Why More Companies Are Letting Their CMO Absorb the CRO Role

The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role emerged in the 2010s as companies sought to unify sales, marketing, and customer success under one leader. The promise: better alignment, faster growth, and clearer accountability.

But a decade later, many companies are rethinking this structure. Instead of hiring a CRO, they're expanding the CMO's mandate to include revenue ownership.

Why? Three reasons:

1. RevOps Has Absorbed the CRO's Technical Work

The CRO role was originally designed to own forecasting, pipeline management, and revenue analytics. But today, Revenue Operations (RevOps) teams handle these functions with sophisticated tools and automation.

RevOps owns the systems, data, and processes that drive predictable revenue. The CRO's traditional responsibilities—pipeline visibility, deal tracking, and revenue forecasting—are now table stakes, managed by specialized ops teams.

This leaves the CRO role focused on strategy and execution—areas where the CMO often has more expertise.

2. Marketing Drives the Majority of Revenue

In modern B2B companies, marketing generates 60-80% of pipeline. Product marketing defines positioning. Demand generation fills the funnel. Content marketing educates buyers. Customer marketing drives expansion.

Sales executes, but marketing creates the conditions for revenue. When the CMO already owns the majority of revenue-generating activities, it makes sense to give them full accountability.

3. One Leader, One Strategy, One Team

The biggest challenge in GTM is alignment. When marketing and sales report to different leaders, you get competing priorities, misaligned incentives, and finger-pointing when targets are missed.

By consolidating GTM under the CMO, companies create a unified strategy. Marketing and sales become one team, working toward the same goals, measured by the same metrics.

What This Means for CMOs

If you're a CMO, this shift is an opportunity—but it requires a mindset change. You're no longer just responsible for brand, demand, and content. You're accountable for revenue.

This means:

• Owning pipeline targets, not just MQLs
• Managing sales teams, not just marketing teams
• Forecasting revenue, not just campaign performance
• Building systems for predictable growth, not just creative campaigns

The CMOs who succeed in this expanded role are those who embrace systems thinking, data-driven decision-making, and cross-functional leadership.

The Bottom Line

The CRO role isn't disappearing—it's evolving. In many companies, the CMO is the natural owner of revenue because they already control the levers that drive growth.

The question isn't whether marketing should own revenue. It's whether your CMO is ready to lead it.