ON Partners Recruits Chief Revenue Officer for Rent
July 10, 2023 – ON Partners’ Jake Espenlaub and Tindall (Sewell) Hein recently placed Jeff Lautenbach as chief revenue officer of Atlanta-based Rent, a provider of marketing software and rental management solutions. With a track record in leadership roles across leading global software and service organizations, Mr. Lautenbach brings expertise and strategic vision to drive growth and market expansion. He has held several significant leadership positions throughout his career, and he is a proven leader in building and transforming cloud businesses at scale on a global basis. Prior to Rent, he was president of global field operations for Cornerstone OnDemand, a provider of talent and learning management solutions for business.
Prior to that, Mr. Lautenbach was president of worldwide field operations at Jive Software, responsible for driving the growth of Jive’s business through direct and indirect sales, marketing, and partner channels. He has also held prominent roles as president of CRM at SAP and senior vice president for North America enterprise commercial sales for Salesforce.com. Mr. Lautenbach also spent 19 years at IBM, with his last role being that of vice president, software, West IMT.
As chief revenue officer, Mr. Lautenbach will play a pivotal role in overseeing the Rent global revenue operations, formulating revenue growth strategies, fostering key partnerships, and further expanding Rent’s customer base.
Rent is a marketing and automation platform that engages prospective residents through the entire renter journey, maximizing leads and occupancies with a strong ROI. Through its broad network of rental listing sites including rent.com, ApartmentGuide.com, Rentals.com, and Redfin.com, the company connects property owners and managers with over 10 million high-intent, in-market renters per month. In addition, the platform powers a full suite of best-in-class digital marketing solutions across search advertising, social media, email marketing, web chat, resident communication, reputation management and more. Rent is owned by Seattle, WA-based real estate company Redfin.
Top-Ranked Recruiters
With a primary focus on technology, consumer, industrial, and the life science sectors, ON Partners recruits C-level and board talent for public and private companies, as well as venture capital and private equity firms. Founded in 2006, the firm’s consultants work from offices in Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Menlo Park, CA; Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco; and New York. ON Partners is one of the fastest growing search firms and this year is ranked as one of the Top 20 recruiting platforms in the nation by Hunt Scanlon Media.
Related: ON Partners Recruits Chief Revenue Officer for StarCompliance
Mr. Espenlaub serves the software, E-commerce, consumer, digital, and retail industries. Organizations he serves include public, private equity, and growth equity organizations with a focus on digital transformation. The functions he serves include go-to-market, product, technology, digital, and customer experience. Previously, he ran the technology practice at the Benefits Advisory Group.
Ms. Hein builds executive leadership teams at growth equity, private equity, and Fortune 500 companies. She serves a range of positions across CEO, operating partner, and VP-level executive roles with strong focus on diversity placements with a concentration on industrial and technology sectors.
Evolving Role
The chief revenue officer essentially owns everything that goes to market – sales, account management, customer success, and sometimes marketing as well, according to a recent report from ON Partners. Ten years ago, there was no such position as CRO. The role was known as head of global sales or VP of sales, depending on how companies defined the role. But as executives in that position continued to see other key functional experts reporting directly to the CEO, they wanted a seat at the executive table as well.
ON Partners Recruits Chief Revenue Officer for Seeq Corp.
Daniel Bolger and Jake Espenlaub of ON Partners have helped to place George Skaryak as chief revenue officer of Seeq Corp., a provider of manufacturing and industrial internet of things advanced analytics software. “This is an exciting time of growth for Seeq, and we’re thrilled to add a sales leader with a proven track record of growing SaaS businesses to bring more value to our customers,” said Lisa Graham, CEO at Seeq. “George’s rich background in enterprise sales and passion for hiring and training sales teams will be an invaluable addition to the executive team.”
According to ON Partners, the CRO role demands different skill-sets depending on the client. “For a smaller growth company, someone who thrives in an early-stage environment and enjoys building things from scratch – hiring, putting key tools and processes in place – requires a unique person who is good at the heavy lifting required to acquire market share and evangelize,” the firm said.
That person can be different from one needed by a more established company doing $10 million to $20 million per year in revenue, who understands how to improve on and tweak the work of his or her predecessor, according to ON Partners. For a $100 million-plus organization, the CRO needs to understand how to lead large teams in a complex, matrixed environment selling across multiple market segments on a global basis. That said, certain qualities remain consistent. Every CRO must know how to hire the right team, lead good people, and have a strong sense of how to build and scale a company.
Related: ON Partners Places Chief Revenue Officer for LastPass
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
