CRO School
April 13, 2023 – June 15, 2023 | Virtual | Applications due March 30, 2023
Thursdays from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm ET
Designed for Revenue Leaders, Open to Executive members
Overview
There’s no challenge quite like being a CRO in today’s world. You’re tasked with creating predictable revenue growth in unpredictable times. You need to think about how buyers like to be sold in a digital world, ensure reps are productive, and make certain that everyone is following the same process.
This 10-week comprehensive school is designed to enhance your skills and prepare you to strategically level up. Each week, you will work with industry-leading experts to discuss and gain actionable insight into topics like building a world-class management team, developing a theory of enterprise value, forecasting and revenue modeling, and more.
2023 Deans
Kiva Kolstein
President and Chief Revenue Officer
AlphaSense

Sam Jacobs
Founder & CEO
Information
In this 10-week school, you’ll learn from industry-leading experts to further develop the necessary skills, perspectives, and experiences that will help you make a lasting impact as Chief Revenue Officer.
This school is designed for sales, marketing, and GTM executives looking to advance to the C-suite, executives from other functions looking to level up their careers and develop a foundational understanding of revenue generation and management, as well as current CROs looking to refine their craft and gain exposure to new ideas.
By the end of this course, you will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to:
- Define a winning sales process choosing the right systems and architect for scale and predictability as well as create visibility into appropriate success metrics and KPIs
- Take both a qualitative and quantitative approach to forecasting
- Build and execute marketing, customer success, and partnership strategies that drive revenue and support common goals
- Identify the proper time to shift into scale mode while focusing on the 3 P’s (people, process, and planning)
Being a CRO today demands that you create predictable growth in an ever-changing selling landscape. This course will give you actionable insights to not only build a solid foundation for revenue success but readily pivot at any moment.
Curriculum
The Role of the CRO
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Use an execution framework to prioritize and allocate your time as a CRO
- Set your strategy and be ready to pivot whether you are starting from scratch or stepping into an existing organization
- Define a winning sales process including choosing the right systems and architect for scale as well as create visibility into appropriate success metrics and KPIs
- Identify your place and responsibilities on the executive team and as a part of the board
Building a World-Class Management Team
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Define your own leadership principles based on who you are and how you lead
- Assess current strengths, skill sets, and gaps to round out the team and structure management to allow you to be more strategic
- Clearly define what each interviewer should test for and specific skills to evaluate for including situational and behavioral questions
- Motivate and inspire your team by encouraging them to share their vision with their team, investing in leadership development, and providing resources to remove obstacles
Developing a Theory of Enterprise Value
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Use quantitative analysis as well as incorporate personal experience and preference to create a repeatable and predictable business
- Focus on the order of operations to generate revenue (market size, product, marketing, and sales)
- Use Unit Economics to tell the core story of your business to showcase if it was designed to drive results
Forecasting and Financial Modeling
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Take both a qualitative and quantitative approach to forecasting
- Include leads generated from product and marketing into your forecast, as including sales capacity alone is not optimal
- Separate forecasting for your new business and recurring/mature business
Scaling from 0 to 100M as CRO
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Create mutual respect between teams to drive alignment
- Use culture as the tie that bonds the team and company together to increase employee engagement and productivity
- Apply a franchise owner mentality to the business by inverting the org chart to gain perspective
Foundations of Marketing Leadership
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Ask the right questions to evaluate the business’s health and its potential for growth, as success in sales and marketing is largely predetermined
- Build a solid foundation that drives cross-functional alignment and supports the collective company goals
- Build and deploy a marketing budget using data to drive decisions
Ecosystems & Partner Strategy
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Treat ecosystems and partner strategy as a “strategy” instead of a “tactic” to ensure program success and drive successful revenue growth
- Take your time with phases 1 and 2 (discovery & foundation and strategy & planning) of building the function before executing, as many leaders want to start signing partners right away
- Treat partnerships as a true partnerships, assuring both parties benefit
Scaling the Inside Sales Machine
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Identify the proper time to shift into scale mode
- Focus on the 3 P’s of scaling (people, process, and planning) to drive success
- Predictably repeat performance to drive growth
Foundations of Customer Success
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Define and execute against your customer journey, creating a seamless experience
- Identify and define the team’s various roles and responsibilities to create strong cross-functional relationships that deliver a better customer experience and drive more revenue
- Avoid common CS pitfalls
Storytelling with Data
By the end of this class, you will be able to:
- Provide a time series for context when presenting data, since rates and ratios are always better than absolute numbers
- Dig beyond surface-level metrics and vividly paint the picture for the entire executive team
- Apply data-driven changes and closely monitor the impact