The CRO Spotlight Podcast

Susan Rothwell Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Warren Zenna: Welcome to this episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast. I'm Warren Zenna. I'm the founder of the CRO collective. And today we have a great guest, [00:01:00] Susan Rothwell, who is the Chief Revenue Officer of Simpli.fi. She has an amazing career. She was a three-time Chief Revenue Officer. She was with Vericast and then Epsilon. And she has an incredible story of how she kind of developed her career and built a really great track record of lasting a long time as a Chief Revenue Officer.

So I'm really excited to have Susan with us today. So stay tuned.

It's really nice to have you here. And I'm very familiar with Simpli.fi. My background is in media, I worked at Havas, I worked at Publicis, so we kind of crossed paths with the organization quite a bit, so we have some common background and stuff to talk from.
But it'd be really great if you could first just introduce yourself a bit. Like Susan, you have a great background. You've been a CRO three times, you've also interestingly followed the same CEO a couple of times, which is really interesting, and you've had a great tenure building some amazing business.

You were the first [00:02:00] CRO at Vericast, which is really interesting, right? So I'm just curious to know a little bit how your career progressed and how you ended up getting there, and a little bit more about your background.

Susan Rothwell: Oh, great. Yeah, sure. So I've been in sales my whole career and very early in my career, ended up in leadership. So I started out in software sales and then I went to Polaroid where I spent 14 years at Polaroid and learned a lot about a company that didn't transform and what happens when you don't transform.

So that's a little bit of why I like to get involved in companies that want to get to the next level because I think it's super important to be focused on getting ahead of the game versus behind the game. Then I spent 14 years at Vericast. Valassis, Vericast.

I started as a sales director, moved my way up to CRO there, so grew quite a career there as well. Then spent a couple years at Epsilon focused [00:03:00] on bringing them to a unified go-to-market strategy. They had three very disparate teams and brought them together. And now I'm here at Simpli.fi, working with Cali Tran again, who's the CEO and was my CEO at Vericast.
And we are here taking Simpli.fi to the next level. So I'm really excited about the opportunity and being able to use all of my backgrounds to help a company like Simpli.fi.

Warren Zenna: Company. That's great. That's great. Yeah, I remember the Polaroid Kodak days when those dinosaurs just couldn't seem to make that leap. But it's kind of fascinating to watch that happen. I think a lot of companies are doing the same thing right now with what's going on, to be honest with you, which I want to talk to you a bit about.

But more importantly, I think it's interesting you had the CRO role for the first, you were the first CRO at your first CRO role. And I'm curious to like, when you got that job as a CRO at that company, what was the remit there? Like what was it they were looking for you to do as a Chief Revenue Officer?

As I think you and I probably agree, [00:04:00] that role is different based on what stage the company is at and different types and stages of the organization. So how did they view the CRO back at that time?

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, I think it was an opportunity to actually kind of create what they were looking for in the CRO role, right? Again, it was at Vericast and there were a bunch of different companies that fell under that umbrella. There was Harland Clarke, there was Clipper, there was a print company, a digital company.

And it was the opportunity to take all of those different companies driven under one person being the CRO. So that's why it was the first time they had that. And I think the interesting thing about that job was even though the companies didn't seem like they had a lot in common, you were able to drive a commonality amongst the leadership of the different sales organizations to really leverage off of our different clients, our different products, our different services, to actually be able to grow our [00:05:00] clients across all the different products. So I think it was a unique opportunity because again, it was one person over many different organizations within the Vericast portfolio.

Warren Zenna: Yeah, I mean it's interesting because back at that time, I mean granted it wasn't so long ago, but from a CRO perspective, it was a different world even last year for a Chief Revenue Officer.

Susan Rothwell: Oh yeah.

Warren Zenna: is evolving quite a bit.

Right, exactly. So I'm just interested in that evolution. Right. So how the role was initially presented to you, and then how it's changed since then, and how you've evolved in that respect, particularly interested in the fact that you stayed with Cali for so long and what that relationship is, that shows a lot, right?

Obviously you have a good, trusted relationship there and how that was formed. These are interesting things because of my audience, right? These are Chief Revenue Officers who are many times wondering how they can maintain the kind of longevity that you've had in the role, because most CROs last around 17 to 18 months [00:06:00] today.

Susan Rothwell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think one of the biggest parts of being successful as a CRO, no matter what size the company is, is that you have to have ownership of the revenue streams, right? You have to have a seat at the table. You need to be at the highest level of the executives, and you need to be partnering with the CEO.

You need to be partnering with the CFO, right? It really needs to be a team that revolves around revenue, because I always say, without customers, we don't have a company. Right. And sometimes you can have different areas of the business that will push or dominate. Sometimes you have a product-dominated organization, right.

