What Is a Chief Growth Officer? The Role, the Three Kinds, and Whether You Need One

What Is a Chief Growth Officer?

A chief growth officer (CGO) is the senior executive accountable for the company's growth as a whole: where it will come from, which functions deliver it, and whether it is worth what it costs. Most executives own a department. A CGO owns an outcome that crosses several of them.

The role exists because growth problems rarely sit inside one function. Marketing can generate leads that sales cannot close. Sales can win customers that customer success cannot keep. Each leader can hit their own target while the company as a whole stops growing. The CGO's job is the whole chain, and the decisions that fall between its links.

In some companies the title replaced the chief marketing officer. In others it sits above sales, marketing and customer success. In a few it runs new markets and new products while the core business runs on its own. Those are different jobs, and the difference matters more than anything else in this article.

What Does a Chief Growth Officer Do?

A chief growth officer decides where growth will come from, then makes the functions that deliver it work as one. In practice that means six responsibilities.

1. Sets the growth plan. Which customers, products and markets next year's growth will come from, and how much from each. The result is a plan that names the sources of growth in numbers, not a list of hopes.
2. Joins up the revenue engine. One target, one definition of a qualified lead and one view of the funnel across marketing, sales and customer success, so marketing and sales stop arguing over whose numbers are right.
3. Owns customer insight. Why customers buy, stay, expand and leave, drawn from interviews and data, and what that means for the product, the price and the message.
4. Grows the customers you already have. Retention and expansion are usually the cheapest growth available, and the easiest to neglect when everyone is chasing new logos.
5. Opens new ground. Tests new segments, offers, channels and partners as small, measured bets, then scales the ones that work and stops the ones that do not.
6. Runs the growth numbers. A short set of measures reviewed every month, and the authority to move budget from what is not working to what is.

The Three Kinds of Chief Growth Officer

Most chief growth officer roles are one of three jobs, and each needs a different person.

A search that does not settle this first will attract all three kinds of candidate, and the person hired may do a different job from the one the board had in mind. Before anyone writes a job description, write down which of the three you need, what it will own, and what it will not.

Who Does a Chief Growth Officer Report To?

A chief growth officer reports to the chief executive. Growth that crosses functions needs authority that crosses them too, and only the CEO has it. A CGO who reports to the CMO or the COO is a growth manager with a bigger title.

Who reports to the CGO depends on the kind. A marketing-led CGO usually leads the marketing team. A commercial CGO leads marketing, sales, customer success and often revenue operations. A new-growth CGO may lead only a small team, and borrow people from the core business for each bet.

In a founder-led company, the founder often keeps growth for themselves. That works until every growth decision queues at the founder's desk. At that point the founder has to step back from doing the work to running the company, and growth needs an owner of its own.

Chief Growth Officer vs CMO, CRO, CCO, COO and Chief Strategy Officer

The closest titles overlap with the CGO in different places. The difference is what each one owns and what it is judged on.

If you are choosing between a CGO and a CRO, ask whether your problem is running the revenue engine or finding the next source of growth. A chief revenue officer is built for the first, and a chief commercial officer for the first with a sharper eye on margin. A CGO earns its place when the second is the problem. The commercial kind of CGO is often a CRO under another name.

A chief development officer is a different role again. In nonprofits the title usually means fundraising, in drug companies product development, and in businesses with many sites, opening new locations.

What a Chief Growth Officer Is Measured On

Judge a CGO on growth the company would not have had otherwise, and on what it cost. Six measures cover most of it.

• Revenue growth rate, against the plan and against last year.
• Net revenue retention. Revenue this year from last year's customers, after expansion and losses. Above 100 percent means existing customers are growing the business on their own.
• Revenue from new ground. The share of revenue from segments, products or markets that did not exist two years ago.
• Cost of growth. Sales and marketing spend per dollar of new annual revenue, or the months it takes to earn back the cost of winning a customer.
• Win rate and length of the sales cycle in the segments the plan targets.
• Gross margin on new revenue. Growth bought with discounts is growth the company pays for twice.

The warning sign is a CGO who reports activity instead: campaigns launched, experiments run, partners signed. Activity is how growth gets made. It is not the growth.

Does Your Company Need a Chief Growth Officer?

You probably need one when most of these are true:

• Growth has slowed, but every function says it hit its own targets.
• Marketing, sales and customer success argue over whose numbers are right.
• The founder is still the only person thinking about where growth comes from next.
• New markets or products get tried, but nobody owns them and nothing is learned when they fail.
• The core business is steady and the board wants to know what comes after it.

You probably do not need one yet when:

• The founder still closes most deals. The first senior hire is a sales leader, and handing over founder-led sales comes before a growth executive.
• The problem sits in one function. If leads are the problem, strengthen marketing. If conversion is, strengthen sales.
• You need someone to run the revenue engine day to day. That is a chief revenue officer or a VP of sales.

Hiring a Chief Growth Officer: What to Look For

Look for five things, whichever kind of CGO you are hiring:

• They have owned a number, not only a function.
• They have worked across at least two of marketing, sales and product.
• They can show growth they found that was not in the plan, and bets they stopped.
• They read data and talk to customers, both, every month.
• They can change what other leaders do without owning their teams. Much of the job is persuasion.

Five questions that separate the candidates:

1. "Where do you think our next stage of growth comes from, and what would you need to know to be sure?"
2. "Tell me about growth you found that was not in anyone's plan. How did you find it?"
3. "Tell me about a growth bet you stopped. How did you know, and how long did it take?"
4. "Which of our functions would you change first, and which would you leave alone?"
5. "How should we measure your first year, and what would make you call it a failure?"

Full time, part time or advisor

A full-time CGO makes sense once growth needs a dedicated executive and the company can carry the cost of one. Before that, many companies get the same thinking part time: an experienced operator who sets the plan with the founder, names the levers and holds the leadership team to them, while the existing leaders keep running their functions. If the job you need is the commercial kind, the part-time version is a part-time revenue leader who runs sales and marketing as one engine.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does CGO stand for?

CGO stands for chief growth officer, the executive accountable for a company's growth across functions. The same letters are sometimes used for chief governance officer, so check the context when you see CGO in a job title or an organization chart.

Is a chief growth officer higher than a CMO?

Usually, when both exist. A chief growth officer typically reports to the CEO and may have the chief marketing officer reporting to them. In some companies, though, the CGO title simply replaced the CMO title, and the two are the same job under a different name.

What is the difference between a chief growth officer and a chief revenue officer?

A chief revenue officer runs the revenue engine that exists today: sales, marketing, customer success and the forecast. A chief growth officer is accountable for where the next growth comes from, which can include new customers, products and markets. The commercial kind of CGO is close to a CRO.

Is a head of growth the same as a chief growth officer?

No. A head of growth is usually a hands-on role in a younger company, running experiments in how customers are found, signed up and converted. A chief growth officer sits on the leadership team, owns the growth plan and directs several functions.

Does a small business need a chief growth officer?

Rarely as a full-time hire. Until several functions need joining up, the founder or a sales leader usually owns growth. A small company tends to get more from a part-time growth advisor who builds the plan with the founder and holds the team to it.

Final Thought

A chief growth officer is only as useful as the decision behind the hire. Decide which growth problem you have: more demand, a revenue engine that works as one, or the next business after this one. Then hire the kind of CGO built for that problem, and judge them on growth that would not have happened otherwise. Choosing where growth will come from is the N of the UNLOCK Method: name the growth levers. If you need that thinking before you need the full-time seat, a growth advisor can do it alongside your team.