Every founder knows the pressure to keep revenue moving. You hire a CRO or head of sales, expecting focus on pipeline, deal velocity, and customer retention. But in practice, many CROs are pulled away from their core mandate. Fundraising, key accounts, board reporting: all critical, but all distractions. And when the sales leader is distracted, growth quietly stalls.
The Reality of Distraction
McKinsey has found that B2B sales leaders spend less than 30% of their time actually engaging with customers (McKinsey, 2022). Salesforce’s State of Sales report shows that reps and managers lose nearly 70% of their week to admin and internal coordination instead of selling (Salesforce, 2023).
That loss of focus filters down. Account execs chase unqualified leads. Junior marketers are left without strategic direction. Product and marketing alignment gets sloppy. The CRO may look busy, but the system beneath them starts to fray.
The Founder’s Dilemma
Founders feel it most acutely. They see momentum slow, but the root cause is hidden. The CRO still looks engaged, reporting on forecasts and big deals. Yet smaller deals slip, renewals weaken, and pipeline health deteriorates. By the time results show in the numbers, months of damage are already baked in.
Nonprofits experience a parallel issue. Development leaders get absorbed in large grants or board relations, while day-to-day donor stewardship suffers. Advocacy and communications teams run in parallel, rather than converging on a shared growth story. The organization feels busy. But effectiveness erodes.
Why It’s Hard to Fix Internally
Boards and founders often hesitate to intervene. Challenging a CRO can feel like second-guessing your own hiring judgment. And junior staff rarely raise alarms: they’re too busy patching gaps.
But distraction is rarely about capability. It’s about scope. The modern CRO role has ballooned: revenue strategy, investor alignment, customer success, cross-functional leadership. No one person can carry all of it effectively without structured support.
Practical Levers That Work
When a CRO loses focus, the answer isn’t to panic. It’s to re-balance the system. Some of the most effective moves I’ve seen include:
- Fractional leadership support. Surprise! A fractional CMO can step in to unify messaging, shore up pipeline quality, and realign sales with marketing priorities.
- Sharper enablement systems. Automations that strip admin out of reps’ weeks free up selling time. Salesforce data shows automation boosts win rates by up to 15% when paired with clear strategy (Salesforce, 2023). I’ve seen the same.
- Board-backed clarity. Boards and CEOs that give CROs explicit permission to narrow focus (fewer markets, tighter ICPs, clearer outbound sequences) often see faster rebound.
- Nonprofit integration. Bridgespan’s work shows nonprofits that unify development, comms, and advocacy see stronger donor engagement and retention (Bridgespan, 2023).
A Global Challenge
This isn’t just a U.S. dynamic. Government advisories in the UK, Canada, and Australia have all urged SMEs to strengthen leadership efficiency and reduce role sprawl during economic volatility (Gov.uk, 2024; Government of Canada, 2024; ATO, 2024). In other words, leaner leadership systems aren’t optional: they’re resilience strategies.
The Founder’s Job
The founder’s role is to see the distraction early. Not by micromanaging, but by noticing the system-level symptoms: pipeline slippage, campaign drift, donor fatigue. And then to rebalance leadership, whether with fractional help, clarified scope, or systems that free up scarce executive attention.
Because growth doesn’t stall from lack of effort. It stalls when focus is diluted. And the sooner you bring that focus back, the sooner the system starts working again.