But you really need to be able to align with the strategy of the overall organization and make sure that revenue really is the focus. Meaning our clients are the focus of driving the business forward. And I think that when companies get enamored with just their products or get enamored with their systems or things like that, that's when companies don't [00:07:00] thrive, right? We really need to be focused on the clients and really need to be making sure that sales has everything in their pocket to be successful. And that's great products, great go-to-market strategy, great execution, all those things that are needed to drive revenue forward.
Warren Zenna: You know, I agree. I do believe that the CRO needs to have that sort of remit, but many times they don't. You know, many times CROs are essentially sales leaders at go organizations. They're functional leaders. So what in your view was it about your company at that time, I mean, you had been there for a really long time, so you had built up quite a reputation there.

But what was the process that the organization recognized from what you just said, that they need somebody like that as opposed to what happens many times is they promote a sales leader to be a Chief Revenue Officer, which is a different context for the role, as you know.
Susan Rothwell: Yeah. Well, I think that's one of the two things, right? First of all, I think that the fact that I [00:08:00] had longevity when I came into that role, and I knew a lot about the business, right? I would say probably knew more about every aspect of the business than most people in the organization. So that created a value.

It was a very balanced understanding too. I understand all the different pieces, not just sales, but how did operations work? How did finance work and things like that. So I was fortunate enough to have a lot of people that believed in me because they knew that I really understood the customers and the business.

But second to that was working with Cali. I think what he did for me, which made me have a good career as a CRO person is he added some rigor around that knowledge. He added my ability to, pushed me on my financial rigor, making sure I really understood how the company made business, how the company made money, our customer, making sure we put our customer under how our customers made money.

As well as that operational aspect of making [00:09:00] sure that there was a, the foundations were in place to allow a revenue organization to really run. And I think that's where the evolution of the CRO is really going. Right? Where I look at my sales leaders, my next in line, they are really the people that are the sales leaders, right?

I mean, I lead them, but they're the empowered ones. If I don't have them and the next level of leadership engaged, driving strategy aligned with me, I'm never going to get to everyone else in the organization. Right? So they're the people that really help with the strategy. And then I sit on top and the operation is not that I don't go to client calls.

It's not that I don't talk to sellers and things like that, but I'm making sure that we have all the operational excellence in place so that we can thrive as a sales organization. So we're not undercut with all the administrative things, we're not trying to fix things that aren't going well within the organization.

So I think that it's really, I really look at [00:10:00] that leadership layer as really, they're the active sales manager people or sales leaders that are out there. I'm with them. But I'm really making sure we have operational excellence as well. So I do think there's really two types of CROs in some aspects. There is that one that is a sales leader only, which is great for some organizations, but I think there's also that operational excellence is needed as well.

Warren Zenna: Well, I tend to agree. I think that might be the case because companies look at it that way. My belief, and as you probably may have seen from the work that we do, is the full stack, let's call it, or the full cycle Chief Revenue Officer, is really ultimately what a company needs when your company gets to a certain stage of complexity. Having functional leaders, as I'm sure you know very well, becomes very difficult to manage. You have a lot of seats at the table, a lot of C-suite executives who have a lot of opinions.

You have a lot of silos. Very difficult also to cross pollinate data and process across organizations like that. You know, we've just [00:11:00] changed a lot with the technology and the way that we can do things today, the sort of classic, let's say, cowboy type Chief Revenue Officer, like from 10, 15 years ago, I don't know if they're as relevant anymore. It's a much more operationally driven, customer-centric kind of a business market right now. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on, like, if you were to be looking for a CRO, let's say you're a CEO of a company, maybe the size, the one you're working at right now, right?

And you're interviewing a Chief Revenue Officer, what are the top qualifications and competencies that you think would make you likely to make the best Chief Revenue Officer? And secondarily, what would the kind of remit that you'd give that person to run the organization?

Susan Rothwell: Yeah. So I would be looking for absolutely someone that is a strategic thinker, right, making sure that they're able to put strategy in place. But I think what goes along with that is also the ability to execute, right? You can have a strategy, but if you don't execute the strategy and then constantly look at the strategy to say, is this the right strategy?
Right? [00:12:00] Reworking it. I think that adaptability, that strategic thinking, I always say that ability sometimes even at a CRO level to sit very strategic and then at times become very tactical. And then know when to jump back out and be strategic again. Right? So it's that adaptability and that flexibility.

I also think that they really need to understand what technology can do for a revenue organization. Particularly with the onset of AI and the way AI is really infiltrating and really I feel like helping sales organizations and companies in general, but I'm focused on revenue right now.

So they'd have to have some type of technical acumen and business acumen to understand where that makes relevance within the organization and how they can make that happen. And then I think that a really important part of it is attracting and developing talent and leadership and teams within your organization, right?

You can [00:13:00] only do so much as a CRO, but when you bring good people in and good talent in, and I always say people with superpowers, right? Some people that have been at a company, some new talent into companies, people that have different things that they're good at, then you really can develop a well-balanced team.

So I think it's really a combination of having strategic thinking, being able to be adaptable, think on your feet, make changes when you need to be really looking at analyzing what you're doing all the time, some technical prowess to understand how that can help the organization, and then the ability to really bring talent in and build the team around you.

Hey everyone. I want to thank you again for listening. Get great comments across LinkedIn and other channels about the show, and it's really gratifying to see that we're having an impact on you. Another thing I wanted to let everybody know is that we also produce events. About two and a half [00:14:00] years ago, we started the CRO round tables.

