Everyone says the CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) owns revenue. But no one agrees on what that actually means.
This blog breaks down the disconnect between the title and the reality, and what it takes to close that gap.
On paper, the CRO role sounds pretty straightforward.
It reads like a strategy job with clear authority. But walk into day one, and you’ll find out fast that you're not actually being asked to lead a system, but instead to fix one you didn't build.
And if you think you're here to “control the buyer journey,” consider this: Only 3% of buyers trust sales reps. Today’s buyers are independent. They’re researching and comparing long before sales ever shows up.
Sales, marketing, CS….all doing their own thing. No shared metrics. No shared goals. When deals stall or churn spikes, no one owns it.
CRMs full of bad data. Tools no one uses. Reports that never match up.
Marketing drives volume. Sales chases quota. CS tries to keep customers happy. But no one’s really responsible for the entire journey. And post-sale is always “someone else’s problem”. That is, until the renewals don’t come in.
CROs are told they own revenue but aren’t given the tools, authority, or structure to actually do it.
Start with the tech stack. The average GTM team is juggling 20+ tools….CRMs, email platforms, dashboards, attribution software, sales enablement tools, enrichment platforms, forecasting layers, and on and on. None of them talk to each other. Most aren’t adopted. And the data inside is incomplete, duplicated, or flat-out wrong.
Then there’s CAC (customer acquisition cost).
Between 2014 and 2019, Customer Acquisition Costs surged by 60–75%, and then jumped another 50% in the last five years. That means hitting revenue targets is now harder, slower, and far more expensive than it used to be, yet CROs are still expected to deliver “growth at all costs” with the same tools and budgets.
Meanwhile, handoffs dominate the org chart:
With each handoff, something gets lost and the buyer experience suffers. By the time churn hits or a renewal falls through, nobody’s really accountable. Except the CRO.
And that’s if the buyer even gets to sales in the first place.
Today, 90% of the buying process happens before a sales rep is involved.
So to recap:
But sure, go ahead and "own revenue."
The CRO title makes it sound like you're calling the shots, but:
You can’t force alignment across those groups. You don’t control their budgets, their goals, or their roadmaps. And yet, when revenue slows or churn creeps up, everyone looks to you for answers.
It’s not just hard to own revenue. Under the current model, it’s structurally impossible.
Ask five teams who owns revenue, and you’ll get five different answers.
This is how you end up with a funnel full of misalignment:
The result? Misaligned GTM teams are 2x more likely to miss revenue targets.
Owning revenue starts with a unified revenue engine. Organizations with aligned revenue engines grow 12–15% faster than peers. And fully aligned teams are 2.3x more likely to exceed their revenue goals.
If you don't have shared KPIs, a single source of truth, tools that are connected, and processes that actually work across departments, you're going to run into trouble.
You also need end-to-end visibility. From the first touch all the way through to expansion. You should be able to answer basic questions like:
Right now, most companies can’t. Not because they’re not trying but because the system isn’t built to show them.
This is what RevOps is actually for. Not just automating tasks, but connecting the dots. Bringing sales, marketing, and success into one model. Cleaning up the data. Making it usable. And turning chaos into something repeatable.
If no one owns the system, revenue will always be someone else’s problem.
If you build the system, you finally get to own the outcome.
Most CROs are dropped into a broken system and expected to hit targets before they’ve even figured out where the leaks are.
The fix is to treat go-to-market like a product.
That means version control. Feedback loops. Iteration. Releases. You don’t build it once and walk away….you measure, improve, and keep pushing updates.
And you don’t measure success with vanity metrics. You need to be tracking what actually drives growth:
If this job feels impossible, it’s because it usually is.
You’re told to “own revenue,” but what you actually inherit is a mess….siloed teams, broken handoffs, and a bloated tech stack. You’re held accountable for results across marketing, sales, and CS without owning any of them.
The real problem isn’t your leadership, it’s the lack of a system which gives you visibility into what’s working, what’s leaking, and where to apply pressure.
That’s what the BowTie Model solves. It maps the full GTM motion from acquisition to retention and expansion in one unified view. And when paired with a real RevOps engine, it becomes the playbook you've been missing.
Ready to stop surviving and start owning revenue?