at high level, even maybe granularly, what's the optimal relationship that a CRO and a CFO should have? How would it look if you were to like put it down on a piece of paper for somebody? -
Speaker 2Yep. Great question. I've been blessed with great relationships at this current job, here with SIB, first with Larry and now with Dave Bertolino, who's our CFO, both extraordinary, extraordinary guys, both unique in that they're great CFOs, but they also have a deep understanding of go to market. Like they really get it. They understand you have to spend money to make money. They understand that the concept of as you're hiring, hiring a little ahead, maybe of where you think you need to be that, you know, you do have to invest in marketing and that investing in marketing builds pipeline and pipeline converts. So it's been a pleasure working with both of these guys and specific to Dave, who I think we have a great relationship, you know, like the key components of it are first having alignment on exact goals, for the business, right? We have to achieve this revenue growth next year. We have to achieve this EBITDA goal next year, alignment on the ways that we agree as a team that we're going to do it. You know, we're going to have a mix of increasing our marketing investment to get there. We're going to grow these functions of the business. We're going to double down on these specific channels, deciding what to do together. And just having that be a collaborative effort. As you said, revenue should exist with the revenue leader, but I greatly value Dave's perspective. He sees more of the business than I do. I mean, you know, the CFO. -
Speaker 1I think it's like a, it's a dotted line. I think, you know, I don't, I don't think you're, I'm not suggesting you cordon the person off from finance. I'm saying that you should have, you know, nominal control over the revenue function, but there should be either somebody, on that team who is someone whom you is utilized by the CFO or has a line in there because you're right. I mean, there are different perspectives there, but I'm again, I'm saying it more to qualify my point, which is not to have it owned by finance. Then it becomes a financial function solely. And that's not what it's intended for. That was my point. -
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly. Right. Totally agree. And I, you know, I do think that increasingly the CFO is becoming the ultimate decision maker and economic buyer. For really everything.
Speaker 1I mean, - You, you sell to them. I mean, that's your, that's your customer right now. So for your unique perspective, you have to have because the nature of your business. -
Speaker 2Exactly right. And even prior to joining SIB and in former lives, the most frustrating thing ever is when you're a rep and you have a deal that gets to the one yard line. And then you're, you learn that it's been shut down.
Speaker 1Why? - I've seen that happen many, many times. -
Speaker 2Yeah, CFO said no way, right? CFO said it's a freeze on, on spent. And so I think with all of the volatility today, with the confusion out there around the impact of AI and, and, you know, looking at companies that are growing, but they're shedding head count, the CFO is now being positioned as the ultimate decision maker and economic buyer, almost on par with CEO. And some companies we're finding. And, and that's an interesting dynamic as a CRO, you definitely want to be aligned there. And you want to have a relationship that's built in trust. That's, that's supportive that, you know, I read Dave in, he he's part of our planning meetings. We have a weekly meeting where we talk through strategy and what we're doing. He and Yu Yang have a regular one-on-one. I mean, we overshare, we over-communicate. He does the same with us. And so I think when you have conversations in the shadows or if there's a lot of silence, or if you don't have a regular cadence, that's, that's, that's going to hurt you at some point, you need to have that really make an effort to have that relationship steady. I will also say for any new CRO, one of the big changes you have to acknowledge, just like when you're an individual contributor, when you become a manager for the first time, it's a big leap because now it's not about you. It's about your team. And then when you become, when you become a senior executive, there's another leap, which is, it's not just about your team. Now it's about the company. And if there's a fourth leap as a CRO, it's, it's a rare dynamic that is, it's not just about the company, it's about your CEO and what they envision needing to achieve. That becomes, the CFO, the CFO relationship is critical, but I think the CRO to CEO relationship is the one that is most, certainly most critical. It's paramount, but it's also the one that any CRO probably has the least experience with when you move into that role. You know, a sales leader isn't always directly working with a CEO every day. That's a different dynamic. And we have a remarkable CEO here at SIB, Shannon Copeland, and he's a visionary. And he has helped us totally transform the business. And working with him, understanding what he's trying to achieve and recognizing that I play the role of a integrator of that vision into go-to-market models has been the unlock. Like, he knows where we're going. I view my job as within our go-to-market, how do we execute that vision to get there fast? And that's a really critical dynamic.