Predicated on the idea that, well, two premises. One is that CROs are looking for other CROs to talk to, which is really true. It's a very lonely job. And how do we get a bunch of CROs in a room where they're not being, let's say, disintermediated by panel discussions and sponsorship events and demos and stuff, and really give them a chance to talk to each other.
So we created a round table event. Essentially it's a three and a half, four hour discussion between 20 and 30 Chief Revenue Officers. And these are amazing events. The format took off, people love them, and I get requests all the time as to when is your next CRO event. So, to that end, I just want to let you all know that we have a number of the roundtables coming up over the next year, over the next like 2026.

And I want to share them with you so you can, if they're in your market, you can come. So the next one we're having is going to be in London, [00:15:00] actually in February, February 24th in London. So if you happen to be a Chief Revenue Officer in the UK or even in Europe and you want to come by, you'll be hearing about it more on my website and LinkedIn.

But early on your calendar. And then following that, we're probably going to be doing an event in San Francisco in March. There's going to be one in New York in March. I'm going to do another one in Chicago probably in April. And then I'm going to do an event in Boston. I'll do an event in Atlanta. I'm going to do an event in Salt Lake City.

I'm going to do an event in Austin and I'm going to do an event in Los Angeles or the Southern California area. So those dates are to be determined, but they'll be going across all next year. And these events are taking on huge momentum. They're the place to be if you're a Chief Revenue Officer and you want to be in a room with no interruptions and have an opportunity to really share with each other in a [00:16:00] sort of a private and confidential open discussion about everything that you wanted to talk about as a Chief Revenue Officer and collaborate with great people.

So thank you and thanks for supporting the show and look forward to seeing you at the events.

Warren Zenna: And would you say you're likely to maybe first look at people who came from a sales background, or are there other areas where people come from today that you think would make them equally or maybe even more suited to be a CRO today?

Susan Rothwell: Well, I always think that one of the pieces of advice I give any person in sales, which I don't think they always think about, is really understanding financials, right? Really understanding how companies make money, understanding, having a financial rigor, what matters to your customer from a financial perspective.

So I think someone with a financial background could be interesting, particularly as everything that you do has to not just be top line, but bottom line as well. So I think that that is definitely something I'd look [00:17:00] into. I've hired people from consulting backgrounds, right?

So they've been in many different companies and seen many different things. So sometimes they can bring a view that's very different than you might have from just strictly a sales background. But I do think there's a value to having had a quota, having performed in the past that I would never walk away from having people that carried a bag at some point in their life on my leadership team as well.

So, again, I would say a balance of all of that is what would make a really strong leadership team.

Warren Zenna: Okay. It all makes sense. I'm seeing a lot of rev ops people moving into the CRO role right now. They have a really strong understanding of process and operations and connecting the dots and building systems, which ultimately, really at the end of the day, a CRO is managing a system. They,

Susan Rothwell: Yes.

Warren Zenna: inherited or they have to build it themselves.

Right. So let me talk about that a bit. So when you were at, when you had [00:18:00] this long tenure or 13 years, you became a CRO as you already stated, you already had this really great knowledge of the business. You had your hands on everything and it made sense because you knew so much.

It would make it a perfect opportunity for you. But you went to Epsilon, you're like the first CRO, you're like day one outsider. So what do you have to bring? Like, you know, that's a much different situation. So how did you make that change between having such tenure and then all of a sudden starting new day one?

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, that's a great point. I think that one of the advantages I had is, through my time at Vericast, I was able to create what I called some playbooks in ways that I approached the business. So I have a very data-driven approach to how I'd like to see sales teams organized and aligned.

I focus on who the customers are, where they are, what they buy from us, what they don't buy from us, those types of things. And so, because I did have a point of view on that type of playbook and I had instituted some types of those [00:19:00] changes, I did come in with a thought of what I was going to do with the business.

That was a very, very complex company, right? It's not only Epsilon, but it's also owned by Publicis, right? So you have a lot of complexity to the way you drive the go-to-market strategy there. So I think the fact is that they hadn't had a CRO, so that was the first time that that existed within the organization.

All three parts of the business and my main focus was creating a unified go-to-market strategy because there were three different companies and we had many people calling on the same customers. Right. Not talking, not driving an overall strategy for large enterprise companies. So what we were really trying to do was streamline the way we approached them, made it easier for them to buy from us and then in part, make it easier to function within the Epsilon ecosystem because there were different systems there that were never married, right?

There were a lot of different things that went on that made it complex to kind of [00:20:00] drive one sales organization forward. So I think the fact that I worked with a complex company that had bought and sold, like we were owned by MacAndrews & Forbes. We bought and sold companies all the time. So I learned how to integrate, how to bring teams together, how to take them apart.

And because I had that experience, I was able to bring a lot of that into Epsilon and drive some of that change very quickly. If I hadn't had that experience, I think it would've been much more difficult.

Warren Zenna: Let me get into the weeds there a bit, if you don't mind. So you get into this new job. And it's three businesses. They're sort of trifurcated. You get customers getting called from three different business units.

