The relationship between the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and Revenue Operations (RevOps) Leader is crucial for sustainable growth. To create a successful partnership, it’s first important to build an understanding of where responsibility and accountability lie.
At our recent roundtable event hosted by Mark Paterson, we brought together CROs and RevOps Leaders to explore their dynamic working relationship. In this article, we’ll break down the key takeaways from their conversation, including:
- The background of CRO and RevOps relationships
- RevOps reporting lines
- How to achieve commercial excellence
- What does revenue operations need from CROs?
Key takeaways
- Where CROs have a narrowed sales focus, their relationship with RevOps becomes strained and they are unable to perform effectively.
- To avoid becoming siloed, RevOps should report into CROs with a broad, organisation-wide focus. This will enable them to achieve their goals effectively.
- RevOps Leaders need CROs to protect their time and promote trust at board level and cross-functionally. This allows RevOps to take a strategic focus, rather than operating with a short-term lens.
RevOps is still misunderstood
Despite the growing prominence of Revenue Operations in modern go-to-market teams, there remains a fundamental misunderstanding of what RevOps is, particularly at C-suite level.
Many organisations claim to “have RevOps,” but in practice, it often resembles an evolved Sales Ops function: focused on CRM hygiene, reporting cadence, and pipeline administration.
The current relationship between CROs and RevOps
The tension becomes most visible in the CRO relationship. In some businesses, the CRO is a true cross-functional revenue leader, accountable for the full customer lifecycle. In others, the title masks what is effectively a VP of Sales role, singularly focused on new revenue.
When RevOps reports into the latter iteration of the job title, it risks being pulled into sales optimisation alone. This prevents them from serving as the neutral, cross-functional engine it is designed to be. In these structures, attribution, lifecycle efficiency and retention discipline can quickly take a back seat to short-term pipeline pressure. The result is friction.
RevOps is expected to drive forecasting accuracy, attribution clarity, lifecycle efficiency and commercial alignment. However, it is not always given the mandate, authority or structural position to do so. Until there is clearer alignment at board level about what RevOps is there to achieve (and what a CRO truly owns) the partnership will continue to feel tactical rather than transformational.
Reporting lines
So, who should RevOps report into? This is a common challenge for businesses looking to implement a revenue operations function.
At its core, RevOps is structurally cross-functional designed to connect silos, not sit comfortably within one. Wherever it reports, it must retain neutrality and the authority to challenge across Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and beyond.
The CFO
Some argue that RevOps should sit under the CFO. Forecasting accuracy, margin discipline, discount control and predictable revenue are all areas where RevOps and finance intersect. In some cases, reporting into finance can strengthen rigour and credibility.
However, a purely financial lens can also limit revenue operations’ ability to drive growth enablement. Revenue Operations is as much about behavioural change and customer journey design as it is about numbers.
The CEO
In earlier-stage businesses, RevOps often reports directly to the CEO. This can be effective when alignment and speed are critical.
However, CEOs rarely have the bandwidth to deeply engage in operational design and without a clear commercial partner at executive level, revenue operations can quickly become isolated.
The CRO
When RevOps reports to a CRO who truly owns the full revenue lifecycle - marketing, sales, customer success and retention - the alignment can be powerful. In these instances, the CRO sets the commercial ambition and RevOps builds the system to achieve it.
Achieving commercial excellence
When enabled to do so, revenue operations is working towards building “commercial excellence” across the entire organisation.
What is commercial excellence?
Commercial excellence is behavioural. As one roundtable participant shared, commercial excellence is about “doing the right thing for the right reason in the most optimal, efficient way”. It isn’t simply about clean dashboards, accurate forecasts or neatly structured stage gates – those are just outputs.
An example
The language used around forecasting provided an excellent example. The concept of deals ‘slipping’ was challenged directly, as one participant shared, they had “banned the word ‘slip’ ages ago. It’s not a slip; it’s a missed forecast.”
The issue isn't semantics; it is the lack of accountability. If a forecast is wrong, something upstream has failed. It could be qualification, discovery, pricing discipline, customer alignment, but whatever the issue, it needs to be identified and corrected.
Company-wide change
The same logic can be applied to a business’ overall objectives. One participant shared the importance of shifting targets to achieve excellence, “Instead of a good week being we hit our number, the good week is we got better at hitting our number”. This shift moves the CRO and RevOps partnership from reactive performance management to structural optimisation.
Crucially, commercial excellence cannot sit within one function alone. Accountability cannot be held against just the sales team, true commercial excellence is achieved when Product, Marketing, Finance and Customer Success are aligned.
RevOps are responsible for encouraging this business-wide accountability. As such, they cannot behave as a policing function, but as the mirror that surfaces the truth. The real question is what leaders choose to change once they see it.
What does RevOps need from CROs?
The CRO plays a crucial role in enabling RevOps to achieve their objectives. Revenue operations are often brought in when something is broken. However, at the same time, it is often common for RevOps to be expected to maintain the very processes it is trying to fix.
This reality means that the role’s focus can quickly become operational firefighting unless the CRO deliberately creates space.
RevOps needs time, trust and protection
When the conversation turned to what RevOps needs from a CRO, the answers were simple but telling: trust, time and protection:
- Protecting strategic focus: Without clear time protected for strategic work, RevOps becomes focused on incrementally improving spreadsheets rather than fundamentally redesigning the revenue engine. Protected time matters because transformation is not instant.
- Trust is equally critical: RevOps inevitably surfaces uncomfortable truths around broken processes, such as inflated pipelines, optimistic qualification and misaligned attribution. That exposure can feel threatening and is often difficult to handle. Trust matters because behavioural change is uncomfortable.
There are CROs who fear revenue operations because “it will shine a light on their shortcomings.” The stronger dynamic, however, is one where the CRO sees RevOps not as scrutiny but as leverage. When RevOps identifies systemic challenges, it's important for the CRO to provide focus at board level and across functions, defending long-term optimisation over short-term optics. A good partnership between a CRO and RevOps will ensure they back structural change even when it causes short-term disruption.
The CRO-RevOps relationship determines business success
Ultimately, the relationship between Chief Revenue Officers and revenue operations plays a defining role in the success of the function. Without the clear support of the CRO, RevOps will face difficulty in building commercial excellence.
Of course, it’s important to note that every business has its own unique nuances, dynamics and structures that will influence the right approach to revenue operations.
How 3Search Executive can support your revenue growth
At 3Search Executive, our RevOps Search Partners will leverage their in-depth knowledge and take on an advisory role to ensure you’re engaging the right profiles for your organisation. Whether you’re appointing a Chief Revenue Officer or a RevOps Director, our search process – Advise, Attract, Develop – will ensure you meet the right leaders for your company.