The Ceo Solution

As a CEO, President or Business Owner you are the one with the most to gain, and the most to lose from the success or failure of your business. You are the one who at the end of the day is held accountable, no matter what. You are held accountable for the day-to-day operations, monthly expenses, salaries and most of all to your bottom line. But how accountable are those who are responsible for growing your business—Sales management and your sales team?

Most CEO’s are frustrated with the problems inherent in Sales Managers such as:

• Creation of a sales team that is run like a fraternity—focusing on occasional base hits opposed to closing pipeline prospects.
• Ineffective hiring criteria leading to poor overall performance and unnecessary turnover.
• Sales managers who continue to buy into the excuses provided by their sales team resulting in pipeline bloat.
• Sales Managers who have an optimistic viewpoint of pipeline prospects who never convert into sales.
• Sales managers who put your organization’s financial future in the hands of your sales team, opposed to placing your sales team into a corporate system of selling.
• Failure to implement real performance standards and hold each sales person accountable resulting in inconsistent sales.
• Sales managers who focus on your pipeline opposed to your bottom line.
• Sales managers who spend their day “riding” with sales reps opposed to growing your bottom line.

Visit the CEO Diagnostic Tool to Assess your Sales Weaknesses.

• The individual who successfully climbed the corporate ladder through operations or other areas of management but has no background in front line selling. This person often is disengaged at best and disconnected at worst from what is really happening with their sales department.
• The individual who does have a solid and successful sales background who now is utilizing that experience and entrepreneurial spirit to run their organization. However they have come to the realization that attempting to duplicate their past sales routine and positive mind set with others, is more of a burden than a path to production.

Often it is the second type of business owner who has worked hard and long to develop a profitable client base only to see it erode when put into the hands of a sales team. They suffer client decay and experience lackluster performance when it comes to new account development. The entrepreneur typically doesn't’t start a business with the mind set that he or she will become a lifelong sales person, regardless of how effective they may have been in the past. The desired end result of this hard work is to get others to work for them. However the opposite is often true. You end up working for them!

Regardless of which category you fall into we must focus on the actual root cause of sales ineffectiveness. There are too many to list within this section of the web site so we will focus on just a few. To learn more about the major causes of sales force complacency and sales management ineffectiveness, please click here>> to complete the CEO Diagnostic Tool

The Role of the CEO

Business Owners and those responsible for managing sales people are responsible for providing advice, structure and strategy. However we all have strengths and weaknesses. Therefore the weaknesses you, or those responsible for managing your sales people possess, become part of the problem. For example if you are naturally weak at closing, prospecting, qualifying or holding margins, is the advice you provide to your sales people in these particular areas productive, or counter-productive? Often this weakness possessed by the one responsible for managing, motivating and training the sales staff translates into an across the board sales team weakness!

Most CEO’s are frustrated with the problems inherent in sales people such as:

• Sales people who fail to diplomatically confront objections leaving money on the table!
• Sales people excuses—weak economy, bad territory, bad leads, etc. causing their poor performanceIneffective
• Cold Calls—they will not make them or they get poor results
• Uncomfortable calling on top executives/decision-makers
• Selling Cycle Too Long—cannot get a decision-maker to make a decision
• Goal Setting—no clear documented measurable goals resulting in missed quotas
• Subserviently providing unnecessary time-consuming proposals
• Planned and unplanned staff turnover costing you time and money.
• Failure to uncover budget or discuss money until it becomes an objection.

Click here>> to complete the CEO Diagnostic Tool to discover your obstacles to growth.