I can understand all this sort of spaghetti junction stuff that happens. So what was the way that you figured that out? I'm just curious. Walk me through the process. So imagine you're trying to explain to a CRO who's walking into a similar situation right now and you're giving them some guidance on, like, what do you do first?

What do you do second? What's the [00:21:00] process by which you guide somebody to untangle and recreate a system that you need to be more streamlined?

Susan Rothwell: Well, I first got alignment, internal alignment with the finance organization. We did not have a revenue operations function there as well. There was not a sales enablement function there as well, like a true sales enablement function. So the first thing I did was I lined up a couple of those functions that would be needed.

Again, an infrastructure to support a revenue organization. That was kind of the first thing I did. So I assembled my team and my team wasn't just sales, it was outside of sales to make sure that I had the support I needed to take a look and say, okay, how do we align this very sophisticated organization?

The second thing we did was, we hired a consulting company to come in and help us gather all the data because I said the data was in disparate areas. So we gathered all the sales data, all the customer data, and we brought that all together. And then I literally [00:22:00] got in a room for a couple of days and we just started to plot.

You know, who were all the customers across the entire organization? What were they buying from us? What was their revenue, all that type of information. And then kind of stood back, literally, I had it on a wall. I can see it right now. A big wall. Everything diagrammed out. And once I looked, we were able to look at that data.

The strategy became very clear that we needed to verticalize. That there were seven key verticals of the way our customers were buying from us. That popped out as you looked at the data. And then once we had that kind of structure, I then had to go and sell that, that, hey, I want to verticalize the sales teams, bring them all together, unified.

Put them under these specific verticals. I had to go to the executive team right? And to get everybody's blessing to go ahead and say, "Hey, this is how we're going to drive our go-forward strategy." And, it was complex because there's over a thousand [00:23:00] sellers and CS people in those organizations.

And I think the key to the success though, and this is where in my experience, transitions fail is in the way you communicate and the way you get everyone on board to the changes that you're going to make. So once you get the structure, once you understand the vision, it is now about having people around the table with you, making the decisions to take the business in that direction and communicating to anybody that's going to be affected by your organization of the decisions as they're being made.

"This is the vision. This is what we need to do to drive the vision. These are the steps we're going to take to do that. This is how we're going to support you. This is what your role is going to be like." All those things. That's where transformation either makes it or doesn't in my experience. And so, we got them there.

We have a very large [00:24:00] organization. We got it aligned to strategy because I like a vertical strategy, but I don't always want to assume that's a strategy that a company needs to have. And the reason why I liked it for Epsilon was because it really created a value around the products that spoke to a vertical.

And we could really customize and tailor the way we approach the customers and make sure we were able to tie all those strategies and all those services and products together. So it drove a value, right? Why would a clean room have anything to do with media? Right? And making sure we were talking to customers and understanding why it made sense to think about Epsilon as one and not as three different disparate organizations.

Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have, and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free, please to share, like the podcast with any of your colleagues. [00:25:00] We just think there's a great wealth of information here and we want to get the word out to as many people as possible and your support of the show is really appreciated.

I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bi-monthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer board of directors, so to speak, so that they could share what's going on with them.

Collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own board of directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have, it's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other Chief Revenue Officers you can talk to and say, "Hey, I'm working on this," or "Have you guys figured that out?" Or, "I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results." These are just invaluable [00:26:00] conversations with Chief Revenue Officers.

Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job, and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me Masters or Masters Council and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it.

Looking forward to seeing you there and thank you.

Warren Zenna: That's great. I love this. So you got a couple of interesting things going on there. One is you have to communicate right to a bunch of people who are now going to entrust you to make some massive changes in a very big business and turn a ship. You know, it's very difficult to do. And then also, like you just said, communicate this downstream to a lot of people who are going to have, as you probably well know, a lot of emotional reactions to change. What does this mean for me? Am I going to keep my job, you know, all the other stuff that goes with this stuff? Am I going to lose control? Am I not going to get acknowledged? Am I not going to get my raise?

How is this going to affect me? Right? So the hard one though is you have to get [00:27:00] that support first. Because then when you have that, then now you can strategize the downstream communication. So how did you do that? What were the ways in which this organization said, "Alright, Susan, come with a plan and convince us this makes sense."

And what do you think were the successes or the ways in which you were able to effectively get the buy-in from the people who had been running this business a certain way for such a long period of time to get them to give you that level of latitude to redo this? What was it? The external reputation you came in with?

Was it the culture that you came into? Was there tension? Were there disputes? I'm curious to know how that went down, because I speak to a lot of my clients who are entering into a situation like this, and they have a great idea and they know that it'll work, but they just can't seem to get the coalition built around them to make it happen, and they end up having to compromise.

So what do you do about...

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, so I think that what you hit on is [00:28:00] right. It's not easy, right? It's particularly being a new person coming in and having executives there with a lot more tenure, right? And people like things a lot of times the way they are. But I was hired specifically to do this work. There was a lot of conversation prior to me coming in with the chairman about what he was looking for. We made sure we were aligned.

