Skip to Main Content

Insights from the 2023 CRO Survey

Optimizing Performance in Times of Uncertainty

If you’re grappling with a new normal for sales, you’re not alone. Spaulding Ridge’s survey of revenue leaders like you has revealed how your peers are navigating challenges from overly long sales cycles to cautious customers—and what they’re doing about it.

Read the full report here

Spaulding Ridge’s 2023 CRO Survey shows what challenges are top of mind for revenue leaders and illuminates some tactics that they’re using. Our survey pulled in leaders from diverse industries including: 

  • Consumer Products and Retail 
  • High Tech 
  • Healthcare and Life Sciences 
  • Manufacturing 
  • Power and Utilities 

The result: Insights you can use from a broad range of revenue leaders. The following is an overview of how respondents answered key questions—and major takeaways from the results. 

CRO Survey

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE SURVEY

 

Key Insight 1@2x

Longer-term strategy is taking a backseat to short-term tactics

Revenue leaders need to maximize performance so they can stabilize their revenue practice for the short term before addressing longer term goals.​

Key Insight 2@2x

Increased sales targets require greater efficiency

There’s a technological gap between the results leaders want and the steps to achieve them. Leaders aren’t always recognizing the opportunities presented by connected planning and automation.​

Key Insight 3@2x

Revenue leaders are still adapting to modern tech.

CROs don’t fully understand how helpful their sales tech stack can be. By understanding the full capabilities of AI, automation, and their existing tech stack, revenue leaders can drive better results.

Read the full report here

 

Brief overview of CRO survey results & SR Insights

 

What is your confidence level in hitting your 2023 revenue targets? 

While it’s heartening to see that 53% of revenue leaders feel very or extremely confident in achieving their 2023 revenue goals, that leaves 47% of revenue leaders facing uncertainty in achieving revenue targets.

CRO Survey
CRO Survey

Between FY22 and FY23, what change did you see in your sales targets? 

 

In 2023, please select your prediction for sales team size: 

With 80% of organizations increasing their revenue targets, but only 43% adding sales headcount, revenue leaders must explore options for achieving more with less. Reach out to us for our on-demand webinar videos of Revenue Elevate’23, where we discuss with industry experts on how to boost revenue growth.

CRO Survey

 

CRO Survey

Where do you see the most opportunity in the next year or two for additional revenue streams for diversification?

With more than a third of respondents ranking customer cross-selling as the revenue stream with the most opportunity for diversification, it is clear that optimizing relationships with existing customers is a higher priority than delivering net new logos or exploring new markets.

 

What internal operational issues most often prolong your sales cycles? 

The top three concerns (Buyer approval process, price negotiation, and product availability) reflect macroeconomic trends such as supply chain delays and hesitant buyers. It’s also likely that CROs and CFOs are taking more active roles in purchasing decisions due to a greater focus on the bottom line. This involvement means a longer approval process.

CRO Survey

 

CRO Survey

What are your biggest pricing pain–points?

Three of the four biggest pain points (over-discounting, poor customer and deal data visibility, and trouble with dynamic pricing) point to disconnected, manual systems. Connecting and streamlining your operational data and automating pricing processes will lead to a more structured discounting process, real-time pricing options, and better transparency.  

 

Which of the following are offline manual processes at your organization?

With a range of 15-25% of the respondents listing these five easily automated processes as manual within their revenue practice, it is clear that a sizable cohort of respondents are losing valuable sales and planning time to manual processes.

 

Are you using AI in any of your sales tools? 

With 70% of leaders saying they don’t use AI, and 15-25% of respondents listing at least one of five potentially automated processes as manual, it is worth exploring whether you truly understand the potential of AI in your sales process and if you may, in fact, be deploying it without realizing.

LEARN MORE 

This is just a sample of the insights contained in our report. Download our insights at the link below! You can also check out vides from our Revenue Elevate’23 event, where we heard from industry experts on how to drive revenue growth.

Cro Tilelogo

Show me the CRO Survey’23 report

 

Revenue Elevate23logo

Revenue Elevate 23 on-demand webinar videos

 

Still have questions? Reach out to Spaulding Ridge for more insights!

GET IN TOUCH