The statistics are brutal: the average Chief Revenue Officer lasts just 18 months in role. Most leave before they’ve had a chance to make meaningful impact. Some are pushed out when results don’t materialise quickly enough. Others jump ship when the reality of the challenge doesn’t match the promise of the interview process.
Grant Coleman has done the opposite. As CRO at Uberall, he’s not only survived past the industry average, he’s thrived. When he joined the martech company just over two years ago, he inherited a go-to-market organisation that was, to put it mildly, struggling. Win rates sat at 9%. Churn was a problem. The 200-person team needed direction.
Two years later, the numbers tell a different story. Win rates have climbed from 9% to 32%. Pipeline generation has tripled. These aren’t marginal gains or accounting tricks. They’re the results of systematic, disciplined execution.
So what exactly did Grant do? And more importantly, what can other revenue leaders learn from his playbook?
The Reality Check: What You’re Actually Walking Into
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about taking a CRO role at a struggling organisation: the problems are always deeper than they appear in the interview process. A 9% win rate isn’t just a sales execution problem. It’s a symptom of multiple underlying issues.
Maybe the product-market fit isn’t quite right. Perhaps the ideal customer profile is poorly defined, so your sellers are chasing deals they’ll never close. The sales process might be broken, or your team may lack the skills to execute it properly. Pricing could be wrong. Positioning could be off. Your tech stack might be creating more friction than value.
Grant’s situation at Uberall likely involved several of these challenges simultaneously. Most turnaround situations do.
The critical first step for any incoming revenue leader is honest diagnosis. Not the sanitised version you present to the board, but the brutal reality of what’s actually broken. You can’t fix what you won’t acknowledge.
The Weekly Cadence: Why Consistency Trumps Intensity
One of the patterns that emerges from successful revenue turnarounds is this: sustainable change comes from weekly cadence, not quarterly heroics.
Grant built his transformation on predictable, repeatable rhythms. Weekly pipeline reviews. Weekly one-on-ones with his leadership team. Weekly forecasting sessions. Weekly skill development.
This matters because sales organisations are ultimately performance engines. They need fuel (pipeline), maintenance (coaching and development), and regular calibration (forecasting and reviews). Miss a week and you fall behind. Miss a month and you’ve lost the quarter.
The temptation for many revenue leaders, especially those under pressure to deliver quick results, is to focus intensely on deals in the short term whilst neglecting the systems that generate deals in the long term. They live in the CRM, micromanaging opportunities and jumping into customer calls.
This creates dependency, not capability. Your team learns to wait for your intervention rather than solving problems themselves.
Grant’s approach appears to be different. By establishing consistent weekly rhythms, he created accountability without creating dependency. His team knew what was expected, when it was expected, and what good performance looked like.
Building High Performers: The Leadership Approach
Taking a team from underperforming to world-class (and let’s be clear, a 32% win rate is world-class in most markets) requires more than just better process. It requires developing your people.
This is where many revenue leaders fall short. They’re brilliant at strategy, competent at execution, but mediocre at developing talent. They hire experienced people and expect them to figure it out.
The problem? Even experienced sellers need coaching in your specific market, with your specific product, against your specific competitors. The skills that made them successful in their last role won’t automatically transfer.
Grant’s success suggests he understood this. You don’t triple pipeline generation without dramatically improving your team’s capabilities. That means investing in skill development, providing clear feedback, and creating an environment where people can improve.
It also means making tough decisions about who stays and who goes. A 9% win rate typically indicates you’ve got some people in the wrong roles. Transforming the team probably required both developing the keepers and moving on from those who couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt.
This is uncomfortable work. It’s also essential work.
The First 18 Months: What Actually Matters
If you’re a revenue leader trying to make impact in your first 18 months, here’s what Grant’s story suggests you should focus on:
Diagnose ruthlessly. Spend your first 30 days understanding what’s actually broken. Talk to customers who chose you and customers who didn’t. Ride along with your top performers and your struggling reps. Review your tech stack, your compensation plans, your sales process. Don’t make changes yet. Just understand.
Fix the fundamentals first. Before you rebuild your entire go-to-market motion, fix the basics. Can your team articulate your value proposition clearly? Do they know your ideal customer profile? Is your sales process documented and followed? Are you measuring the right activities and outcomes?
Build weekly rhythms. Establish predictable cadences for pipeline generation, deal reviews, forecasting, and coaching. Make these non-negotiable. Your team needs to know that every Tuesday at 10am, you’re reviewing pipeline. Every Thursday at 2pm, you’re doing forecast calls. Consistency creates accountability.
Invest in your leaders. Your direct reports are your force multipliers. If you have five sales leaders reporting to you, and each manages ten reps, fixing problems at the leadership level has a 10x impact compared to fixing problems at the rep level. Spend disproportionate time developing your leaders.
Show progress quickly. You don’t need to fix everything in 90 days, but you do need to show movement. Maybe you improve win rates from 9% to 15% in your first quarter. That’s not the end goal, but it’s proof that your approach is working. It buys you time and credibility to make deeper changes.
Play the long game. Tripling pipeline doesn’t happen in one quarter. It happens over six to eight quarters of consistent execution. Set realistic expectations with your board and your team about the timeline for transformation.
The Uncomfortable Question: Can This Be Replicated?
Here’s the question every revenue leader reading this should be asking: is Grant’s success transferable, or is it specific to his situation, his skills, and his market?
The honest answer is probably “both.” The principles are transferable. Ruthless diagnosis, fixing fundamentals, building consistent cadence, investing in people, showing incremental progress whilst playing the long game. These work across industries and company stages.
But execution is personal. Grant brought 16 years of SaaS and martech experience to Uberall. He understood the market, the buyer, and the competitive landscape. That domain expertise mattered. He also presumably brought leadership skills honed over multiple roles and companies.
You can’t simply copy his playbook line by line and expect the same results. But you can adopt his principles and adapt them to your context.
The Real Measure of Success
There’s one more thing worth noting about Grant’s story: he’s still there. In an industry where CROs last 18 months on average, he’s passed two years and appears to be going strong.
That staying power matters. It means the transformation he led isn’t superficial. The board believes in his approach. The team is responding. The results are sustainable.
For revenue leaders taking on turnaround situations, that should be the real goal. Not just hitting your first-year numbers, but building something that lasts. Creating a go-to-market engine that generates predictable, sustainable revenue. Developing a team that can execute without your constant intervention. Building a culture that attracts and retains top talent.
That’s the difference between a quick fix and a real transformation. And based on the numbers, Grant seems to have figured out how to do the latter.
The question for the rest of us is: are we willing to put in the disciplined, weekly work required to do the same?
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