Don't Talk About Sales. Talk with Sales

“Fall in your ways, so you can wake up and rise”

from A Seat At the Table by Solange

Very few products sell themselves. They all require an active outreach and closing by a sales team. The sales process varies depending on the product or service, the target audience, geography, and many other factors. But the process always involves a team of people: sales development, inside sales, field sales, key account, customer success, … and, in my opinion, always a strong, seasoned sales leader.

Even in a world where 80% of the buying decision is already made before sales gets involved, it is this sales team that is responsible for “the last mile,” for every dollar of revenue, all the growth the business aims for, and in many cases relies on to survive. With that in mind, the sales leader should be sitting next to the CEO, Founder, or Owner and be the most important person in the organization.

Now, why are there so many businesses that have a CFO, CTO, and COO, three internally focused functions, reporting to the CEO, but not a Chief Sales and Marketing, Chief Commercial, Chief Growth, or Chief Revenue Officer?

A 2022 MasterClass article on 17 C-Level executive positions does not even include any of the above titles. What I have seen quite a few times instead is a VP of Sales reporting to the COO.

Would you think of having an engineer run your Finance team? Or a marketeer leading the Operations team? Why then do you put a person that is great at structuring and running (internal) operations in charge of sales?

The difference between having a CFO and a CSO is opinion vs. rules: No one argues over the golden rules of accounting, the tax rates for the business, or what qualifies as an SG&A expense. A CFO has a degree, knows those details, stays updated on those laws, and applies them. There is no room for “common sense” when preparing a company’s P&L.

Sales (and Marketing), on the other hand, is more ambiguous. There are very few laws governing sales. And so, what appears to be an absence of structure, invites everyone to have an opinion. And everyone becomes an expert on how to structure and execute sales, how to pitch to a customer, to think that the value proposition is really a no-brainer, and to passionately engage in the discussion of "why we do not meet our sales targets.”

If you want to know what works and what does not in sales, give your sales leader a seat at the table!

Talk to us and find out how a fractional or interim sales leader with a seat at the table can make a difference in your business.

__________________

Masterclass – All About the C-Suite

Photo by author