I think that if I could say one of the things that I could do over again, I would do it over again. One of my lessons learned for people on this podcast to be listening is that they were, there was some fear in making the change, so they asked me to kind of double step the change. So just verticalize a couple verticals, see how it works, and then finish the rest of the work. So the work that would've taken me probably nine months ended up taking me [00:29:00] like 18 months because we ended up two stepping the process.

And that was not easy because part of the organization was running one way and part of the organization was running the other. The positives out of it was we had some key learnings, we understood what things worked and didn't work. But I would say in retrospect, I probably would've pushed harder to say, "No, we need to do this all now."

But again, being newer to the organization, I was definitely trying to make sure that I had alignment and got buy-in where I could and probably didn't push back enough, to tell you the truth. It was definitely a key learning for me.

Warren Zenna: That's really great. So you sort of recognize the fact that you, I get it. I mean, you sort of saw the latitude you were given and you took it and you ran with it, and you were able to prove out your thesis and then get buy-in to grab the rest of the organization to follow suit. So you took a two-step [00:30:00] motion.

Now, okay, so this is interesting. So here you're in a situation, which again, I'm very familiar with. What happens here is they say, "Yeah, you know, this is a great idea, Susan. We think it makes sense, but we're not ready to let you boil the entire chicken right now. So cut the chicken in half and cook the first half and let's see how it comes out.

And if it tastes okay, then we'll give you the second half of the chicken." Right? So that's fine. But then there's implications of that too, because it impacts your trajectory around your profit margins and your projections for revenue. So how do you manage those things when you know that if you had it the way you wanted it, you probably would've achieved business goals faster.

But now this six months or nine months turn into 18 months, what's the way you manage the short-term goals with those long-term goals, which are the big problems that CROs have as they're being asked to solve the quarterly problem while you know, they have to solve the five-year problem?

Susan Rothwell: Yeah. I think that it was hard to be focused on the five-year problem, right? It [00:31:00] was more about being focused on the one-year or two-year problem. So it made it much more complex, right? We had to put different KPIs in for the way that the unified business, for lack of a better term, was functioning versus the more siloed way that the company was out there.

And so I would say that we really focused on the big KPI that proved it out was, were we actually driving more incremental revenue coming to a client holistically as one organization trying to drive strategy or all the products across the whole organization? Were we getting a higher lift in those accounts, in those verticals than we were in the verticals that we were not unified in? And by having that comparison and being able to compare the results, that was really the proof in the [00:32:00] pudding to move forward as well.

So I think that it made it more complex, but that's that adaptability, right? I was talking about earlier. You know, this job would be easy if it was just linear, right? But it's not. And sometimes, and that takes time. Sometimes you have to take a step back and say, "Okay, I wasn't planning on that. How do I now make this work?"

And I think that's where you have to have teams around you to just support you. That's why finance had to be involved, right? I had to have some support people around me saying, you know, "Yes, we can measure this. We can't measure this." The comp plans had to be different for these people, right? There were a lot of moving parts that made it pretty complex. But I do think that as long as you have some type of measurement in place, then you get the permission to say, "Yeah, let's go for the whole thing."

Warren Zenna: You mentioned in the beginning of this anecdote that you had to get your people together first, right? So how many of those people were ones that were already there that you were able to utilize, and how many did you have to bring in from the outside?

And how did you [00:33:00] decide on those things? What was the way that you made the people process work for you?

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, I would say the way I usually make it work for me, and I'm actually doing it here at Simpli.fi as well, is it was a combination of having people that were there in the organization. I always believe that legacy talent has been a good talent, important to keep in an organization, right? They've got background and things that other people don't. But I also do have a vast network of people that I've worked with over the years that are super talented.

So I did lean on some of those super talented people to come into the organization who are still there today doing very well to help really round out that leadership team and some of those people have been through some of the type of change that I was doing there, right? I've done some of that playbooking at Vericast as well, so they totally [00:34:00] get what we're trying to do, how we're trying to do it.

And so that creates a quicker response. And when people go through this type of evolution of an organization with me on part of my leadership team, it's really transformational for them. It's that ability to really think about how an organization aligns? Like I always say, you put the organization in place and then you think about the people, right? So that ability to think more broadly than just your sales team, really thinking about the overall needs of an organization, right?

They're the things that create that next level of leadership. And allow people to go on, whether it's with me or within other organizations, to be really successful in going through a transformational change like I did at, like we did at Epsilon. Really granted a lot of people good opportunities to really stretch their wings and become better leaders.
And as I said, a lot of them are still there doing great work today.

Warren Zenna: Got it. So let's talk about this [00:35:00] CEO-CRO relationship, which I think is the key.

Susan Rothwell: Yes, I do.

Warren Zenna: The first thing I right is the key thing, right? So I always tell my clients, you go get a job as a Chief Revenue Officer. The first thing you have to be thinking about is the person who you're going to be working for, which is the CEO of the company.

