The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role in a private equity (PE) backed company is one of the hardest and most nuanced jobs in the market. So, what are the skills you should look out for in a top CRO candidate? And how do you build a successful succession plan for future CROs?

In short, there are two nuances in private equity:

In growth equity backed companies, the CRO role is fundamentally about acceleration. The focus is on building and scaling the revenue engine, hiring, and enabling sales teams and expanding into new markets, all whilst, driving top-line growth, and increasing market share.

In large-cap PE buyout environments, the CRO is expected to operate with a much sharper lens on efficiency and predictability. The role is less about unchecked growth and more about profitable growth. This often includes refining pricing strategies, reducing customer acquisition costs, and ensuring that every pound of revenue contributes meaningfully to EBITDA.

Naturally, while both roles are revenue-focused, investors will measure a growth equity-stage CRO by how quickly they can scale the engine. Whereas they’ll measure a buyout-stage CRO by how efficiently and predictably they run it.

What skills should a CRO have for a VC and private equity backed company?

To understand the role better, it’s useful to compare how the demands and expectations of a CRO can differ per investment stage. Having a holistic view can help and shape a more accurate CRO succession and hiring plan.

Venture Capital (VC)-Backed Companies

In a VC-backed environment, the CRO’s primary focus is scaling revenue by transitioning from founder-led sales to building repeatable, data-driven go-to-market processes. This often involves working with a small team, securing early customers, and laying the foundations for scalable growth.

There is typically a stronger emphasis on growth compared to private equity. And with that, there is a greater willingness to trade off efficiency in the short term to accelerate scale.

Private Equity-Backed Companies

The emphasis shifts toward efficiency and profitability as soon as you turn to private equity. As highlighted earlier, the CRO is responsible for balancing growth with financial performance and that differs for growth equity vs large-cap PE buyouts. The rule of 40 or 50 comes into light here, focusing on cost control, margin optimisation, and sustainable scaling as the business moves toward exit.

Internal successor vs external hire: Which strategy is best for growing your leadership team?

Choosing between promoting from within or hiring externally is a key decision that can shape your team’s performance, culture, and long-term success. The right approach depends on your business priorities, timelines, and the kind of impact you want your next hire to make. The below can help set the foundations for an accurate succession and hiring plan for your next CRO.

When an internal successor makes sense:

• You have time to plan, coach, and develop talent through a structured succession pipeline.
• Continuity, stability, and cultural alignment are top priorities.
• You want to reward and retain high-performing employees.
• The role requires deep institutional knowledge.

When an external hire is the better option:

• You are looking for transformation, innovation, or a fresh perspective.
• Previous hiring or internal promotions have not delivered the desired results.
• You need skills or expertise that do not currently exist within your team

Key considerations for external hiring:

• Clearly define the skills and capabilities you need – especially if they are new to your organisation.
• This will guide where and how you source the right talent.

How to structure a succession plan for a CRO

Succession planning for a CRO is not about identifying a potential replacement or filling a gap. It’s about ensuring that person can lead the business through its next phase of growth. A strong plan balances current performance with future capability and sets clear expectations around what success looks like at each stage.

Pre-interview assessment check:

Work backwards from your future growth plans:

• Conduct a reverse gap analysis of the business: where is the sales/GTM organisation today vs. where it needs to be in 1 year and in 3 years?
• Identify the experience required to achieve your 1-year and 3-year goals (e.g. international expansion, new market entry, multi-product growth, new sales channels)

Align experience with future needs:

• Use the gap analysis to identify key skills and experience for the CRO – i.e scaling into new regions or industry verticals
• If gaps, what development or support will be needed to close those? This often can be overlooked in CRO succession planning.

Evaluate track record in scaling:

• Has the CRO successfully led a similar scaling journey before? What are their most analogous examples of how this was done?
• 360 referencing & feedback: What do previous CEOs and peers say about their leadership, performance, and ability to scale?
• There are trade-offs for every candidate. Think about how a candidate’s experience aligns to the strengths/weaknesses of the existing GTM organisation.

Post-hire:

Build in structured review points:

• Set quarterly progression reviews to track development against defined goals.
• Include an end-of-year reflection focused on measurable progress and readiness for the next step.

Define clear, tangible outputs:

• Be explicit about what success looks like in both the short and long term.
• Identify measurable outcomes (e.g. revenue growth, team build-out, market expansion milestones).
• Continually refine these expectations as the business evolves.

What skills should I look for in a CRO candidate?

A successful CRO can shape the entire trajectory of the business in a PE-backed company. This makes it critical for tech companies to get this hire right. With PE firms focused on balancing growth with efficiency and profitability, the right leader goes beyond driving revenue to build the systems, teams, and strategies that enable sustainable growth.

1. Do they have prior experience in a PE-backed company?

When hiring a CRO for a PE-backed tech company, they must be able to deliver results while confidently managing investor expectations. Depending on the investment type (growth equity or large buyout), they need to balance priorities between revenue growth and EBITDA, all while understanding the nuances of value creation in a private equity backed environment.

2. Do they look beyond top-line growth?

A CRO should be able to focus on durable, sticky, high-margin revenue across the entire revenue funnel rather than just top-line growth. Do they have experience of successfully managing the trade-offs between growth and efficiency, and can they adapt it to the changing needs of the business?

3. Can they engineer growth beyond simply adding headcount?

In PE-backed businesses, CROs should focus on maximising return on investment rather than simply adding more people. They should maximise results by getting the most out of existing resources and working in a targeted, strategic way to optimise the revenue funnel. Although AI is still in its infancy, CROs with proven experience of successfully implementing tooling, automation and selling AI-driven or highly transformative products is desirable also. All whilst being able to optimise go-to-market strategies around the product.

How to identify skill gaps in your current revenue leadership

Before asking, “What skills should I look for in a CRO candidate?”, first identify your current skill gaps. Assess whether your current revenue leadership is aligned with the company’s stage and strategic priorities.

Strong revenue performance on its own is not enough if it does not advance broader objectives. Quality of revenue becomes increasingly important as the company scales.

It is important to spot gaps between a leader’s experience and the business’s needs to help future proof the role. Hiring from an unsuitable background can create blind spots, so conducting thorough pre-hire assessments using checklists like ones above is essential to ensure the right fit. Partnering with a firm like ours can help with thorough referencing and detailed insight profiling, giving you complete coverage of the role.

Decisions should be driven by medium to long-term strategy, not just short-term sales targets.

How Erevena fit in:

Overall, founders, hiring managers, and investors in growing tech companies should prioritise bringing in a CRO with a proven track record. The ability to align with the company’s strategic vision is critical, while the capacity to scale operations in line with anticipated growth is equally essential.

Erevena specialises in Chief Revenue Officer executive search for investor-backed companies, and one was a CRO we placed at Unily.

The business was looking for a new CRO to enable continued growth across the European and American markets, and, following a thorough search, Erevena appointed Mark Chambers in October 2025. Mark had previously led the Accountancy division at IRIS Software, having spent 17 years at Aptean beforehand, latterly as Vice President of International Sales. Both the Unily and CVC teams were delighted to bring Mark on board.

If you are looking to place a CRO in a PE-backed company, you can contact one of our team here.