The advice provided on BNET is usually pretty good. However, I recently saw a post (which, sadly, went out on the Sales and Marketing newsletter) that was ill-advised.
The post was titled "When It's Time to Break Out the Big Guns to Make the Sale" and it suggested that "companies don't use CXOs in the sales process nearly as much as they should." IMHO, that's a bad idea. Here's why.
The whole idea of B2B sales is predicated on the concept that the sales professional is a trusted adviser who is the equal of the people who are making the buying decision. If the decision-maker includes the customer CEO, the sales pro must be able to walk into that CEO's office and have a conversation between equals.
The moment the seller's CEO gets involved in a sale, the sales rep, regardless of his or her experience, immediately becomes a functionary. The decision-makers will, from that moment forward, insist upon dealing directly with the CEO.
The sales pro will now be expected to fetch and carry messages and, if the CEO doesn't respond in a timely manner, will take the blame for being unable to deliver the "real" account manager — the CEO. The result will be either a dissatisfied customer or a CEO whose constantly being pestered by customers.
CEOs do not belong in the sales business, except when they sell the company to investors. One of the smartest CEOs I've ever met is Mitchell Kertzman, former CEO of Powersoft and Sybase and now a famous venture capitalist at Hummer Winblad. Here's what Mitchell told me about the job of the CEO, when he was head of Powersoft:
I am the reverse of the Peter Principle. When I started the company, it was a one-man business. There was a time when I did every job in this company. I wrote the programs, I sent out the bills, I did the accounting, I answered the phone, I made the coffee. As the company has grown, I do fewer and fewer of those jobs. And that's just as well, because I was certainly less competent at them than most of the people who are doing them now.
Mitchell is right. The job of the CEO is to be CEO, not to do the job of the other people in the organization. To my mind, one of the dumbest things that any CEO can do is get involved in closing sales.
Look, if the sales team can't close sales, the CEO needs to focus on hiring and training better sales reps. Not trying to do the selling for them.
READERS: Do you agree?
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