This is your key ally. If that ally's not working, it's probably not going to be a good situation. In fact, I'd say that's probably the area where most things fail. You've had this great relationship with Cali for, you know, this is the second time he brought you back. Talk me through that process. Like how did you two develop this and what was it that Cali was looking for this second time around and maybe even some insights into that relationship and things about it that you think are important as to how other people can emulate what the qualities that are necessary for a CRO to succeed.

Susan Rothwell: Yeah. So Cali came into my life when we were purchased by MacAndrews & Forbes. So I was a senior leader. I was not a CRO. I was a VP at the time. I became an SVP under [00:36:00] him and came in as they were taking control of Vericast at the time and the digital business in particular. So the initial was a jarring initial way we came together and we went back and we laughed quite a bit about it, but when we first got together it wasn't easy. It was a very difficult relationship.

And Cali is a person that gives a lot of feedback and for me it was feedback overload at times and was not always the easiest. But I think what I realized through that, that part of the reason why the feedback was difficult was actually me and not him. And like my confidence about being able to go head to head with him because it was a highly, highly intelligent man.
And as we started to realize that hey, we had different strengths that actually really complement each other, that's when I think we [00:37:00] really started to see the motion really go well together. And he, as I talked about earlier, like he's Harvard MBA guy, I did not have my MBA and so he helped me really understand about certain types of rigors around running businesses and operations and having business plans and business objectives like in a way that I had not been exposed to before, but I was a sponge and open to.

And then I think for him, he was very early in his leadership career. And I think having been a more tenured leader, I think that they were the compliments that helped him as well. So they were the type of things that we really came together with and we don't always think alike, right?

Which I think is really actually really good. And so there would be some back and forth, but I think we always got to a place where we eventually agreed and there was a lot of confidence. We had a lot of confidence in each other that we developed over the [00:38:00] years we worked together. So now in 2.0, I became a CRO under him.

My career grew tremendously under Cali, so I was personally indebted to him and professionally as well. And I left Epsilon and I was very much thinking about retiring or downshifting quite a bit. And he took this role at Simpli.fi and you know, I never thought I'd get a chance to work with him again.

I just didn't think the cards would align. And they did. And I would say we just the other day, we were sitting across the board table from each other and looked at each other and said, "Wow, it is really even better the second time around." Because we both didn't work with each other for five or six years.

And we both went and developed other skills and other perspectives and other experiences. Right. That, and in that time kept our relationship as friends going. So we [00:39:00] went from a business relationship to a more friendly relationship, just through phone calls. And once in a while we'd meet up and have dinner together, and now we're back together in a business relationship.

But there is a confidence and comfort level with each other that I would not have had if all that happened didn't happen. So I'm very fortunate that I know that I have a CEO that a hundred percent believes in me, a hundred percent backs me. I feel the same way about him. And so it's easy.

Because we can have the real talk, the real conversations, and not be worried about the politics of it all and really be focused on what we can do best for this company and best for this organization. Because I feel so blessed that I could come back to work for Cali in a time when I was thinking about not doing it and be a hundred percent focused on what is best for this organization without Susan worrying about [00:40:00] what she's going to do next or any of that.

It's a really amazing place to be and to be able to do it with someone that I know has my back and really believes in me, and not afraid to still give me a lot of feedback. Let me tell you that much. I think that I'm really fortunate and I hope other people get that opportunity in their lives.

Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the CRO collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible.
A couple things to note, if you're an aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even an old salty CRO, and you're looking to either become a Chief Revenue Officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a Chief Revenue Officer, [00:41:00] we offer the CRO Accelerator course.

It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15-week course that is populated by aspiring Chief Revenue Officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably more ready to be a CRO right now.

They have a number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader, or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C-suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. So, if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn.

Just DM me CRO Accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO Accelerator course, 15-week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great and you'll see some more information about it on the website.

[00:42:00] Thanks.

Warren Zenna: Yeah. No, it sounds great. I mean, I've had a couple of those relationships in my life with people I work with, and unfortunately it's not as common as we'd like, you know, it unfortunately, it's a magical thing. When it happens, it's good, but I think that the important thing is to know what good looks like, right?

At least so when you get a new job, right, you sort of know what you're shooting for instead of maybe being wrong. I think you make a great point too, because I too developed incredibly thick skin. I mean, I used to be really defensive when people gave me feedback a long time ago. Now, I actually love it.

Susan Rothwell: I do too.

Warren Zenna: When someone tells me the truth, I'm like, oh God, I like this person greatly. You know, someone insults me. I'm like, okay, I like this person. He told me the truth. Great to me, weird, right? My brain completely changed in that respect. In fact, I find if someone's being too complimentary to me, I don't trust them as much.

I don't like, I'm like, what, but you're not saying that. I want to know what the white space is, not that, you know. But I wanted to switch gears a bit here because it's interesting. When you were at Vericast, it was essentially like a print and coupon company and [00:43:00] then you moved it into more of a digital business.

So this sort of goes to the whole thing with, we were talking about like Polaroid and Kodak companies that just didn't know how to transform, and there's a lot of reasons for that. So what are your thoughts on how you were able to move an organization into a new era without kind of making the changes required and the people and the competencies that are still more tied to the older model and the migration to the newer model, and moving people across, or getting rid of people and simplifying things?
I'd be interested in knowing what that transformation process looked like for you.

