Jaime Ruhl, CRO at Emergn, joins Warren Zenna to explore how a sales leader becomes a strategic revenue architect in a product‑centric consulting firm. She explains stepping into a broader remit that covers sales, go‑to‑market and marketing alignment across global teams. Jaime describes being a player‑coach who builds repeatable sales motion and champions measurable customer outcomes after delivery.

Jaime digs into practical moves she led: shifting from sporadic lead chasing to a disciplined target account approach, tightening qualification at the funnel entrance, and leveraging intent signals, account reports and smarter prospecting tools. She describes building persona‑led outreach, thought leadership assets, and repeatable playbooks that scale account expansion and shorten cycles. Jaime also tightened lead handoff timing and aligned content cadence with selling motions.

This episode contrasts consulting revenue with pure SaaS by unpacking stakeholder mapping, surrounding the customer with delivery, product and commercial teams, and balancing client intimacy with scalable processes. Jaime explains clearer handoffs, joint KPIs, role clarity and incentive design to reduce internal friction and drive sustainable expansion and retention. She stresses mapping buying centers and creating accountable cross‑functional teams.

Jaime closes with tactical advice for new CROs: surround yourself with people who raise your game, ask why to learn the rationale behind decisions, pilot changes and lead by example, and cultivate mentors. She urges CROs to balance staying in the trenches to learn with delegating, define a focused go‑to‑market, test AI capabilities before broad rollout, and communicate early wins to build momentum.