The Sales Focused CEO

Companies fear looking at changes or improvements to their sales forces for good reason: Sales are the engine that drives revenue. No matter how patched up or sputtering that engine may be, the mere thought of overhauling it fills CEOs and senior executives alike with dread. Companies will make ongoing, piecemeal repairs as long as they can in a vain attempt to keep revenue flowing. They will tolerate behavior and performance from sales and marketing that would not be tolerated in any other areas of the business.

For CEOs, there comes a point where changes or improvements must be made to these two areas of a business if growth is to continue. The world is not static, and sales and marketing organizations cannot be allowed to stagnate and to operate using now-primitive thinking. These business units are the last frontier for CEOs to address in business improvement.

Fear of the unknown, and the use of the wrong lens for viewing the business, are the greatest barriers to overcome.

The first step for any CEO is to become empowered with the knowledge of how the sales and marketing business should function; only then can he or she hope to become competitive and deliver profitable growth in today’s ultracompetitive market. Most of the information that people are exposed to has been written by former middle managers of sales and marketing units. Such information is narrow in content and is focused on compensation plans, training, and ingenuous reporting.