This new handbook from ANNUITAS|research delivers practical insights and proven strategies to improve organizational design and sharpen your go-to-market execution—enabling you to achieve a sustainable ‘growth engine’ state for your organization. The handbook frames the Office of the Chief Growth Officer through the concept of a Converged Growth lens—i.e., an approach to operationalizing go-to-market activities around the customer lifecycle, both pre- and post-sale. This approach unifies GTM programs, processes, organization, technology and data around a common, customer-driven playbook. It enables organizations to shift from legacy ‘random acts’ of sales and marketing to a strategic, perpetual growth engine model. The result is substantially-improved go-to-market performance—orchestrating customer engagement, providing customer journey stewardship and achieving sustainable CLV growth.

1. Transforming Go-to-Market,
Building a Growth Engine
The
Chief
Growth
Officer’s
Handbook
By Adam B. Needles + Martin Schneider
Copyright © 2023 ANNUITAS. All rights reserved.
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2. Foreword 4
I. Focused, Orchestrated, and Customer-centered Growth 5
RandomActsandtheChallengeofTraditionalGo-to-Market.........................................................................6
AConvergedGrowthLensAddressesKeyGTMChallengesandImprovesLift ����������������������������������7
TheFourPillarsofConvergedGrowth..............................................................................................................................8
RethinkingtheGTMTechStack............................................................................................................................................8
KPIsandOurNewGrowthGoal:MaximizingLifttoCustomerLifetimeValue ����������������������������������9
PivotingtoImplementaConvergedGrowthLens.................................................................................................11
DeepDive:WhatisConvergedGrowth?......................................................................................................................12
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................14
II. Why Create the Office of Chief Growth Officer? 15
GoBeyondtheSilos.....................................................................................................................................................................16
AttainaStrategicFocus............................................................................................................................................................18
GainCompetitiveAdvantage...............................................................................................................................................19
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................21
III. What Defines the Role of the Chief Growth Officer? 22
KeyPillarsandFactors..............................................................................................................................................................23
FocusingonEnd-to-EndGo-to-Marketvs.(Pre-sales)MarketingandSales ���������������������������������������24
DeepDive:CXvsDX:ACriticalDistinction................................................................................................................25
MeasuringHolisticGrowthvs.“Leads+Opportunities”....................................................................................27
(Top-down)OrganizationalRealignmentis(Usually)Needed.......................................................................28
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................30
IV. Chief Growth Officer: The Position Outlined 31
PositionOverview........................................................................................................................................................................32
CoreAreasofResponsibility.................................................................................................................................................32
OperatingPrinciples...................................................................................................................................................................33
RequiredKnowledge,Skills,+Characteristics..........................................................................................................33
StakeholderCollaboration.....................................................................................................................................................33
Table of Contents
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3. V: The Core Operating Principles of a CGO 34
The6Pillars.......................................................................................................................................................................................35
TheCGOMindset.........................................................................................................................................................................35
DeepDive:TheConversationTrackArchitectureis(Still)King.....................................................................37
TheApproachofaCGO............................................................................................................................................................41
ExecutionFactorsforCGOs..................................................................................................................................................42
It’sMoreThanJustan“ExpandedCRO”.......................................................................................................................43
DefiningtheChiefGrowthOfficerRoleisanOngoingDialogue..................................................................44
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................44
VI. What does a Converged Growth Organization look like? 45
OrganizingAroundtheCustomerJourney—End-to-End.................................................................................46
BringingHolisticControlofGo-to-MarketUndertheChiefGrowthOfficer �������������������������������������50
Process-basedvs.FunctionalRationalizationofGo-to-MarketFunctions ������������������������������������������52
BridgingPre-andPost-saleGrowth.................................................................................................................................56
HybridConvergedGrowthOrgsandthe“OfficeoftheChiefGrowthOfficer” ��������������������������������58
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................59
VII. Elements of the Converged Growth Technology Stack 60
GTMTechnologyStackCharter.........................................................................................................................................61
GTMTechnologyStackArchitecture—EvolutionnotRevolution..............................................................62
KeyInputstoGo-to-MarketSystemArchitecture................................................................................................65
PotentialGapsinProcessAutomation..........................................................................................................................67
GTMTechnologyandtheCustomerDataValueChain......................................................................................68
Drivingchange?StartwithanAudit.................................................................................................................................70
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................71
VIII. Rethinking the KPIs for Converged Growth Organizations 72
OurNewGrowthGoal:MaximizingLiftToCustomerLifetimeValue(CLV) ���������������������������������������73
NewAnalyticalCornerstonesforGTM.........................................................................................................................75
KPILayers..........................................................................................................................................................................................77
NextSteps..........................................................................................................................................................................................79
FurtherReading.............................................................................................................................................................................80
Accelerate your GTM Transformation with a
Go-to-Market Assessment 81
Authors 85
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4. 4
Dear Growth Leader,
First off, thank you for taking the time to read and digest the ideas put forth in this book. We wrote this book
for people like you—growth leaders looking to transform their go-to-market strategies in a way that builds a
perpetual Growth Engine for the entire customer journey.