Speaker 1Hey, everyone. I want to thank you again for listening. Get great comments across LinkedIn and other channels about the show. And it's really gratifying to see that we're having an impact on you. Another thing I wanted to let everybody know is that we also produce events. About two and a half years ago, we started the CRO Roundtables predicated on the idea that, well, two premises. One is CROs are looking for other CROs to talk to, which is really true. It's a very lonely job. How do we get a bunch of CROs in a room where they're not being, let's say, disintermediated by panel discussions and sponsorship events and demos and stuff and really give them a chance to talk to each other? So we created a Roundtable event that is essentially that. It's a three and a half, four hour discussion between 20 and 30 Chief Revenue Officers. And these are amazing events. The format took off. People love them. And I get requests all the time as to when is your next CRO event. So to that end, I just want to let you all know that we have a number of Roundtables coming up over the next year, over the next like 2026. I want to share them with you. So if they're in your market, you can come. So the next one we're having is going to be in London, actually, in February, February 24th in London. So if you happen to be a Chief Revenue Officer in the, in the UK or even in Europe and you want to come by, you'll be hearing about it more on my website and LinkedIn, but throw in your calendar. And then following that, we're probably going to be doing an event in San Francisco in March. There's going to be one in New York in March. I'm going to do another one in Chicago, probably in April. And then I'm going to do an event in Boston. I'll do an event in Atlanta. I'm going to do an event in Salt Lake City. I'm going to do an event in Austin, and I'm going to do an event in Los Angeles or the Southern California area. So those dates are to be determined, but they'll be going across all next year. And these events are taking on huge momentum. They're the place to be if you're a Chief Revenue Officer and you want to be in a room with no interruptions and have an opportunity to really share with each other in a sort of a private and confidential, open discussion about everything that you want to talk about, as a Chief Revenue Officer and collaborate with great people. So thank you. And thanks for supporting the show. And I look forward to seeing you at the events. Yeah, you're talking about relationships, which look, I'm not surprised it ended up there because this is the thing. You know, you're right. It's two parts of it, right? There's the quality of the relationship, which is just how well you work together and your shared vision and your understanding of each other's goals and your willingness to support each other and speak frankly and all the stuff that goes with it. But then there's also the dynamics of what those roles represent. And you may, make this clear, right? That the CEO role, and I tell my clients this all the time, that's the most important role for you when you're interviewing for this job. Like, I don't care who you talk to, it's the CEO part of the interview is where you're going to learn everything about this job, because that's the most important person in your life at that point. That's the person who's going to give you the authority, the autonomy, the resources, and the runway. They ultimately sign off on the things you need most. And, you know, there's a skill to know how to navigate that. You know, it's an interesting thing if you're a bit, I don't want to say younger, more, less experienced with dealing with CEOs and founders. You know this because you've done it now. We tend to place a great deal of weight in that title, even with ourselves. And, you know, the CEO walks in the room and it's understandable. There's a certain degree to which you probably imbue that person with maybe some powers that they may not necessarily have earned. They're just people, just like you. You know, you have the same problems you have, you know. But, you know, because they're that person, they kind of control your destiny. They have this title. You know, there is this sort of, weird dynamic that can go that, you know, you will give them latitude or you'll listen to things they say in a certain way. Maybe, who am I to question this great leader kind of thing? But, you know, you should because this person is responsible for your destiny. But here's the thing. Again, it goes back to what I said earlier, is if you don't know what you're looking for, if you don't know the questions to ask, you're never going to be able to figure it out. You have to have a plan. You have to know, okay, what does this role mean for me? But the obvious stuff is, is this someone who I get along with? Do we have the same sort of work ethic? Do we agree on