Exit Ready Analytics - with Will Sullivan, Managing Partner at Predictive Analytics

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Wright, Founder and CEO of Benchmarkit, and your host of the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics Measure Up Podcast. Today, I am joined by Will Sullivan, the managing partner at Predictive Analytics. We'll be covering three primary topic areas with Will today. First, how are strategic's chief revenue officers different from a VP or SVP of sales? What are the critical components for a strong CRO and CFO relationship? And the concept of Exit Ready Analytics, what every CEO and CFO needs to know. So that will please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest here in the Metrics Measure Up Podcast.

**Will Sullivan** (1:16)
Well, Ray, first of all, I'm glad to be here. I've been a fan of what you've been posting on LinkedIn, and I've been to some of your events, and it's great to be here as another SaaS Metrics fan. My background is a little unique. I went to West Point and I served in the Army. Actually, before I got into technology, I was in oil and gas. Then from oil and gas, I went into small business, worked with PE fund, acquired a company, built it and sold it, and then got into advisory space.
I loved being a part of that SMB pre-equity opportunity and understanding multiple arbitrage. Then I went and got into PwC's M&A team, where I would do revenue analytics, focusing on net retention rate and quality of revenue and go to market diligence. Did that, did over 30 billion in deals. I did 25 deals in about 20 months, and I've gone off on my own to help CROs work better with CFOs and for CFOs to understand customer journey and how to run and support the sales team.

**Ray Rike** (2:28)
Now, I'll tell you, your career journey is important for any early career professional to see, because it's not that straight, you know, up through a particular function, well-rounded. And quite frankly, thank you for your service, because it's one of the most important things I think anyone can do. So we're going to talk today, though, a lot about some LinkedIn posts I've seen you make over the last few months. And honestly, it's one of the ways that you're kind of really came to top of mind when I was thinking about guests for the podcast. So let's get into the first topic. It's that time of year again. You've got 37 spreadsheets, eight departments submitting plans in different formats. And somehow, Headcount Plan V9 Final is still missing two hires. Welcome to the budgeting season, where FP&A teams juggle people, timelines and way too many spreadsheets. Or you could use DriveTrain. DriveTrain is an AI native business planning platform built for modern finance teams. Easy to use modeling, real time collaboration, and no spreadsheet chaos. This year, don't just survive the budget season, take control of it. Visit drivetrain.ai.
slash metrics and get two months free and 50% off implementation for a limited time. That's D-R-I-V-E-T-R-A-I-N dot A-I slash metrics. What are some of the common differences that you're seeing between a Chief Revenue Officer and a Senior Vice President of Sales? And I think I'm talking about both business and personality traits.

**Will Sullivan** (4:07)
Yeah, let's, I'm just going to jump right into it. So inherently, a CRO who is a CRO, not just in title, is able to manage revenue movements and growth, whereas a VP of Sales is a expert on process, really around sales process and being the alpha leader of the sales team. And going back to the CRO managing revenue, that specifically is around expansion versus new logo growth, with the idea of driving net new logo at an efficient, sustainable manner. Because I believe, and it's shown by valuation, that every dollar of revenue is not valued the same way. A dollar of expansion revenue is actually valued higher because you have a stronger quality of revenue and a stronger net retention rate.

**Ray Rike** (4:59)
Well, so it's a little bit of a hot take, but I know you've done a lot of acquisitions and advisory services, at least the due diligence for acquisitions. You're telling me that even a lot of the heads of sales out there just don't have that understanding or process around expansion to where they do new?

**Will Sullivan** (5:20)
Well, it's not just expansion rate, it's also churn management and revenue leakage. It goes back to, that's just an example of if you have a 15% growth rate, you should have 5% coming from your current customer base and 10% coming from new logo growth. It's very simple 2-to-1 ratio. In that 2-to-1 ratio, you also have to be overcoming industry standard 7% churn. And so those are three very different skill sets. And growing up in sales, you are an expert and you are awesome at understanding customers and helping customers understand their purchase decisions so they can make the right decision. That is a different skill set than managing organizational structures and delivering on different revenue metrics.