Leadership
Why Your CRO Should Be Marketing's Closest Ally
The CRO is not marketing's customer. They are marketing's co-conspirator. Here is how to build the alliance.
The most consequential relationship in any B2B marketing leader's career is the one with the CRO. Get it right and the function thrives. Get it wrong and the CMO is on a clock measured in quarters. Most CMOs treat the CRO as an internal customer. The CMOs who last treat them as a co-conspirator.
The difference is small but decisive. A customer relationship is transactional: marketing produces leads, sales takes them, marketing reports MQL volume. A co-conspirator relationship is strategic: marketing and sales jointly own pipeline, jointly forecast, jointly defend the number to the board, and present a unified front internally and externally.
Practically, building the alliance starts with weekly 1:1s between CMO and CRO. Joint pipeline reviews. Co-attendance at customer calls and board meetings. Shared OKRs at the top level (pipeline created, win rate, NRR, not 'marketing OKRs' and 'sales OKRs'). Joint compensation tied to shared outcomes where possible.
When the CRO defends marketing in front of the board, the CMO has won. When the CMO defends sales velocity in front of the board, the CRO has won. The alliance compounds. Both functions outperform what either could deliver alone. The companies that operate this way are the ones with predictable, scalable revenue. The ones with marketing-vs-sales tension are the ones with unpredictable, sub-scale revenue.