“Sales Leaders play a pivotal role in a company’s ability to reach targets and to satisfy the needs of their customers and their shareholders. That means their primary job is to put your products and services in the hands of more of the people who will use them to solve their biggest problems, while creating profits for the people who own the company.”

from alignstrategic.com

(Link to video)

Let’s start with a universal truth: Very few products sell themselves. They all require an active outreach by a sales team. The sales process varies depending on the product or service, the target audience, the geography, and many other factors. And the process 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.

I assume for a moment that you, the reader, agree with me … so far. 

It is the above-described sales team that is responsible 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 second 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, Chief Commercial, or Chief Revenue Officer? What I have seen quite a few times instead is a VP of Sales reporting to the COO. 

You would not think of having an engineer run your Finance team? Or a marketer leading the Operations team? Why then do you put a person that is great in structuring and running (internal) operations in charge of sales?

I guess the difference between having a CFO and a CSO is the following: 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 on the other hand, like Marketing, 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 “why we do not meet our sales targets”

I recently met a co-founder of a Software company, bearing the title CFO. He stated as one reason for the success of his business the fact that he really only does accounting and finance at night. Early on he created simple and automated processes using every tool available in the market and working with third-party service providers. 

“As CFO, my job is to grow the business during the day...while doing accounting at night”

I suggest changing his title to CRO.