CRO vs VP Sales: which leader does your software company need?

A VP Sales runs the sales team and is measured on new bookings; a Chief Revenue Officer owns all revenue, usually including sales, customer success, revenue operations and often marketing and partnerships. Most software companies need a VP Sales first, and a CRO once revenue depends on several teams working to one plan and misalignment between them is costing growth.

The CRO vs VP Sales question comes up in most leadership searches we run for software companies in London and the US. Founders hear that the best-run companies have a CRO, investors ask who owns the number, and candidates increasingly want the bigger title. But the two roles solve different problems. Hiring a CRO to do a VP Sales job is expensive and frustrating for everyone. Hiring a VP Sales when the problem is cross-functional leaves the real issue unsolved.

What is the difference between a CRO and a VP Sales?

The clearest distinction is the number each owns. In the a16z guide to hiring a CRO, the firm contrasts a VP of sales, who oversees sales teams with a focus on hitting sales numbers, with a CRO who owns total topline revenue and typically oversees most or all revenue functions: field and inside sales, revenue operations and enablement, business and sales development, sales engineering, customer success and services, and channel, partnerships and alliances (a16z).

Titles also inflate. Some early-stage companies give the CRO title to what is really a VP Sales role, to win a candidate. That can work, but the scope still has to match the problem. A 'CRO' who leads ten sellers and nothing else is a VP Sales with a bigger title and, usually, a bigger package.

When does a software company need a VP Sales?

Hire a VP Sales when you have proved that sellers other than the founder can win deals, and the next problem is scaling that team. Typical signals:

• You have three or more AEs and nobody is coaching them or inspecting deals consistently
• The founder is still running the pipeline review and the forecast
• Win rates, deal sizes and ramp times vary widely between sellers
• You plan to double sales headcount in the next 12 months
• Customer success, marketing and ops are either small or led well by someone else

The first VP Sales at an early-stage company is often a player-coach who still carries some deals. a16z describes early sales leaders as player-coaches motivating small teams, and warns that 'gut-feel sales won't scale your company' (a16z). The best VP Sales hires combine credibility in front of customers with the discipline to build process: stage definitions, qualification standards, a forecast method, a hiring profile and a ramp plan. See /specialisms/sales-leadership.

When does a software company need a CRO?

Hire a CRO when revenue growth depends on several teams pulling together, and the cost of misalignment between them is visible. The signals are mostly about friction between functions, not size:

• Sales and marketing disagree on what a qualified lead is, and pipeline targets are disputed every quarter
• Net revenue retention matters as much as new bookings, and customer success has no clear commercial owner
• You run several motions at once: product-led, sales-led, partner-led or multiple segments
• The CEO is spending a large share of their time refereeing sales, marketing and CS
• Forecasts are unreliable because the data spans systems and teams nobody owns end to end
• You are preparing for a stage where the board expects one accountable revenue owner

The first signal is common. In a Gartner survey of 243 chief sales officers and senior sales leaders conducted at the end of 2024, 49 per cent said sales and marketing define a qualified lead very differently, and only 45 per cent said their organisation met several of its 2024 strategic goals (Gartner, May 2025). A CRO with authority over both functions is one way to fix that; a shared definition enforced by the CEO is another. Be clear which you are paying for.

For product-led companies, a16z points to roughly $20m to $30m in ARR from bottom-up sales as a strong signal that adding a CRO to layer top-down enterprise selling onto a working self-serve motion is worth considering (a16z). That is a signal, not a threshold; enterprise demands for security, access control and central procurement are another.

What does the research say about CROs?

McKinsey's 2023 analysis of 100 SaaS and hardware unicorns in Europe and the US, and of US Fortune 100 companies, found that Fortune 100 companies with a CRO-like role showed 1.8 times higher revenue growth than their peers, though only 11 per cent of the Fortune 100 had a CRO (McKinsey, July 2023). That is a correlation, not proof that the title causes growth. Several other findings from the same research are useful for founders:

Source: McKinsey, July 2023.

Two points stand out for UK companies. First, US scale-ups move to a CRO earlier, so a UK company competing for US customers or US investment may find its board expecting one sooner than local norms suggest. Second, most unicorns with a CRO still have a separate head of sales or marketing. Hiring a CRO does not remove the need for a strong VP Sales underneath; at scale, it usually adds a layer above.

How do revenue leadership structures typically change by stage?

There is no single right structure, but most software companies move through a recognisable sequence. The stages below are illustrative and overlap; the trigger for each change is the problem you need solved, not a revenue figure.

The step that goes wrong most often is the jump from 'scaling sales' to 'multi-motion'. Companies either make it too early, hiring a CRO when the real gap is sales management, or too late, leaving the CEO to referee functions that should share one plan. The decision framework below helps place you.

Should you hire a CRO or a VP Sales? A decision framework

What should a CRO's first 12 months look like?

Agree this before you hire, because it shapes the profile. A typical first year for a CRO at a growth-stage software company:

a16z stresses capacity planning 12 to 18 months ahead, allowing six to nine months to recruit and ramp reps (a16z). A CRO who arrives and immediately starts hiring sellers, without a capacity model, is usually a VP Sales in a CRO's job.

What should you look for when hiring a CRO?

The a16z guide advises looking for someone who has scaled from your current ARR to the ARR you want to reach in the next 12 to 18 months, with evidence of internal promotions and consistent forecast delivery, and notes that a sales leader who 'hops around too much without getting promoted is likely not ready' (a16z). We would add four things to test explicitly:

• Cross-functional record: have they led customer success, marketing or RevOps, not just sales? Ask for specific decisions they made in those functions
• Retention fluency: can they talk through gross and net revenue retention drivers as confidently as pipeline coverage?
• Forecast discipline: how close were their forecasts to actual results over several quarters, and how did they build them?
• Board communication: have they presented to a board, and can they explain a missed quarter clearly and without spin?

For a VP Sales, the emphasis shifts: hiring and coaching record, how they built pipeline, ramp results for the sellers they hired, and the quality of their sales process. For both roles, verify claims through structured references; our guide to verifying quota attainment sets out how, and the same approach applies to a leader's team results.

How should a CRO or VP Sales be paid?

Both roles are typically paid a base salary plus variable pay tied to revenue, with equity at venture-backed companies. CRO packages are larger in cash and equity, reflecting broader scope, and their variable pay is more often tied to total revenue measures (ARR growth, net retention) than to new bookings alone. VP Sales variable is usually tied to new bookings and team attainment. US packages are generally higher than UK packages at the same level, though UK leaders running EMEA for US companies are often paid on US-style plans. Pay varies too much by stage and scope for a single benchmark to be useful; we can share current ranges for a specific brief.

Warning signs you hired the wrong leader for your stage

Can you promote your VP Sales to CRO?

Often, yes, and it can be the right move. A VP Sales who already works well with marketing and CS, understands retention and has the board's trust is a strong internal candidate. The risk is that a VP Sales promoted to CRO keeps acting as head of sales, leaving the wider scope unmanaged. If you promote, hire or appoint a strong sales leader underneath them, and set objectives for the functions they have not run before. Test the same competencies you would test in an external candidate.

Whichever role you need, define the scope, the first-year outcomes and the reporting lines before the search starts. Candidates at this level will ask, and a vague answer is one of the most common reasons strong revenue leaders decline. TRG GTM runs CRO, VP Sales, VP Marketing and VP Customer Success searches in the UK and US; see /specialisms/sales-leadership, /specialisms/revenue-operations and /specialisms/marketing-leadership, or brief us at /employers#brief.