the way we approach business? Do we have the same principles, the same values? I mean, that's really important stuff. That's table stakes. But then it's like, what do they understand about what I do and what my mission here is and what my role is and all the pieces of the puzzle that I need to have at my disposal and the resources and the access I need to be able to do my job and what degree of trust are they going to give me so that I can do it? And to find that stuff out is, not easy. So how did you, I mean, you had an interesting situation in your job where you, the leaders were changed a little bit, but what was the way in which you were able to ascertain the qualities, the functional, pragmatic qualities of those relationships that you knew you'd succeed? How did you, in maybe some cases, have to maybe influence them a little bit so they can be more amenable to you? -
Speaker 2Well, you're poking at such a critical point, which is in that relationship, you have to have enough trust established where you can disagree, you can challenge each other, you can question. And that starts, I think, at the CEO level. That's really on that leader. Thankfully, with Shannon, he's an incredible leader who understands you gotta create a space where there's trust. And if I disagree or if I push back on something, he understands, okay, there may be a reason for that. I'm gonna evaluate that. I'm gonna evaluate what he's saying and do that in a safe space. Most of the time, he's right, though. But the fact that we have this open dialogue is, it's amazing and it's a huge deal. I'll tell you an anecdote, though, just to this overall point. My kids, I got young kids and I was telling my son recently, I took a call from our CEO and I hung up the phone and I said, John, I'm gonna tell you a life lesson right now. When the CEO calls, you always answer, and it's true. And it's not to say that Shannon calls me all the time, but when he does, I'll always answer. I'll always answer that call. It doesn't matter when or where I am, because I know it's important. And we have a relationship that is respectful in that regard. But to your question, I think building this relationship, it started, as you alluded to, at the beginning, I had a unique situation where our CEO moved to the board and Shannon became our CEO. And I remember when that happened, I pretty immediately sat with Shannon and just told him that I have his back, I'm here to do whatever it takes, and I'm ready to go. And we cultivated a relationship, I think, over dinners and coffee and sitting with each other and really talking about our perspectives just as people first on how would we solve this puzzle and earned, I think, a lot of mutual respect as we saw how aligned we were. And he's a guy that deeply understands AI. He and his team have been building ontologies and knowledge graphs and agentic AI. Since the early 2000s, he's not one of these charlatans that just is coasting on a new concept, right? He's one that has put in the time and really gets it. And that spoke to me, that was important. And I think he saw the rigor and the discipline that we were bringing to the go-to-market org. He respected that. And so we, but it takes time. You gotta build that relationship. But, and gotta have trust so that you can disagree, so that you can have alignment. And, you know, it's magical when you do. -
Speaker 1Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have. And more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free, pleased to share the CRO Spotlight Podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and wanna get the word out to as many people as we can. As many people as possible. And your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bi-monthly group of six seasoned chief revenue officers who are looking for a chief revenue officer board of directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own board of directors of chief revenue officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other chief revenue officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this, or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with chief revenue officers. Chief revenue officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me Masters or Masters Council, and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there and thank you. Yeah, it's great. I see when this works, when the relationship between the CRO and the CEO works, it's a magical situation. And unfortunately, it's not as often as I'd like. And I think some of it's just stuff you can't control. It's just not there. It's like any chemistry thing. But if you have those underlying principles, then you can make it work if you understand what the pragmatic overlay is to those principles. I want to talk a bit about the business itself. So you mentioned AI, and I watched as your organization transformed from sort of like almost a consultancy to a technology. So I'd love to hear about that because I know you, Yang, and you've been doing a lot of work on that. So I'd love to hear about that. I think it'd be interesting to hear how your organization embraced this new technology to enable your function in a way that's really innovative. It'd be kind of interesting to
