Host Helen Sutton speaks with Jason Tooley, Executive Advisor to CEO.

Jason Tooley recently stepped back from Chief Sales Officer at Soldo into an advisory role with CEO Carlo and the incoming SVP Sales, alongside his board role at techUK. His career spans Veritas, Viridium, Dynatrace, Informatica and Citrix, with a consistent focus on growth through both direct and indirect channels.

He started as the first non-graduate BP Exploration hired into its IT organisation, moved to Reuters, then set up his own consultancy — where running the business and driving sales pulled him into a sales career proper, beginning with a sales director role at Tivoli.

What we cover

• Moving from operator to adviser, and giving the team room to run the business
• Why Jason chose growth: creating value for clients, and innovating around how you take that value to market
• His approach to assessing a business's real potential — go-to-market differentiation, market maturity, competitor behaviour, and whether the value sell touches multiple stakeholders
• The two limiting factors most people miss: whether your customers can transform at your pace, and whether your own business can innovate at the pace the market demands
• The Citrix pivot in the early 2010s from a technology play to mobility and remote working — including bringing the partner ecosystem along at the same pace
• Setting targets that stretch without breaking: build the plan with the integrated team, show the path, not just the number
• Why the CRO must be invested in every go-to-market function, not just the ones they came from
• Silos, collaboration, and why Jason talks about demand generation rather than pipeline
• What he hires for in individual contributors and, differently, in first-line leaders

Jason's top three for anyone stepping into a CRO role

1. Don't just be an operator — be an innovator. Drive and differentiate the go-to-market, and be willing to challenge clients on the value you can create.
2. Make everyone a great storyteller — sales, marketing, PR, technical. It's at risk of becoming a dying art, and executive-level clients value it enormously.
3. Don't create silos. Break them down, insist on an integrated go-to-market model, and invest in every area of the business.

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