Susan Rothwell: Yeah. Well, I mean, I started on the print side of the business. I was a sales director on the print side of the business, and when they started to spin up this idea called digital media, I kind of raised my hand and said, "Hey, I want to go do that." Right? Which was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. And people were saying, "Well, why would you want to do that? You were so successful on the print side of the business." And I'm thinking, because I think that's the future, right?
And it was [00:44:00] really difficult. I mean, it was doing maybe $10 million worth of business. We were renting all of our tech and it was very, very messy. Very messy. And people thought I was nuts, that I would leave this great print world and go over to that messy part of the world. But I think that having a print person go over and start to actually integrate into that media and create those bridges between the two organizations.

Again, even at that time, I'd been there probably eight or nine years, I had quite a few relationships within the company, and that's something I think is always important, right? To make sure that you have a lot of bridges, not just in your own world, but throughout the organization.

So essentially what we did was, we got the product to be better and then we built up that business to a 200 and some million dollar digital business. Some of it was through acquisition, and then we started to position the two organizations, the print [00:45:00] digital organization side by side and saying, how can we make print work better by wrapping digital amplification around it and creating the digital sales team being much smaller than the print sales team.

They were the SMEs, right? They were the leads. We started to bring them together and started to become like more of a joint selling organization. That was step one. Then step two was again, starting to realign the organization, right? And not just having people that were digital sellers over print, mainly print business, right?

Really driving that integration of the two. So you started to have the company thinking more digital first. Print was the main engine, but really getting that business back to growth because print was declining right. And the ability to add digital around it, and many legacy organizations have done this.

This is nothing special. Right. We ended up being able to [00:46:00] flip the business from a declining business to a growth business within about a year by really driving that integrated strategy of print, digital, and that value to the customer.

Warren Zenna: This is funny. I love this because we have a lot in common, you and I. So I grew up, my father had a printing business when I was a kid. So we grew up with pre-press. Like we had two six colored presses and

Susan Rothwell: oh, wow.

Warren Zenna: and we did commercial printing.
And that was his business for decades. That's how I was, all my college was paid for through this business. So I grew up in the printing business and then I watched what happened when digital printing came out. And how a lot of these old printing companies just kind of just didn't make the jump.

And I was selling print advertising for many years. I was going door to door selling newspaper advertising in the print advertising business. And I too made this similarly, like, you're selling this story. It's funny. I remember when the digital business, I was like, this is great. I went into it right away. I jumped right into this [00:47:00] and simply with mobile marketing, etc.

Susan Rothwell: Mm-hmm.

Warren Zenna: I am very familiar with what you're saying, not just specifically, but generally about having the ability to see what's coming and know to jump on something that maybe might be good because it's ending and that something else is exciting and trying to get other people to get on board. Make the leap with you and be the first person out there.
It's a very exciting place to be, particularly a company that's grounded in a very specific type of industry, and that's how their culture is. So, the retooling of an organization and the learning and the new education and all the new technologies and different types of ways of thinking. I mean, it's amazing how different things are.
So that leads into the next conversation I want to talk to you about is AI. Like here we are now, you and I. Both at the forefront of this whole new world, which I'm in the middle of right now, really dealing with it quite a bit. What are your thoughts on this? So, we look at the way we sell, the way we manage business, the way we manage data, the way we manage people, we manage customers. [00:48:00]

What is your current way in which you're thinking about the usage of artificial intelligence systems in your processes, and what are you doing about it today?

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, well, I mean, I'm leaning in, you know, I believe that you have to lean in. The train has come, it's probably left the station already. And you need to be very much on the forefront of it. I think that it's easier said than done. Because there's just still a lot of legacy processes and systems and things like that in place.

But you know, here at Simpli.fi, right? Like we do have a lot of AI baked into everything we do every day, you know, with our advertising and our location data and things like that. But I still do think you need the human touch, right? I think the human overlay is still vitally important at this point anyway with AI.

So I think it's really a huge aid versus actually running the business. But that probably will change [00:49:00] in the future. So for me, I'm thinking about it, we're looking at our CRM system right now, right? And how can we take the customer experience everywhere from that initial introduction of Simpli.fi who we are and what we do all the way through the billing process, right?

Be AI aided in every single step of the way. So I'm not just thinking about the revenue portion, I'm thinking about the entire system portion. So as we're looking at a CRM system, what is out there to update what we're currently doing that can actually take us through that entire journey.

And from a sales perspective, I mean, it can really unleash so much productivity, right? In the way that you can really use AI to tailor your messages, to really understand what's going on with your customers, to make sure you're up to date on everything. So you're [00:50:00] really talking to them about their business, from understanding, the forecast becomes much more predictable, right? Understanding, using AI to understand trends of where we lose, where we win, not so much in the background, but what's coming forward, right? What's the leading indicator of the business, which I think is hard in the current state without some easy way for AI to analyze some of that stuff again.

