The CRO’s Playbook: Orchestrating human and AI performance in sales

The CRO role is changing fast, AI is accelerating and skills are shifting. CROs know change is needed, but not always where to begin - so we have created a clear, step by step playbook to get started.

This 50-page playbook brings together:

• Research from Warwick Business School’s Sales Excellence Hub

• Practitioner insights from Hive Perform & Corporate Visions

• Discussions with CROs and revenue leaders from our recent London roundtable

It reveals how elite teams are redesigning data foundations, workflows, skills, and human–AI boundaries to drive consistent, repeatable performance in a noisier world.

This playbook summarises the core findings and practical implications for CROs directly from Warwick Business School’s research and the insights surfaced in our CRO roundtable discussion.

What you’ll learn

Inside the playbook, you’ll find:

• The four capability gaps choking AI performance in most sales orgs.

• Where AI truly creates leverage and where humans remain irreplaceable.

• How CROs are cutting through “AI slop” to build meaningful pipeline in a saturated outbound market.

• How the best teams are using AI to professionalise sales again, not replace it.

• The six-step playbook: audit → fix → strategise → experiment → scale → evolve.

Why this matters

AI isn’t the hard part.
Operationalising it is.

Most teams break not because of talent, they break because:

• Data is inconsistent

• Processes are unclear

• Skills haven’t evolved

• Sellers don’t trust AI

• Leaders can’t see what’s happening in deals

This playbook gives you a clear blueprint to redesign your sales operating system so humans and AI actually work together.