B2B SaaS Business — Software & Technology

A software company parted ways with a Chief Revenue Officer nine months after appointment. The cost was substantial, but the more damaging issue was that the board could not explain what had gone wrong, which made a confident second attempt impossible.

Erdobar began with a structured review of the failed appointment rather than a search. It emerged that the role had been specified around enterprise sales leadership while the business actually operated a product-led model with self-service adoption — two fundamentally different disciplines that had been conflated in the original brief.

We rewrote the specification around product-led growth, then assessed candidates on their experience converting free usage into commercial contracts. Three of five shortlisted candidates had done precisely this at comparable scale. Final interviews used the client’s live conversion data rather than hypothetical questions, giving the board a clear basis for comparison.

Outcome: Appointment completed in 8 weeks, net revenue retention up 18 points within four quarters, and the diagnostic approach adopted as standard for all subsequent executive hires.