Boards often measure their Chief Revenue Officer on pipeline coverage and quarterly forecasts, then get shocked when growth stalls despite hitting short-term targets. The issue is not execution but expectation.
Keith Vere Fenner, CRO at Morea Global and board member across enterprise software companies, has spent decades scaling businesses at Microsoft, Diligent, Sage, and high-growth FinTech and PropTech organizations. His view is that boards frequently misunderstand the role itself.
“If boards want real, sustainable growth, they must partner with their CROs, not just as sales leaders, but as co-strategists,” says Fenner. “Expect vision, expect integration, expect results, but results that endure.”
Aligning Commercial Functions Around Unified Strategy
The traditional view positions the CRO as responsible for revenue execution. They manage the sales team, deliver forecasts, and close deals. This narrow scope creates blind spots. When sales, marketing, customer success, and product operate independently, organizations leave revenue on the table and miss signals that predict whether growth will continue or collapse.
Fenner’s experience suggests modern CROs should architect the entire go-to-market strategy, aligning commercial functions around a unified approach. “At Morea, we didn’t just push sales. We built scalable growth systems by aligning commercial execution with our long-term vision.”
This means sales targets that the accounts marketing can reach. Customer success identifies expansion opportunities that sales can pursue. Product incorporates commercial feedback on features customers will actually pay for. When these functions reinforce rather than operate in isolation, growth compounds instead of fluctuating quarter to quarter.
Bringing Market Intelligence Into Board Decisions
Revenue numbers tell boards what happened. Market intelligence tells them what’s coming. Pricing dynamics, competitor positioning and shifts in customer behavior all signal when strategy needs adjustment before results deteriorate.
“At Microsoft, my team helped navigate digital transformation across multiple industries in the Middle East and Africa, not just by selling software, but by feeding back actionable insights from our global client conversations into their strategic planning,” Fenner explains.
Are customers resisting price increases or accepting them easily? Which competitors are winning deals and why? What problems are customers prioritizing, what budgets are expanding or contracting?
This intelligence shapes board decisions in ways backward-looking metrics cannot.
Boards that expect only revenue updates make reactive decisions after market conditions have already shifted. Boards that demand market intelligence can adjust pricing before deals slip, address competitive threats before they erode share, and identify behavior changes before they impact pipeline.
Measuring What Sustains Revenue Over Time
Measuring CROs primarily on new bookings creates incentives that can undermine sustainable growth. Deals get closed regardless of customer fit. Contract terms sacrifice margin for volume. Commitments get made that cannot be delivered profitably.
“Boards should expect CROs to build long-term value, not just close the next deal,” Fenner says. “When I launched SageX3 ERP across international markets, success wasn’t just about bookings. It was about building partnerships, driving enablement, and creating product feedback loops.”
Customer lifetime value, retention rates, and expansion potential are all metrics that predict whether revenue compounds or collapses when initial contracts expire. Building partnerships means creating relationships that survive beyond the initial sale. Driving enablement ensures customers can actually use what they purchased. Product feedback loops improve market fit based on what commercial conversations reveal customers need.
These activities do not maximize quarterly bookings, but they do maximize the sustainability of revenue streams boards depend on for long-term planning.
Partnering With CROs as Strategic Architects
The CRO role has expanded beyond sales leadership, but board expectations have often lagged. Organizations that continue treating CROs as responsible only for revenue execution get unpredictable results and growth that stalls when conditions change.
“The CRO role has evolved,” Fenner concludes. “Expect vision, expect integration, expect results, but results that endure.”
Boards that partner with CROs as strategic architects aligning go-to-market functions, sources of market intelligence shaping decisions, and builders of long-term value see more predictable revenue and sustainable growth. The shift requires measuring different outcomes and having different conversations, but the alternative is repeated cycles of strong quarters followed by unexplained stalls.
Connect with Keith Vere Fenner on LinkedIn for insights on what boards should expect from their CRO.
