CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER

Reporting to Tom Mertz, CEO, and working in close cooperation with the Senior Leadership Team and Board of Directors, the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is a corporate officer responsible for all revenue generation processes and accountable for driving integration and alignment between marketing, sales, customer support, pricing, partners, and operations. The CRO will develop a strategic sales plan in cooperation with Tom Mertz and execute according to agreed upon KPIs to include increased project work and establishing long term revenue confidence. With the CRO on board the charter is to continue and exceed the current 40+% YoY growth pattern.

The CRO’s duties and obligations will include performance, strategy, and alignment of revenue operations. The CRO’s charter is to lead sales to ensure the accountability of the sales organization with a larger company-wide growth strategy. This will include effective management of service sales, infrastructure sales, and marketing efforts. Together with other members of the executive team, the CRO will execute the current corporate strategic plan, focusing on expansion to new customer segments and partnerships, while ultimately strengthening operations. The CRO will prove instrumental in assuring the strategic planning process by the creation of predictable and sustainable revenue acquisition forecasts.

CPG is at an exciting stage in its growth and development having already established “recognized leader” status with the world’s leading internet and hyperscale data center companies. As capacity demand grows to new orders of magnitudes, the CEO and Board feel the addition of a commercially experienced CRO is necessary to take the company to the next level. This CRO will be a durable and credible executive with leadership characteristics that affect positive inertia, instill a vision, empower a culture, and open CPG up to new commercial opportunities in the market from both a sales and financing standpoint.

CPG’s decision to add a CRO at this chapter sends a message of conviction and commitment to growth to the company and the market. The CRO will complement and extend Tom Mertz’s career accomplishments as a strategic revenue leader. The CRO will formulate the underpinnings of a scalable revenue engine and tune everything for execution. In this regard, defining and tracking metrics, analysis, and performance benchmarks relative to multiple concurrent growth initiatives are vital.

As an executive officer, it is expected the CRO will remain cognizant and participate in improvements on product, business operations, finance, customer experience, and personnel operations. This purview will allow the CRO to learn quickly how to derive revenue from existing culture and resources, build a plan, hire to execute effectively, and get to the point of helping the company look around corners.

 

CRO NEAR-TERM OBJECTIVES 

• Take inventory of what is made CPG successful to date and develop a holistic strategy on how to succinctly define, leverage, extrapolate, and extend their value proposition.
• Assess current sales and marketing personnel and resources to determine how to maximize the full suite of solutions CPG offers and effectively engages with target audiences.
• Author and implement a strategy on how to retain and expand revenue with CPG’s top 25 customers by expanding services and identifying opportunities to add additional value.
• Author a strategic plan on how to effectively leverage and replicate existing successes with new customers whether in new geographic markets and/or new market verticals.
• Partner with other members of the executive team to execute the current corporate strategic plan while incorporating their ideas in the development of future plans.
• Ensure performance, strategy, and alignment of the organization’s revenue-generating departments
• In collaboration with the executive team, create and monitor key performance indicators for revenue acquisition in accordance with strategic growth plans.

 

ROLE & RESPONSIBILITES

• Monitor the marketplace and analyze opportunities, providing competitive analysis, strategies, and tactics
• Stay well-connected with customers to ensure broad market needs are being incorporated into the product development and enhancement cycle
• Collaborate with finance, product management, and marketing on messaging, pricing strategies, and business models to achieve revenue goals
• Identify and resolve issues across the marketing/sales and account management functions
• Participate in contract negotiations
• Establish a credible and more deeply refined business plan with the CEO, Board, and senior management and be accountable for its successful execution
• Identify and capture appropriate market opportunities that leverage current capabilities and expertise to expand sales and enhance the company’s valuation
• Provide the overall leadership, acumen, action and working environment necessary to build a world-class construction services enterprise which provides enduring customer value.
• Articulate the company’s business plan, competitive advantages, and vision to customers, internal teams, senior leadership, the Board, and investor audiences.
• Establish realistic annual sales performance goals and define detailed plans to achieve
• Develop the marketing strategy, resources, and tools to support the business plan
• Create accountability within the company by developing appropriate metrics and aligning compensation and promotions with specific achievements
• Develop and implement robust sales management processes – pipeline, account planning, and proposals
• Work closely with CFO to align financial planning, analysis, and reporting to the board
• Be aware of profitability and operating expenses to align plans with monthly, quarterly, and yearly variances
• Identify and establish strong channel and representative relationships with CPG’s extended partners and suppliers

 

KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS

Revenue Generation – Demonstrated success authoring strategic sales and marketing plans that achieve YOY revenue goals

• Broad geographic and diverse market audience reach
• Familiar with forecasting revenue cadence of long sales cycles
• Diverse sales and marketing resources leveraged including direct sales, brand management, SEO, channel relationships, advertising / sponsorship, and other strategic partnerships
• Evident rolodex reflecting extent of existing high level, influential industry relationships

Executive Leadership – Achieved near and long-term revenue growth goals via a holistic approach inclusive of leading people, planning, process, and resource utilization

• Strategic Alignment – Makes evident and aligns people to a common path and outcome
• Multi-Disciplined – Empathy for diverse functional perspectives and emphasizes the value of bridging gaps and bringing people and entities together
• Team Builder – Has built sales organizations from the ground up, including the creation of effective compensation and incentive plans

Strategic Business Acumen – Ties business planning and decision making to purposeful outcome of increasing corporate / shareholder value

