Now, more than ever, your company needs a chief revenue officer

“Field of Dreams” is my favorite movie. Lately, I can’t stop thinking about James Earl Jones’ “people will come” monologue when he says, “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again.”

If ever we’ve been in an erase and rebuild phase, it’s now, during this frustrating pandemic that’s steamrolling through our society, sending us scurrying indoors and flattening our economy.

It’s hard to see what’ll be on the other side, but a few things are becoming clear. Trends that were already working their way through society have suddenly jumped ahead by at least a decade. Working from home, e-commerce, restaurant takeout and delivery, and telemedicine are all surging ahead and leaving a wake of bankruptcies and empty storefronts.

The strongest companies will survive. But the level of play will increase, and the operating environment will be far more competitive. For South Florida businesses, climbing back on top, and staying there, will be harder than ever.

Thriving in the post-pandemic environment will require intense focus on revenue maximization. All organizations must have multiple revenue streams, aimed at different kinds of customers, and utilizing all of a company’s available assets. Restaurants, for example, have already learned that dining rooms aren’t their only assets. Their kitchens can also drive a lively takeout and delivery business, their supply chains and storage facilities can support a retail food operation.

Contingency plans like these will become routine. And the process of continually seeking new revenue streams via new products aimed at new markets will become business as usual.

That’s why a new C-level executive role called the chief revenue officer, which was gaining traction in corporate America before the pandemic, is now more important than ever.

This new executive office is responsible for all revenue generation activities in a company and is accountable for getting the people charged with advertising, digital marketing, sales, PR, customer support, social media, pricing and revenue management all rowing in the same direction.

The chief revenue officer, or CRO, is the person with their finger on the pulse of all revenue activities and who has the analytical basis to forecast the revenue impact of various tradeoffs such as: launching new products, entering new markets, adding sales reps, expanding PR initiatives, increasing the pay-per-click advertising budget or funding additional webinars.

While chief financial officers (CFO’s,) are responsible for controlling expenditures and for tracking the overall financial health of a company, including its relationships with bankers and investors; the CRO is responsible for stitching together and measuring the performance of all activities that touch future revenues.

A successful CRO should be able to identify a company’s customer segments and create profit-maximizing product versions and pricing strategies for each. The CRO should ensure that sales strategies aim to sell each product to the most valuable customers through the most effective distribution channel possible. The CRO should also ensure that investments in marketing drive incremental revenue and clearly meet return-on-investment targets.

To do this, the CRO works closely with the CEO and executive team to translate the company’s vision into a strategy to launch new products and open new markets, accompanied by a holistic execution plan that aligns all relevant revenue generating functions.

A good CRO drives toward the continual improvement of sustainable revenue results, both near-term and long-term and under different market scenarios.

So, as you prepare for success in a post-pandemic world, you should start building the chief revenue officer function at your company. To paraphrase James Earl Jones in “Field of Dreams,” “Revenue will come, Ray. Revenue will most definitely come.”

Adam Snitzer is a revenue strategy expert and president of Peak Revenue Performance, a consulting firm that specializes in designing and executing innovative pricing strategies to increase revenue and generate cash. He can be reached at adam@peakrevenueperformance.com.

This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 6:00 AM.