Here at The Bridge Group, we’ve been doing rep and manager comp research since 2007. (You can get the latest SDR report here and AE report here.) Although we’ve been asked about CRO/SVP of Sales compensation a lot, it’s one area we’ve never delved into.
Until now.
Before we launched the project, we reached out to a half dozen senior sales leaders in our network to ask them what they’d like to learn from anonymous peer research. Their responses centered around:
- Responsibilities (by size of company)
- OTE & equity package
- The relationship between revenue contribution and earnings
In short, what’s within the CRO span of control, what quota are they signed up for,
and how much are they paid to deliver it.
So that’s what we set out to do.
A big learning along the way is that a “CRO” isn’t a CRO isn’t a CRO. Lots of definitions and expectations are attached to that one little acronym. We shared an early preview of our findings with CRO, board member, and growth company advisor Peter Weyman. He offered a brilliant suggestion:
Rather than report on a fictional “median CRO,” what if you look for clustered characteristics to identify and drill into distinct profiles?
We ended up identifying three different CRO personas: Emerging, Commercial, and Enterprise. Each with varying responsibilities, contribution targets, and earning potentials.
The response to the survey was fantastic. We collected data from 145+ senior sales leaders and were able to package up more than 200 data points.
As a small preview, one item that stood out to me was the variation in what makes up quota between the above profiles:
The report should be of interest to any current (and aspiring) CROs. I hope you’ll take a look and share your impressions. To read the full report, download the CRO Compensation Research Report.
Thanks as always for supporting, and participating in, Bridge Group research.