KPIs Every Chief Revenue Officer Must Track

The Chief Revenue Officer is accountable for total revenue across the full customer lifecycle, not just new bookings. That makes the CRO the one executive who must read acquisition, retention, and expansion metrics as a single system. ARR growth is the headline outcome, but its leading indicators live upstream: pipeline coverage predicts whether the number is attainable, win rate and sales cycle length determine how efficiently pipeline converts, and ACV reveals whether the go-to-market motion is targeting the intended segment. On the retention side, net revenue retention (NRR) and gross revenue retention (GRR) determine how much of existing revenue compounds versus leaks, and expansion revenue shows whether the base is growing on its own. The CRO also owns the unit economics that make growth durable: LTV/CAC ratio and CAC payback period reveal whether revenue is being bought profitably or subsidized. The core CRO discipline is refusing to treat these as separate scoreboards. A strong new-business quarter masked by rising churn is not growth, and the CRO is the person responsible for seeing the whole picture.