You still have to have that human overlay, right? And you still have to be looking at it with that human understanding of your business and same with the people that are in the business, but I think all that expedites how fast you can go. And I think we need to go faster. There's a competitive media world, right?

We need to be going fast so that we're always on top of what's happening. So I'm thinking about it through the full system of what we do, but I think from a revenue perspective, an operations perspective, it's really, it really will simplify the selling process, and I [00:51:00] think it will make our messages to our customers much more relevant and the analysis of how their campaigns and programs did much more insightful, much faster.

So we can pivot if a campaign's working or not working, or we're hitting the right audience or we're not. I think all that stuff, again, will help us go faster.

Warren Zenna: Yeah, agreed. And I think it's just been amazing to watch how fast this stuff develops. I've never been in a situation, I'm sure I'm not alone here, that something I'm working with all of a sudden becomes sort of antiquated, like a month later, and it becomes difficult to decide or commit to something.

Because it's going to change. So there is this reluctance in the marketplace for anybody to make a long-term purchase in anything that has AI in it, because they're afraid, "Well now I'm going to buy something that is no longer going to be useful for me and I'm not going to commit to it." So I see what's happening with businesses.

They're working on basically proof of concept contracts for like three or four months, and that's all they get out of it until they try something [00:52:00] else. And I'm even seeing companies who are going to market and saying, "Well, we're only going to have six month agreements with our clients because we want to make sure they're not being locked into something that may change." And it's changing the way people think about things. And I'm not sure when or if we're going to get to a point where it just sort of stops and we've kind of gotten there now and we can sort of make more longer term commitments.

Susan Rothwell: I'm...

Warren Zenna: is the kind of thing that seems like it's always going to just keep kind of modifying, you know, because we're working on some things ourselves.

It's fascinating what it's doing. Like remarkable to be honest with you. And so, interesting to see what happens next. And I think for a CRO. What I'm curious to know is, are you finding that it's going to enable you to have less people? Like are you going to shrink your teams now? Do you see this as being, I don't want to get into this whole doom and gloom thing about my point being about firing people and it's going to take people's jobs, but there is a simplicity, you know, for a lot of administrative and tasky work where this stuff could replace hours of people.
And I think that obviously maybe [00:53:00] three months ago, six months ago might have been, seemed like some prognostication, but it does seem like it's probably going to be the case. I'm curious to know what you think about that.

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, I think in the present time, no, because I think that unfortunately, in the past couple of roles I've had, sellers have been very inundated with a lot of administrative work, right? And getting, and not, and even within the systems and like making sure campaigns are launching and all those types of things.

So I looked at it initially. So right now I'm looking at it initially as better execution, quicker to our customers, quicker revenue generation. Right. I would say longer term. You know, I think there would probably be some areas of the organization you would not need as many people doing things right?

Where there's, like I call them chair swivels, right? There's a lot of chair swivels where you don't have [00:54:00] technology filling in. But they're also the areas where we tend to break as well. Right. So the areas where I think, again, human intervention I think will always be key because, you know, but I think that there's some weaknesses in the way companies execute that definitely AI will take those chair swivels out and it'll be much more automated and then people can be focused on working with the customer, solving the customer's needs, not so much fixing what didn't happen or what's broken.

Warren Zenna: Yeah, for sure. I'd like to, before we end, if you could talk a bit about Simpli.fi a bit about the business, what you serve, who you serve, and you know, what you guys are up to.

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, so Simpli.fi is really focused on, I would say the medium-sized businesses, right? We've been in business about 15 years and initially we were very much a geolocation type of company. [00:55:00] We still are very focused on location, that's a key thing, AI infused location. And I think that it's to the next level though.

I don't know if you know this, but like 80% of purchases still happen at a location versus online. So I think that's incredible that we still think, you know, e-commerce...

Warren Zenna: drive to the store. They

Susan Rothwell: drive to the store. So we're...

Warren Zenna: kind of entertainment. You know, it's actually a leisure exercise rather than just a shopping thing. People want to go to the store, they want to get out of the house and go, yeah.

Susan Rothwell: Yeah, yeah, you're right. And so what we lead with, we lead with really understanding location and we layer on there all kinds of analytics and understanding who the demographic is and who we are trying to get and making sure they're in the market right. All those types of things.

And then we measure it and make sure that we're not just driving clicks and impressions, but we're driving store visits, we're driving revenue, we're driving people ordering an [00:56:00] additional hamburger when they go into a restaurant, adding to the check as well. And then we optimize all of that and we're really focused.

One of the things that we've done since I've been here and with Cali's leadership and Michael's leadership as well, is we've been focusing on multi-location brands and really trying to help them focus on that individual location and making sure it's really tailored around that.

And then certain types of verticals. Making sure healthcare and legal and home services and restaurant and retail, right? They are ones that jump to mind. So that's what we're doing. We're really trying to be out there serving that medium-sized business, making sure every advertising dollar they spend does result in an action that drives revenue for them.
And really trying to create that value off our platform, which is what we're focused on right now.

Warren Zenna: Well, great. And thank you for [00:57:00] having this,

Susan Rothwell: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.