The Many Disciplines That Bring in Revenue

At its simplest, a business needs someone to sell a product and someone to deliver it. If you are pushing an apple cart, the same person can fill both positions. As businesses become more complex, it can become more difficult to see who is doing what.

This came to my attention recently in a conversation with a very successful chief executive. His board has tasked him with “business development,” and he asked me if I thought everyone on the board had the same definition in mind for that concept.

I don’t.

Just take a look at LinkedIn and see the various titles executives have. When I was a journalist, I often interviewed executives whose work had little to do with their titles. Very few considered their position to be a limitation.

Every company will adopt a structure that makes sense for the work they do, if they are successful. They may take some liberties with job description definitions.

Given all of that, what are the various roles that could be combined to maximize a company’s revenue?

An Overview of the Professionals Working on the Revenue Side

Over more than a decade spent reaching out to companies to better understand their position in the marketplace, I came across executives working in just about every possible position. Here is how I made sense of it.

Chief Revenue Officer

This executive sits in the C-suite and reports directly to the CEO. Often, this role falls to an executive vice-present or senior vice-president. In some cases, the CEO is also the chief revenue officer. This person will design the department and line up the executives below.

Chief Marketing Officer

Marketing is all about targeting. Who should the company be serving? Where are they? How can we find them and best communicate with them? What challenges do they face that we can help them with? What is their buyer’s journey? What do they need to know to do business with us? This executive heads up the team that finds the answers to those questions. She may hire a director to manage the team and one or more specialists.

Business Development Executive

In some companies, this executive is actually the chief revenue officer, but the role is more about finding business in a market that doesn’t yet know they need the solution. Often, this executive will find customers through partnerships, alliances, or acquisitions. Done well, this role can bring a lot of business to the top of the funnel. It won’t all get to the bottom, but sales is a numbers game.

Sales Support & Enablement

These people know the most about the people the company serves, often coming from a prospective company or past customer. This group will also include product specialists, who understand the product and how it solves our prospect’s needs. They are often technical experts or customer success specialists.

Sales 

These are the people who go out into the market and engage prospects. Many think these people work in the marketing department, but that’s not the case. They don’t spend time trying to understand the company’s marketecture. They find or receive leads and engage.

Communication

Not all companies have a separate group for messaging, falling back on marketing to handle this. When it exists, this company is concerned with both internal and external communications, which goes beyond what marketing traditionally does. This is often where the public relations function resides, although some companies, especially publicly traded firms, break this out into a separate department or combine it with investor relations.

Public Relations

When it’s a separate department, PR is primarily focused on media relations and crisis management. More recently, this group has moved into content marketing and thought leadership. In some cases, this group acts like the company’s internal publication, providing newsletters, magazines, podcasts and helping executives write books. The PR team is also tasked with securing public speaking opportunities for company executives.

Building a Company that can Maximize Revenue

Unlike other games, where the number of players on your team is set in the rules, businesses can employ any number of people. You could, given the budget, put someone in every role above. Most companies do not.

Most will do as much as possible with as small a team as possible, outsourcing to fill in until the company grows to the point that more internal staff are required.

In the case of my friend, I doubt the board was thinking in terms of staffing requirements, but was rather laser-focused on their revenue goals. If the CEO could bring in the business on his own, fine. If not, the top executive will need to start building out a team.