Speaker 2understand it. Yeah, our clients led us here. So we've been around for 35 years, grew by acquisition over many years, acquiring best in class, like utility and energy cost reduction, best in class logistics, cost reduction, best in class telecommunications, et cetera. And what we noticed about a year and a half ago was procurement had become more decentralized than ever. It was very hard. If you're a CFO, if you're a sourcing manager, a chief procurement officer, it's never been easier to pay vendors fast. There's a lot of really sexy tools that help you to pay vendors. It's also complicated because of the decentralized nature of it. You've got decisions made in the field. Companies struggle to find their contracts. 70% of companies don't know where 20% or more of their contracts are. They just can't find them. And when they do know where their contracts are, there's an endless amount of errors. 30% of waste invoices contain errors. 65% of telecom invoices contain duplicative or redundant lines. On your small parcel shipping, if you look at page nine, of the contract, you'll notice that some of these vendors and carriers are using jet fuel as the fuel surcharge rate. It's an endless amount of shenanigans. And so clients were moving us here. And because of Shannon and his team, we had institutional knowledge on how to build knowledge graph ontology-based AI. So we created SpendBrain to solve this problem. SpendBrain takes all of your contracts as a client. It then maps knowledge graphs to the invoices. And as those invoices are processed through SpendBrain, we're detecting anomalies. And those can be just little things like we see this all the time. For example, a propane bill that on the invoice, there's a $300 charge for a paper invoice fee. But when you go back to the original contract that was signed seven years ago, it clearly states that no invoice is going to be paid for. So you're not going to be paid for it. You're going to have to pay for it. So you're not going to have to pay for it. fees can be charged other than tax. We had a client that the very large 3200 plus locations. And we built a SpendBrain for them just around their national waste contract. And within about eight days, we detected 43 anomalies in one month of data, and about 1.4 million in errant charges. material changes there that can be made that can make a company more profitable. So the clients led us there. And we call this kinetic cost control. It's it's a self funded AI loop, you know, you have this brain that is getting smarter is detecting anomalies. And that then feeds our our audit and negotiation teams that can go in there and say, hey, that large waste hauler, who's been overbilling you or errantly billing you, let's re procure, let's negotiate a new contract now. And, you know, recover those funds, but also restructure this so that this doesn't happen again, reset the baseline. And what we found Warren is that clients that are with us for a number of years, that we're able to do this with, they have a 40% reduction versus the market in their spend. So it really is material and our job, you Yang and the team and I, we had to basically just tell that story. You know, we had to find a way to present to the market that first, this was a novel idea, it turns out this is the first spend ontology that exists. And so defining that, like articulating that to the world. Second, telling the story in a way that is compelling and authentic, you know, this idea that we make reducing costs as easy as spending money, that we help you turn the table on spending, that there's the spend more world. And there's a lot of ways for you to pay vendors fast, but we're going to turn the tables on that, that, that became a compelling way for us to communicate. And then of course, as you always talk about really defining your ICP, really understanding now, okay, who is that ideal client profile? Where are they getting deeply, intimately aware of, of who they are, firm traffic, behavioral, you know, size of the company and industry? Yes. But also things like amount of shipping spend, amount of waste spend, mix of, of vendors, how fast they're growing. Do they have unmanaged spend? Are they private equity backed? And so kind of sticking all those things, sticking the landing on those was really the job for us.
Speaker 1Now you're, you have a vertically oriented your business, right? So you go after different specific industries. How many sectors are you going after right now?
