Navigated to #107 How CROs Think (+ What It Means for RevOps) - with Jeremy Donovan, Managing Director at Insight Partners

#107 How CROs Think (+ What It Means for RevOps) - with Jeremy Donovan, Managing Director at Insight Partners

February 9
50 mins

Episode Description

In this episode, we dive into exclusive data from Insight Partners’ latest survey of over 200 B2B SaaS CROs. Jeremy Donovan shares what differentiates top-performing revenue organizations from the average, covering everything from org structure and hiring traits to the surprising trends in outbound sales and AI adoption.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

  • CRO Scope & Focus: Why top-performing CROs focus strictly on New Logo and Expansion revenue rather than owning Marketing or Customer Success.

  • The Outbound SDR Surprise: Contrary to market trends, data shows high-growth companies are expanding their outbound teams—Jeremy explains why and when this works.

  • Hiring Top Talent: The hierarchy of intrinsic traits (Grit, Intelligence) vs. experience, and why "similar deal size" matters more than vertical experience.

  • RevOps Reporting Lines: Why 90% of top performers keep Sales Ops directly under the Sales Leader.

  • AI in 2026: shifting focus from top-of-funnel automation to mid- and bottom-funnel use cases like opportunity risk and expansion.

Jeremy Donovan on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremeydonovan/ 

Weflow: https://getweflow.com

RevOps Chat Community: https://getweflow.com/community 

RevOps Resources: https://getweflow.com/revops 

Janis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiszech 

Philipp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippstelzer 

(00:00:00) Introduction and the Insight Partners CRO Survey(00:04:39) How broad should a CRO’s role be? (Commercial vs. Functional ownership)(00:09:24) Where Partnerships and RevOps sit in top-performing orgs(00:17:21) The surprising data on Outbound SDRs in 2025/2026(00:26:23) Hiring criteria: Grit, Intelligence, and the "Experience" trap(00:40:24) The shift of AI: From email writing to Deal Risk & Post-Sales(00:47:15) Book & Podcast recommendations


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