The CRO's guide to scaling top-performer behaviours

The CRO Challenge: Maintaining Consistency Amid Complexity

Revenue leaders today operate in what Hayden calls "perpetual upgrade mode." Go-to-market teams face constant change — new products, reorgs, quotas, markets, and AI-driven disruption — all while battling market changes and rising buyer expectations.

Most organisations experience the 80/20 rule: 20% of sellers drive the 80% of growth. The challenge lies in moving the next 20%, and the next, up the curve. Without a consistent playbook and an enablement engine at the centre, revenue teams can't evolve.

"Transformation only works when it changes how your team operates — when new strategies turn into new habits, and repetition builds the muscle memory revenue teams rely on." — Hayden Stafford

Enablement sits at the centre of this challenge by turning constant change into consistent execution, so performance can scale beyond the top tier.

Uncover what your best sellers do differently

The first move for any CRO is understanding what their top performers do differently.

It's rarely about a seller's personality. It's about repeatable actions like how they prepare, engage, and follow up. AI now gives revenue leaders a lens into these micro-behaviours at scale. Here's how leading companies are using it:

• Expedia uses AI-powered coaching and automation to boost win rates.
• AllianceBernstein uses performance data to automatically generate compliant client materials, freeing reps to focus on conversations, not content.
• Grab cut its ramp times in half by analysing its best performers' habits and replicating them across new hires.

"Taking the time to look at the patterns and behaviours of your top sellers is everything," says Hayden. The foundation of a scalable revenue system is insights grounded in real performance, not assumptions.

Turn insights into everyday habits

Once those high-impact behaviours are identified, the next step is making them stick.

Hayden outlined a simple but powerful framework used inside Seismic itself:

1. Use data to identify what drives performance.
2. Use technology to reinforce and automate those behaviours.
3. Use enablement to ensure continuous coaching and consistency.

By applying its own AI tools, Seismic discovered what its top 20% of sellers do differently — from engagement cadence to meeting behaviours. Using Seismic Aura, those insights now feed into coaching programmes, learning paths, and meeting preparation. Leaderboards, cadences, and business rhythms reinforce those habits organisation-wide.

Make adaptability your competitive edge

In the past, sales leaders hired for IQ (intelligence) or EQ (emotional intelligence). Today, the differentiator is AQ — adaptability quotient. It's the ability to flex, learn, and reframe faster than the environment changes. In an era where AI is constantly reshaping how revenue teams work, that adaptability isn't a nice-to-have — it's the new competitive edge.

Markets move fast. Technology evolves faster. AI raises the stakes, accelerating the pace of change and surfacing insights in real time. The teams that thrive are the ones able to act on those insights just as quickly — sensing and responding in the moment. AI becomes the accelerant, and AQ is what allows sellers and managers to keep up, turning automation into advantage while staying focused on what matters most: relationships, conviction, and trust.

"AI isn't going to replace sellers. But it will replace sellers — and managers — who don't use it," contends Hayden. CROs must create environments where adaptability is rewarded. Embed micro-learning, personalised nudges, and AI-driven recommendations directly into the flow of work. By shortening feedback loops, you can drive faster behaviour change and better performance.

Seismic Learning enables this kind of agility by delivering targeted content and coaching at the exact moment it's needed, keeping teams ready for whatever comes next.

Scale Through Structure

High performance doesn't scale through chaos — it scales through structure. Uber's enablement team shared a powerful model at SHIFT: "Innovate at the edge, scale in the core." Edge teams experiment locally, solving for specific customer needs. Core teams then codify what works, automate it, and push it back out across regions.

That same principle applies to revenue organisations of any size. Empower your field teams to test new approaches, but create a mechanism — powered by data and enablement — to capture and amplify what works everywhere.

The balance of agility and alignment separates organisations that grow quickly from those that scale sustainably. For Uber, this shift is already reshaping outcomes: ramp time is targeted to fall from five months to three as global sales motions become more consistent and enablement becomes a strategic lever for growth.

Humans + AI: The New Enablement Flywheel

The future of enablement isn't about man or machine — it's about both. AI does the manual work; humans deliver the trust and build relationships.

When AI takes on the repeatable work like forecast prep, meeting insights, content matching, it frees sellers to build relationships, read the room, and close with conviction.

But technology alone doesn't transform performance. As Hayden noted at Shift, AI becomes most powerful when it acts like an exoskeleton for sellers — strengthening the muscle that's already there, not replacing it. It amplifies good habits, corrects unproductive ones in real time, and gives managers visibility to coach with precision.

Organisations that master this human + AI flywheel see exponential effects: better productivity, faster ramp times, and customer experiences that feel more personal. Because as long as humans are buying, humans will be selling. The difference is that tomorrow's sellers will be supercharged by AI.

From Enablement Function to Strategic Growth Engine

Shift also underscored a broader transformation: enablement is no longer a support function — it's a strategic growth engine.

Companies like Uber, Shopify, and Legal & General have shown what modern enablement makes possible. When it's unified under one charter, powered by AI, and tied directly to revenue outcomes, it delivers measurable impact — from faster ramp to stronger, more consistent deal execution.

The CRO playbook is clear:

• Identify top-performer behaviours
• Make them measurable through data
• Reinforce them with AI and enablement
• Adapt continuously
• Scale what works

When CROs align people, process, and technology under a shared enablement strategy, they unlock not just better performance, but a culture of continuous improvement.

The CRO's New Mandate

The modern CRO isn't just a revenue leader — they're the chief architect of adaptability. Their remit now spans people, process, and platforms, connecting them in a single, intelligent system that scales what works and evolves what doesn't.

To lead in this new era, CROs must design organisations where excellence is engineered, not accidental. That means:

• Turning top-performer insights into playbooks powered by AI.
• Building enablement structures that drive consistent execution globally.
• Cultivating a culture where data informs every decision — but empathy still closes the deal.

AI has changed the pace of selling forever, but it hasn't changed the fundamentals. Trust remains the ultimate currency, and enablement is how trust scales. The CRO's job is to orchestrate that balance — ensuring humans and AI move in rhythm to deliver outcomes that matter: growth, loyalty, and long-term customer confidence. Excellence at scale isn't about replacing intuition with automation — it's about giving intuition more leverage. That's the CRO's new superpower.

Ready to scale your team's top-performer behaviours? Discover how Seismic's AI-powered enablement platform helps CROs turn individual brilliance into repeatable success.