Right now, we are experiencing a period of some of the most rapid changes when it comes to go-to-market and
how we drive growth. The emergence of new business models and customer expectations under these new
models means we must think differently about how we engage and drive lifetime customer value.
Think of this book as a primer of sorts. Our Chief Growth Officer (CGO) Handbook can be a great introduction
to the mindset needed to build what we call a Converged Growth Go-to-Market Organization—one that
fosters more efficient, more effective lift to customer lifetime value. Additionally, while transforming your go-
to-market is a major endeavor, we see this book as a good starting point for the uninitiated, a tool to reinforce
or rechart the course for those already amidst transformation initiatives.
This book is only the beginning. At ANNUITAS, we are all in on helping companies build highly effective
perpetual Growth Engines that encompass the entire customer journey, and transform their go-to-market
processes, organization, and technology stack. In addition to this resource, we will continue to provide other
thought leadership, events and other tools to help you take your growth strategy to the next level.
We also want this to be a dialogue. Please—send us your feedback on this book, its ideas around Converged
Growth and the office of the Chief Growth Officer found herein. We want to learn from you as well.
Looking forward to continuing the conversation!
Cheers,
Adam B. Needles
CEO
ANNUITAS, Inc.
Foreword
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5. 5
Focused, Orchestrated, and
Customer-centered Growth
The goal of this book is to present a framework to help modern B2B
organizations transform their approach to go-to-market (GTM)—doing so via
a Converged Growth lens and embracing the concept of the Chief Growth
Officer (CGO) as an organizing principle for focused, orchestrated and
customer-centered growth.
This is all in service towards the ultimate objective of (a) building a sustainable, perpetual Growth
Engine and (b) driving maximum lift to customer lifetime value (CLV) by optimizing this engine.
Despite the title, this book absolutely recognizes that not every organization will adopt the
approach of a named Chief Growth Officer, and so it’s important to assert that the goal is
nonetheless to build an organization fully integrated around driving growth—even if that is a
hybrid, “Office of the Chief Growth Officer” conceptual model vs. an actual named CGO.
For context, let’s first dig into the key elements driving the need to transform your go-to-market,
the benefits of having an office of the CGO, and some of the foundational elements of transforming
your go-to-market through a Converged Growth lens.
I.
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6. 6
“Random Acts” and the Challenge
of Traditional Go-to-Market
The traditional go-to-market model is broken. A Harvard Business Review
article1.1
argues that:
Meanwhile, many marketing and sales organizations respond to this
challenging GTM environment by continuing to engage in what can best
be described as “random acts1.2
” of sales and marketing.
What’s changed? In the past, B2B buyers had less leverage and sales
and marketing teams could engage primarily using pre-sales milestones
as the central focus of Demand Experience. Today’s buyers are more
“While once a relatively accurate proxy for the underlying buying
behavior it was meant to approximate, the serial commercial
engine is hopelessly out of date—and dangerously out of sync—
with how today’s B2B buyers buy…”
informed and have more leverage than ever before. Furthermore, there
are simply more stakeholders engaged in the B2B buying process.
Legacy go-to-market strategies are losing their effectiveness, and the
emergence of software-as-a-service and the ‘subscription economy’ has
forced us to rethink how we engage with customers along the entire
journey—in particular, heightening the need for us to frame Demand
Experience via both the pre-sale and the post-sale arc.