Speaker 2There are five predominant sectors. We, we look at property solutions, which you think about restaurants, QSRs, multi-site asset heavy, a lot of locations. There's healthcare, which has an enormous amount of spend. And a lot of times, a lot of waste, our public sector business. So cities, states, counties, school districts, we have our e-commerce direct to consumer. So anyone that's shipping a lot of product to, to customers, they, they're part of our kind of logistics DTC group and our enterprise, you know, upmarket large fortune 1000 kind of large public companies that have many thousands of employees, an enormous amount of spend, an enormous amount of complexity. And a lot of times really are challenged by line of sight. And a lot of times really are challenged by line of sight into all of that spend. And a lot of times, even despite their size, don't always have the domain expertise across waste, telecom, shipping, SAS, all those, those different kind of spin categories that we do.
Speaker 1And is spend brain technology, the package through which all these are delivered across all those articles?
Speaker 2It is now increasingly it is, you know, and so what we've done is moved from really a contingency only 100% performance based service to a hybrid, you know, fee based for building a brain for our clients, that's a self funding loop, with a contingency on some of the savings that we help them achieve. And we even show our clients kind of an optionality of, you know, you know, we have a client lat two weeks ago, right before, you know, kind of the break, who said that they, by no means wanted to pay any contingency or saving share, they wanted a complete, predictable, annual fee. And we're more than happy to oblige that and build that. We have other clients that based on where they are, need us to save them money. on a contingency basis, first, and use that to justify the the, you know, the build out of their brain and payment for that, fine, you know, so There's some flexibility and malleability, but increasingly clients are pulling us to more of the platform fee. And I think it helps them from projecting their costs and their savings a little bit better.
Speaker 1And you're a PE-backed firm, correct? Yep. So you're doing a lot of board presentations now. Yeah, yeah. How's that been?
Speaker 2It's great. And look, we've talked about this. You could do a whole course on the PE-backed CRO because it's the only experience I have because the two CRO roles that I've been in have both been PE-backed. And coming from a company, a public company prior to that, it's so different. And from my perspective, I love it because PE firms move fast. They're results-oriented. They are decisive. We're very lucky to have an incredible partner in Rourke Capital. They are incredibly smart, and they are great thought partners to say, have you tried this? Have you looked at this? They've pushed us to really think creatively and strategically about the business. It's been awesome. And I had a great experience with BV Investment Partners in a prior stop as well. Yeah, you know, board meeting prep and a great deal of understanding every number. You know, that's the thing is the CRO for a private equity-backed company has to have a PhD-level understanding almost of every potential number. You just have to know the numbers cold. And that, frankly, is why you need a great revenue. You need a great RevOps person. You need a great RevOps department, which we do, and someone that can help create an analytics engine and a system of insight so that you're not constantly scrambling for a number, but it's there and you understand it and they bring a perspective to it. Because when you're in those board meetings, you've got to know it. You've got to know it cold. And definitely an opportunity that I think a lot of CROs, first-time CROs are going to have to learn on the job. And it's tough, but, you know, the closer you can get to every number and have a great RevOps person by your side to feed you those, it's going to make your life a lot easier.
Speaker 1So you mentioned your ICP before. Before we sign off, who are your customers, who you talk to, who's the optimal person for you to be speaking to, and what situations are they in that would make it viable for you guys to come help them?
Speaker 2Yep. We work with CFOs. We work with CFOs primarily, increasingly CPOs, chief procurement officers of large, complex, multi-site, multi-category, spend category firms who are experiencing price drift, who lack some visibility in their spend, and who have aggressive cost reduction, EBITDA enhancement, profit margin enhancement goals. And so that can range from, you know, a hobbyist. That can range from a hospital, a county, a, you know, Fortune 100 manufacturer. It's just those hallmarks of, you know, that level of complexity, enough spend that is likely unmanaged or at least sprawling a little bit and needing to reset that and work with a partner to help them do it.
Speaker 1That's great. And how big is the organization? How many people are we talking about right now?