• The singular focus is a team collaboration resulting from astute understanding of broad market trends and resulting direction
• Astute “macro” revenue generation considerations of opportunities in the broader market to include strategic partners, investment sources, and M&A
• Authorship and successful execution of a business plan with demonstrated cognizance on profitability / ebitda outcomes

Market Knowledge – Currently immersed in the data center infrastructure market

• Demonstrated command of the current state of data center capacity demand, its heading and trajectory, and how to position CPG effectively
• Able to successfully navigate large enterprise and hyperscale audience’s complex decision maker and influencer ecosystems
• Able to analyze, break down, and develop industry specific value propositions for the range of CPG’s construction and services solutions

Cultural Leader – Demonstrated collaborator and motivator of diverse functions and resources across the enterprise

• Earn and maintain respect of the board, customers, prospects, and colleagues by virtue of the purposeful nature of his / her professional actions and directives
• Prior experience managing and building through a transformational environment
• Reflects the cultural substrate of existing executive team and board to include tenacity, integrity, hard work, honesty, and intelligence

Personal Characteristics – Charismatic and passionate individual with an intrinsic, gravitational energy and enthusiasm for business

• Critical problem solver – Sees challenges as opportunities for improvement and leads passionate dialog to address and solve problems
• Great communicator – Ability to convey the intrinsic benefit of CPG’s value proposition to benefit the procurement process via high level of patience, diligence, and diplomacy
• Credibility & Humility – A career relationship builder with broad influencers in the procurement process. Has been through the trenches, experienced wins and losses, and maintained personal and professional integrity with his/her extended constituency

Evangelical – Recognized in the data center market as credible and respected, either through a strong personal brand and/or a thought leader in the form of industry white papers, blogs, presentations, articles, etc.

• Industry speaker, advocate, and ambassador for progressive construction solutions
• Evidence of actionable activities to bring positive and sustainable change to the data center product, solutions, and services ‘economy.’
• Knows and is credible with the industry leadership whose influence is necessary to enact and achieve change, for the benefit of the industry as a whole

 

KEY QUALIFYING CRITERIA 

Leadership Acumen – The Chief Revenue Officer will be charged with elevating the overall confidence and conviction of CPG’s team via increased pipeline opportunities and resulting quality of project revenue and operating profit. The health and welfare of the entire company is positively affected with a full pipeline of work to execute.

Critical Thinking – The CRO must be intellectually sharp and clearly capable of thinking on his/her feet while demonstrating outstanding business judgment and analyze critical data to make or influence decisions.  The CRO will build agreement and alignment and determine what is a go/no go through strong business case analysis.

Results-Oriented – The CRO must be performance-driven and outcome oriented requiring a demonstrated history of measurable results achieving sales and marketing performance benchmarks in a timely fashion.

Communication – The CRO should possess very strong communication, listening, and persuasion skills, truly partnering with the Board of Directors and management team. He/she should be comfortable, articulate, and dynamic in front of both external and internal audiences which influence the quality and success of CPG.

Culture – CPG’s senior leadership team and investors are accomplished, prudent business professionals. The CRO needs to exemplify the discipline and conviction necessary to articulate and execute a strategy to ensure milestones are met during this formidable growth stage.

 

WHY CONSIDER THIS OPPORTUNITY WITH CPG?

Kerosene – CPG has the design, construction, and operations excellence to scale as an organization at this time. The CRO will possess utmost confidence that CPG’s value proposition will be supported and delivered effectively.

Capital – CPG’s Board and ownership have convened to agree on the investment necessary to not only hire a CRO but support the growth plan necessary to achieve desired corporate valuation. Columbia Capital’s track record of supporting similar growth initiatives is remarkable.

Success – CPG maintains highly referenceable credibility with their customers and consistently deliver projects on time and budget. They simply need more “at bats” with qualified audiences of influence to present and deliver.

Culture – CPG is emerging from a chapter of integration and has built a foundation of operational, procedural, and process excellence resulting in a pride of ownership and confidence for the years ahead. The team is aligned and enthusiastic about the direction and rate of growth.

Chapter – After 15 years of consistent success, CPG is entering a new chapter of market opportunity realization. The global data center market is growing unabated and CPG is poised for remarkable growth supporting existing clients while entering new verticals and markets.

Leadership – Tom Mertz has more than two decades of sales management leading multiple organization’s revenue generation strategy and execution success. He has multiple known action items to address immediately while empowering the CRO to extend current plans.

 

COMPENSATION

The CRO compensation package is expected to include a competitive base salary (relative to market and candidate’s current situation), annual performance compensation, equity, and robust health benefits program. Employees have the option of choosing from affordable, employer-sponsored medical coverage options, for themselves and their dependents with coverage beginning on the date of hire. The following benefits are currently offered:

• Inclusion in CPG 40lk Plan managed by American Funds. CPG provides a direct contribution equal to 3% of your compensation that is 100% vested (up to IRS employer limitations) regardless of participation
• Medical coverage – A choice of 8 medical plans
• Dental and Vision Insurance – Employee portion paid by CPG
• Disability insurance (Short Term/Long Term) and Life Insurance provided and paid for by CPG.
• Adoption assistance program
• Educational assistance program
• Commuter benefits program
• Learning and development curriculum

 

SEARCH PROCESS

Following a thorough exchange of information relating to company information, resume, and key qualifying criteria, CFS Partners anticipates recommending a shortlist of candidates to Tom Mertz, CEO the first week in September in anticipation of a target start date in October or November. CRO candidates will also meet with Ben Pawson, CFO, Gerry Jepson & Anthony Rizzo, CPG Principals and Co-Founders, and with select members of the CPG Board of Directors.