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7. 7
A Converged Growth Lens Addresses Key
GTM Challenges and Improves Lift
A Converged Growth approach to go-to-market is specifically designed for the
modern B2B buyer.
It’s based around orchestrating interactions and ensuring stewardship
across all stages of the customer journey, pre- and post-sale—fully
operationalizing go-to-market around customer journey.
Converged Growth is also about creating a seamless experience for
the buyer, from the moment they first learn about your company to the
moment they become a customer and beyond—supporting their Demand
Experience with right time/right channel content and team engagement
that aids their journey at every stage.
Converged Growth has been proven to outshine “random acts” and
“growth hacking”—delivering predictable and sustainable growth.
Organizations that take this approach significantly outperform their peers.
Key benefits of a Converged Growth GTM
approach include:
Higher customer satisfaction; greater retention.
Customers are more likely to be satisfied with a product or
service when they have value-added engagement with the
company at all stages.
Improved sales performance. Sales teams close more
deals by repeatedly being in the right place, right time with
the right level of customer engagement.
Reduced costs; higher ROI. Companies reduce costs by
eliminating GTM inefficiencies and optimizing interactions
against outcomes.
Sustainable (high) growth. Businesses grow faster by
attracting new customers, retaining existing customers,
and expanding overall spend.
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8. 8
The Four Pillars of
Converged Growth
When defining a Converged Growth go-to-market organization that is
organized around a Chief Growth Officer, we should consider four key
pillars that underpin the approach to programs and organization:
1. End-to-end customer lifecycle. Converged Growth takes a holistic
view of the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy. It
recognizes that every interaction with a customer—whether
via marketing, sales or customer success—has the potential to
influence the decision-making process.
2. Cross-functional teams. Converged Growth requires cross-
functional collaboration between sales, marketing and customer
success. This ensures that everyone is working towards the same
goal and that the customer has a consistent experience.
3. Data-driven, closed-loop insights. Converged Growth is data-driven
and closed-loop—tightly correlating customer interactions to their
commercial outcomes.
4. Continuous improvement. Converged Growth is not a one-time
initiative—it is a sustainable platform for growth. Thus, it requires and
sets the stage for continuous learning, improvement and optimization.
Rethinking the GTM
Tech Stack
Once you’ve re-aligned your go-to-market programs and organization,
Converged Growth also requires a re-aligned GTM Technology Stack
to support new processes. This book lays out key ideas about how to
rethink your GTM Tech Stack via a Converged Growth lens—evolving
your existing MarTech and RevOps stacks.
An effective GTM Technology Stack must enable customer telemetry,
customer orchestration and customer continuity. It should be able to
orchestrate interactions across the entire customer journey, and in doing
so better align disparate departments and their customer interactions.
The GTM Technology Stack must also build a base of customer
interaction data that is meaningful and actionable. Thus, it must create
a Customer Data Value Chain (i.e., a holistic, end-to-end view of the
customer) that isn’t dissected across various systems, but thoughtfully
built in such a way that systems and interactions federate customer
demographic and interaction data.
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9. 9
KPIs and Our New Growth Goal: Maximizing
Lift to Customer Lifetime Value
When you take a Converged Growth approach to go-to-market, what is the
impact on analytics and KPIs?
What is the impact of a Converged Growth Go-to-Market on your
analytics and KPIs? GTM transformation—specifically, shifting from
random acts of marketing and sales to a perpetual Growth Engine—has
significant implications for the KPIs we use to optimize our go-to-market
programs and processes.
We are no longer as concerned about short-term bookings and renewals,
as we are about the impact our combination of GTM interactions have
on customer lifetime value (CLV). In other words, we are most concerned
about the net “Lift” to CLV that we get from incremental investment in
go-to-market programs. Our analytical goal subsequently becomes fine-
tuning these interactions at every stage of the customer journey to really
optimize a long-term, sustainable, and ultimately profitable customer
value and maximum Lift to CLV.