Speaker 2We have 600. We have 600 employees, I think, just around that, a good 400 of whom are, we call them PhDs. They're experts in different spend categories. So we have a group of waste negotiators that came from some of the large haulers. We've got individuals that worked at a large, you know, linen and laundry company that now help negotiate with clients against those kinds of companies. So we've tried to really, you know, they're the bread and butter. They are the, they're our moat in a lot of ways. Like, it's ironic that we were launching an AI tool that really is only as good as the human fine tuning and expertise that's behind it. Right. And it turns out we say humans are back a lot. It's like a catchphrase here. And they are like, as we build an ontology for a client. It's the human experts that are sitting right here. I'm looking at them that know all 15,000 GL codes coming in on a, on a waste hauler invoice and are able to build that into this tool that then incorporates the client's data and starts to create real value. And so we're, we're proud of those, those, those PhDs.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think, yeah, the rumors of the human demise are a little exaggerated. You know, we still, I think I'm seeing a lot more of that, you know, coming from my circles is, you know, we're, we're dealing with a lot. Now we're training a lot of CROs to use the AI tools because they need to, but you had to go in and deploy these things now because it's, it's table stakes. And the fear is allaying a bit. I think I can see consulting firms getting nervous because you can run some crazy models on these things. But, you know, if you're an implementer, you need people to implement the strategy. I mean, if you can. If you have to deliver a strategy, that's fine. But if you want to solve the problem, people do it with, with tools at their fingertips to, to help. But I, it's, you still need people.
Speaker 2And you need customer facing people always. You know, I, I call me old fashioned, but I just don't think we'll ever, maybe we will, but maybe not in my lifetime, be at a point where humans don't want to interact with other humans when they're making really critical decisions.
Speaker 1That's never going to go away. I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe when we're dead, you know? It'll be some weird robot, robot thing going on. But no, we, I mean, we do, as you know, how many events we do a year now. And it's because people want them. I mean, I put this out like three years ago. The Sierras want to meet each other and are like, where can we go? And they show up because they really do. They really are sort of behind phones and keyboards and LLMs all day. They're like, get me in front of people. I got to do this. And that's why it's going to continue. Well, I mean, look, we're running out of time here, but look, I always appreciate you very much and your advocacy. And the success story that you've had. And, you know, you represent, you know, what it is that our organizations, you know, with the possibility of what we can do. And it's also great to see you succeed so great in what you brought to your organization. And this collaboration, I'm sure, will continue. So thanks for the check in here. And again, happy new year to you. And we'll, well, just so you know, Eric still owns or did own a movie theater in Dallas, the Dallas Theater.
Speaker 2Still do. Still do. I mean, I'm like a silent. I'm a passive investor in it. But, yeah, the Texas Theater down in Dallas and Oak Cliff, Barack and Jason run the show there. But, yeah, you know, 15 years ago, we invested in a kind of a rundown movie theater and helped turn it around. And the guys have done an amazing job. So, yeah, but we moved. We moved from Dallas to Charleston this year. And so I am I haven't been to the theater in a while, but I need to get back down there.
Speaker 1Amazing. Well, I mean, you know how much of a film buff I am. So we will talk more about that. We probably do an episode about that. I'm not kidding. I mean, we both know enough about movies. You probably talk four hours about it. But in any event, look, I really can't thank you enough. And more to come. We got some other things to do. And also we have some announcements coming. You know, we've we've increased their team with new people on board. Some really exciting things happening that I'm very, very eager to bring out. We're probably probably about maybe a month. We're probably probably about a year and a half away from letting everybody know what we're up to and it's exciting and you'll be benefit benefiting from it yourself. So, Eric Steele, thank you so much. Great to see you again. And let's have a great 2026.
Speaker 2Warren, thank you. Happy New Year. You're the man. Thank you for all you've done for my career and for CROs out there. You're the CRO whisperer, as I say. And so job well done.
Speaker 1Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2Thank you. Thank you
Speaker 1for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CROs succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO-ready organizations. You can find out more information about our services at the CRO Collective dot com. That's the CRO Collective dot com. And we look forward to having you join us next time. I'll see you next time.
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