What's the real difference between a CFO and a COO? Can you do both roles simultaneously? And which title is more desirable from a career perspective? Today’s guest, Colin Sims, who is currently the CFO of Hunters but has held both titles multiple times, joins CJ to answer these questions and to talk about channel sales. They discuss what it takes to build a successful channel sales model and how companies need to “feed the channels" before expecting them to feed the company in return. You’ll hear about winning sales motions, what to look for in a CRO, and why transparency trumps democracy when it comes to business decisions.

If you're looking for an ERP, head to NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and get the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning.

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SPONSORS:

Planful is a financial performance management platform designed to streamline financial tasks for businesses. It helps with budgeting, closing the books, and financial reporting, all on a cloud-based platform. By improving the efficiency and accuracy of these processes, Planful allows businesses to make better financial decisions. Find out more at www.planful.com/metrics.

Subscript is a modern billing and revenue recognition platform designed for SaaS finance teams that need flexibility and accuracy. From automated invoicing and dunning to compliant, transparent revenue recognition and real-time analytics, Subscript eliminates manual work, reduces errors, and gives you a single source of truth for all your financial data. Book a free demo at subscript.com.

Rippling Spend is a spend management solution that handles your entire company’s spending in one unified system. It enables you to bring your corporate cards, expense management, bill pay, and more into one place to achieve real-time visibility and uniquely granular control with automated policy controls across every type of spend. Get a demo to see how much time your org would save at rippling.com/metrics.

Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation. Over 9000 businesses use it to automate compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Centralize security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. For a limited time, get $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/metrics.

Tropic is an intelligent spend management solution that consolidates your spend data and processes into one unified offering, enabling insights and decisive action. From spotting hidden optimization opportunities to automating painful procurement workflows and giving you the best market data to turn vendor negotiations in your favor, Tropic combines smart insights with real human expertise to keep you ahead of the curve. Visit tropicapp.io/mostlymetrics to learn how.

NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than 40,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform, head to NetSuite https://netsuite.com/metrics and get the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning.

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LINKS:

Colin Sims: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinjsims/

Hunters:

https://www.hunters.security/

CJ on X (@cjgustafson222): https://x.com/cjgustafson222

Mostly metrics:

http://mostlymetrics.com

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(02:35) Sponsor – Planful | Subscript | Rippling Spend

(06:39) The Real Difference Between a CFO and a COO

(12:58) Why CFOs Are in Greater Demand Than COOs

(16:48) Sponsor – Vanta | Tropic | NetSuite

(22:21) The CFO-COO Hybrid Role

(23:39) Skills To Be a Good COO

(26:21) A Winning Sales Motion and the CRO

(32:07) Intellectual Curiosity and the Ability To Learn and Adapt

(34:48) CROs for Different Stages

(36:32) Channel Sales Models That Rely on Partners

(41:14) The Predicability of Channel Models

(44:24) Where Channel Sales Go Wrong

(47:05) The Different Types of Channels

(49:03) Transparency Works, Democracy Doesn’t

(54:27) Long-Ass Lightning Round: Hiring Mistakes

(55:56) Finance Software Stack

(58:02) Craziest Expense Story

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CFO, COO, or Hybrid? Choose Your Own C-Suite Adventure! (Also: How To Master Channel Sales)

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