Stay ahead with customer value thinking.

Traditional sales and marketing are becoming obsolete. What a bold statement! It is not one of mine. It is a statement borrowed from the latest blog on HBR.org [1]. With the disappearing sales process and the digitalization of go-to-market activities, there is a new reality as follows:

The impact of digitalization on the sales function feels like an earthquake. Just look at the number of available software solutions and apps available to enable the sales process. The overarching goals of all these solutions is to further commercial intelligence and boost sales outcome. So let us start with the definition of what commercial intelligence is. Wikipedia is my go-to source for that!

The SaaS space is booming. It is expected that the number of SaaS companies is going to grow exponentially around the world within the next five years. And these SaaS companies have one thing in mind: to make doing business easier and more convenient. Software in general removes manual processes, accelerates scaling, and enables users to be focused on much more valuable activities. Part of the simplification of business is also to make solutions much more accessible, transparent, and easy to buy. In 2015, a blog post on Forbes based on a Gartner analysis reported that 57% of the traditional...

In the digital age, there are metrics and KPIs that are tremendously important to any business. I could provide a list of them, but they are readily available on the Internet. In the SaaS business in particular, customer lifetime value is by far the most critical one. And the term itself contains the words that are essential in making sure a business is profitable and sustainable over the long run.

CROs are the drivers of the growth engine. They need great technologies to enable their teams and must ensure their technology are embraced and adopted by other CROs. They are both the target and the adopter/executor in the SaaS world. We see three primary goals of focus on for CROs to be successful in the context of greater technology availability, greater requirement for speed, and greater needs to technology impact. Let us look at them separately.

Disruption is all around us. The past two years have been a rollercoaster ride, and the future is predicted to be even more unpredictable. The crisis has challenged fragile supply chains, complex organizational structures, and the selling operating model across many sectors. Although the worst might be behind us, sales and marketing leaders must redesign their go-to-market strategies to adapt to the new normal and continue to grow. Among the changes that are noticeable is the emerging role of Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) in many SaaS firms. The change from Chief Sales Officer or Chief...