Executive Level

CRO School

As a CRO, you're faced with many challenges:

Creating predictable revenue growth amid unpredictable conditions
Adapting sales strategies to align with digital buyer behavior
Ensuring sales reps maintain high productivity
Standardizing processes across the team

CRO School is a comprehensive 8-week school where your skills will be tested and improved to prepare you for any challenge that may come your way as a revenue leader. Each week, you will work with industry-leading experts to discuss and gain actionable insight into topics like building a world-class management team, developing a theory of enterprise value, forecasting and revenue modeling, and more.

Course details

Enrollment type: Live

Session dates: Jan. 9th - Feb. 27th

Schedule: Thursdays, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM EST

Open to: Executive Members

Kiva Kolstein - CRO SChool

Kiva Kolstein, Dean

President & CRO of AlphaSense

Experienced senior executive with 25+ years experience building and leading high performance, cost-effective revenue organizations marked by their performance and operational excellence. Seasoned and disciplined executive, and an influential process improvement leader. A creative problem solver with the ability to deliver innovative customer-focused strategies that grow revenue, and generate long-term customer loyalty. An effective and skilled communicator, with broad experience as both presenter and facilitator, conference panelist and moderator.

Connect with Kiva

Sam Jacobs, Dean

CEO of Pavilion

Sam Jacobs is the Founder & CEO of Pavilion. He launched Pavilion as Revenue Collective in 2016 and bootstrapped the company to $10M in ARR before taking on a $25M growth financing round in early 2021, led by Elephant Ventures and GTM Fund.

Prior to Pavilion, Sam spent 15 years as a senior revenue leader at VC-backed companies in the New York area including Gerson Lehrman Group, Axial, Livestream/Vimeo, The Muse, and Behavox.

Connect with Sam

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"To my incredible Monday cohort - I'm happy to be a part of such a great network of people and am looking forward to continuing our support for each other beyond [CRO School]. Our diverse experiences and perspectives helped me extract the most out of this program."

Stephen Peters
Strategic Accounts, Circular Technology

Course curriculum

This school is designed for sales, marketing, and GTM executives looking to advance to the C-suite, executives from other functions looking to level up their careers and develop a foundational understanding of revenue generation and management, as well as current CROs looking to refine their craft and gain exposure to new ideas.

Please note that curriculum topics and/or session order may be subject to change.

Session 1:
The Role of the CRO

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Use an execution framework to prioritize and allocate your time as a CRO
Set your strategy and be ready to pivot whether you are starting from scratch or stepping into an existing organization
Define a winning sales process including choosing the right systems and architect for scale as well as create visibility into appropriate success metrics and KPIs
Identify your place and responsibilities on the executive team and as a part of the board

Session 2:
Building a World-Class Management Team

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Define your own leadership principles based on who you are and how you lead
Assess current strengths, skill sets, and gaps to round out the team and structure management to allow you to be more strategic
Clearly define what each interviewer should test for and specific skills to evaluate for including situational and behavioral questions
Motivate and inspire your team by encouraging them to share their vision with their team, investing in leadership development, and providing resources to remove obstacles

Session 3:
Developing a Theory of Enterprise Value

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Use quantitative analysis as well as incorporate personal experience and preference to create a repeatable and predictable business
Focus on the order of operations to generate revenue (market size, product, marketing, and sales)
Use Unit Economics to tell the core story of your business to showcase if it was designed to drive results

Session 4:
Forecasting and Financial Modeling

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Take both a qualitative and quantitative approach to forecasting
Include leads generated from product and marketing into your forecast, as including sales capacity alone is not optimal
Separate forecasting for your new business and recurring/mature business

Session 5:
Scaling the Inside Sales Machine

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Identify the proper time to shift into scale mode
Focus on the 3 P’s of scaling (people, process, and planning) to drive success
Predictably repeat performance to drive growth

Session 6:
Foundations of Marketing Leadership

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Ask the right questions to evaluate the business’s health and its potential for growth, as success in sales and marketing is largely predetermined
Build a solid foundation that drives cross-functional alignment and supports the collective company goals
Build and deploy a marketing budget using data to drive decisions

Session 7:
Storytelling with Data

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Provide a time series for context when presenting data, since rates and ratios are always better than absolute numbers
Dig beyond surface-level metrics and vividly paint the picture for the entire executive team
Apply data-driven changes and closely monitor the impact

Session 8:
Foundations of Customer Success

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Define and execute against your customer journey, creating a seamless experience
Identify and define the team’s various roles and responsibilities to create strong cross-functional relationships that deliver a better customer experience and drive more revenue
Avoid common CS pitfalls

Expected Results

By the end of this school, you will have the knowledge and skills to be able to:

Define a winning sales process choosing the right systems and architect for scale and predictability as well as create visibility into appropriate success metrics and KPIs
Take both a qualitative and quantitative approach to forecasting
Build and execute marketing, customer success, and partnership strategies that drive revenue and support common goals
Identify the proper time to shift into scale mode while focusing on the 3 P’s (people, process, and planning)

Sam Jacobs clapping in front of a room of people

Course FAQ

: This program is included in the cost of a Pavilion Membership. Not a member? Join now.
: At this time, this program is open to Pavilion Members only. Join Pavilion to enroll for free.
: CRO School begins on January 9th and runs through February 27th.
: CRO School meets on Thursdays from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM EST.
: CRO School fills up quickly. While the last day to enroll is January 8th, we encourage you to enroll as soon as possible.
: Yes, there will be cohorts for this school. Cohorts meet once per week at a selected day/time during the duration of the program.

Due to the peer element of Pavilion University, we see increased engagement from students which strengthens your ability to recall and apply learnings.
: Yes, 80% attendance is required. We recommend that participants attend the live sessions for the optimal learning experience. Though, watching session recordings counts toward attendance for those with scheduling conflicts or in time zones where live attendance is a challenge.
: Yes, there is a final exam at the end of this course/school. A passing score of 80% must be attained in order to receive your certificate.
: After successfully passing the final exam, you will receive a certificate that you can add to your Licenses and Certification Section on LinkedIn.

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