Communication & AI Strategy | Revenue Unplugged

James Hounslow opened Revenue Unplugged by pointing out that I'd been the first-ever guest on the show, and then handed me a much less flattering statistic: the average CRO now lasts about eighteen months in the seat. In my experience that almost never comes down to missing the number — everyone misses a number eventually — it comes down to how badly that miss gets communicated.

The fix I walked through is what I call the one-page annual plan: a single grid, months across the top, every revenue source down the side, that gets revisited monthly so the board can watch you check boxes instead of hearing surprises. I also compared private equity to house-flipping — nobody expects the kitchen to be perfect on day one, they just want the leader who says "this corner cabinet is a serious problem, here's what I'm doing about it" instead of pretending it's fine.

We also got into AI, and I told James I keep landing on the same conclusion: it's a pattern-matching machine, genuinely useful for research and prep, but it can't look someone in the eye and build trust the way a person can. The sellers and CROs who'll be fine are the ones treating AI as a tool that frees up time for the human parts of the job, not a replacement for them.