Why CROs are leading the charge on AI innovation

Despite the fervor to jump on the AI bandwagon, not all companies are fertile ground for effective deployment at first glance. An AI-powered revenue organization, however, provides a structured opportunity to eliminate busy work, streamline workflows, and create efficient processes. At Revenue Brew, we’ve noticed that much of that change is sparked by a well-informed CRO with a bias to action. Of course, they’ll also need funding, executive alignment, and consensus across their organizations to get anything done.

We spoke with one such executive leading AI adoption at his company to ask how he approaches the task. We also sat down with an executive expert on why CROs are the ones leading this critical charge.

Creating an AI training ground: Brian Geddes, CRO at AI engagement platform AIQ, is emblematic of the modern chief revenue officer: He is curious, regularly tinkers with new tools, and is constantly searching for new AI deployment cases.“From the CRO seat, it’s becoming necessary to understand intimately what frontier models are doing and how you can leverage LLMs for your various teams. It’s kind of traditional, but CRO is going to oversee sales and customer success and marketing,” Geddes said.

Geddes gives the example of using AI to identify repeatable, project-specific workflows, such as creating a request for proposal (RFP) document for an enterprise client using Claude. In doing so, Geddes says he is able to validate pricing assumptions and benchmark against competitors.

Geddes suggests workflows like this are possible because of the experimental philosophy around AI more associated with revenue teams than other parts of an organization.

“If you talk about a CFO seat, the biggest risk is existential. It is much more weighty when you’re talking about finances. Same thing on the engineering side, you could really goof up a code base if you don’t move through it deliberately. I think on the revenue side you have more room to be creative and play a little bit,” Geddes said.

The expert view: When it comes to understanding the role of CROs, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more informed voice than Irina Wolpert, a leadership and talent advisor to company boards at Egon Zehnder.

Wolpert’s view isn’t simply that CROs are more adept at experimenting with AI because revenue organizations are a perfect playground; rather, she believes the personalities cultivated in the revenue space are ideal f0r AI experimentations.

“You have many more people in sales environments willing to experiment than you have people in finance and other functions. I think part of it is because revenue, revenue ops, [and] sales just attract a very different archetype,” Wolpert said.

Wolpert previously told Revenue Brew that CROs are becoming emerging candidates for CEO roles, though she believes CROs who become effective AI implementers will have a higher chance at getting the top spot.

“Any profession, including CROs, where you’re beginning to see people who are beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s absolutely people who are playing with the tools, but who are finding ways to actually have impact in their day-to-day,” Wolpert told Revenue Brew.

Make the moves you can: As discussed with Docusign CRO Paula Hansen earlier this year, a CRO often needs to start with what’s in front of them from a technology and data perspective—especially within larger enterprises. This can be hard, especially if you’re a CRO that wants to be seen pulling up trees from the start. If the bias to action is great, your best strategy might be identifying the strongest use cases first before pulling the trigger.