On today's show we speak to CRO, Kathleen Waid from Prove Identity. We have a continued theme of The CRO Series. We will be discussing topics like; Rev Ops, Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, and Digital Strategies and Digital Transformation. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO’s who come from high growth SaaS companies.
One of the top 50 women in SaaS 2021 (The Software Report), she believes that service to others is the best preparation for life and business. For more context, you'll have to check out her LinkedIn post, which has over 130 likes.
We kick off by asking Kathleen, how does someone decide to be a CRO, what has led her to this point:
- First job was a collector
- Credit card fraud
- Fraud prevention department
- Performance of what we could do
- Industry expert
- Sales career
- Fell in love with SaaS
- Sales leadership roles
- Bleeding edge technology solving problems for not only banks but consumers too
- Growing well at Prove
We ask Kathleen, what does she feel sets apart a CRO from the organization? And what makes a great CRO?
- Report to our board
- Sales is always a part of it
- Not only closing the deal
- Being direct
- Black and white
- Grow at a greater rate
- Clarity
- Revenue is the kingpin
- Connect everyone to their roles and what they do
- Very little grey when talking revenue
- Revenue is a team sport
Next we ask Kathleen, every sales person has missed a forecast or slipped in their career, what do you think about forecasting accuracy?
- Sell what is your personal brand
- Quality solutions that help their consumers
- Hold salespeople accountable - keep CRM up to date
- I don't want to do many overrides
- Revenue protection
- Clear check points
- Discovery, validation, proposal and negotiation
- Win rate
- Business intelligence
- Business plan for validation
- Breathing ground for collaboration
- Think about your customer, and the seat they are in
- I was the buyer
- Winning 92% of deals
- Live revenue
- Data elements
We ask Kathleen about their retention rates?
- Haven't had regrettable losses
- People give feedback
- You have to be accurate
- If you don't know, say you don't know
- Scoring system
- Coachable or not
- I set the tone
- Who we are as people
- Passionate about culture
- Expectations are high and we say so
Lastly, we ask Kathleen what she feels her super power is?
- Talent
- Hire people better than me
- People who feel empowered
- Who you can learn from
- Should be finding people who can do your job tomorrow
- Continuous process of improvement that we all need to be engaging in
Just one more thing, how are things going at Prove, what's the latest, hiring?
- Yes, a lot
- Almost double
- Growth is on the horizon