We subsequently need to build a system of KPIs that support this multi-
point, multi-touch optimization. The cornerstones of this system are four
categories of KPIs:
Of course, there are many sub-metrics and data points that feed
these KPIs, but these are the four categories critical to gauging and
optimizing your go-to-market effectiveness, i.e., lift to customer
lifetime value. We will go into more detail on these critical KPIs in a
subsequent section of this book.
Lift
Conversion
Velocity
Levers
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10. 10
Conversation Track segmentation: Segmenting customers based
on their interests and interactions with us, and thereby targeting
our marketing and sales efforts more effectively by orchestrating
interactions across teams, programs and systems.
Both contact-level and account-level visibility: Seeing the full
customer journey, from initial contact to purchase to post-sale
support, allows us to identify opportunities to improve the customer
experience at every stage.
Focus on customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer profitability
(CP): These metrics help us measure the value of each customer to
our business, allowing us to make decisions about how to allocate
resources to maximize CLV.
Multi-interaction tracking (MIT) of contacts: The ability to track
customer interactions across all channels (including website visits,
emails, and phone calls) is considered table stakes, but not everyone
tracks with the right goals in place. Ultimately, this data is crucial
because it helps us understand what customers are interested in and
how they prefer to interact with us.
Converged pre- and post-sale framework: This is an area where many
growth organizations drop the ball, thus losing the ability to create a
seamless customer experience from pre-sale through post-sale.
Granular, closed-loop reporting: This relatively common goal is
seldom ideally executed. However, it is crucial for measuring the
effectiveness of our marketing and sales interactions at every step
and identifying areas where we can improve.
How do you get to these metrics, and how do you achieve a state where you
are able to connect every interaction to an optimized set of outcomes and of
overall Lift to CLV?
Here are some of the analytical cornerstones that will help us achieve this goal:
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11. 11
Pivoting to Implement a Converged
Growth Lens
Transforming your organization’s go-to-market using a Converged Growth
approach won’t be easy, but it is feasible.
Here are a few tips to get started:
Start with a clear understanding of the
customer journey.
Who is your customer and what exactly are they looking for? What
are the different stages they go through,before, during, and after they
become a customer?
Identify the key touchpoints that shape
Demand Experience.
What are the different ways that customers interact with your
business—across marketing, sales and customer service? What is the
critical path?
Ensure stewardship at each touchpoint.
Who is responsible for ensuring that each touchpoint is successful?
How are you orchestrating digital and live interactions? How do you
drive a Demand Experience that is multi-channel, spanning both pre-
and-post sale and including key content that meets the needs of all key
stakeholders at the right place and right time?
Measure (and optimize) the results.
How can you measure the success of your Converged Growth initiatives?
How can you optimize each touchpoint to drive the highest level of
Demand Experience, end-to-end?
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12. 12
WhatisConverged
GrowthandWhyisit
GoingtoChangeYour
Go-to-MarketStrategy?
DEEP DIVE
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13. 13
The role or committee of the Chief Growth Officer is
necessary because market dynamics around growth are
changing in significant ways.
No longer can growth be focused solely on “pre-sale” motions—the
post-sale phases of the customer journey are now critical contributors
to growth. Organizational hierarchies and “jobs to be done” need to be
re-thought to better offer customer stewardship along the customer
journey, and to better orchestrate engagement across the entire
Demand Experience.
Unfortunately, too many marketing leaders either don’t have a vision for
reimagining this type of organizational integration or lack the authority
to make these needed adjustments.
This new way of looking at growth across the entire customer journey is
what we call Converged Growth. It is all about creating and orchestrating
engagement across the entire customer journey, joining pre-and-post
sale processes to create a perpetual growth engine that is repeatable,
scalable and incredibly effective under any market conditions.
The “Converged” aspects
Managing a singular, end-to-end customer lifecycle vs.
“random acts” of marketing or a primarily pre-sales focus.
Operating with a shared organizational identity around
blended customer-lifecycle-stage-aligned, go-to-market
teams vs. a siloed “marketing” or “sales” or “customer success”
organizational focus
The “Growth” aspects
Seeing Growth as the central objective of the go-to-market
organization vs. focusing on isolated metrics (e.g., leads,
conversions, etc.)
Attaining strategic, sustainable growth with a “customers for
life” mindset vs. “growth hacking” and disjointed campaigns.
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