3 Problems I learned about in the world of a Head of Sales...

I've spent more than a year speaking exclusively to Heads of Sales, CEO's, CRO's, and VP's of Sales. All are the big cheese of sales at their company. I've seen many make good decisions, and some make poor decisions on bahalf their business.

I'd like to share 3 of the lessons/landmines I've observe:

1. CSO's revenue targets can be highly distracting: Heads of Sales focus on their Quarter number, Half Year & Annual Revenue Targets - and rightfully so, its how they get paid their lucrative bonuses. However, while saving deals at the end of a quarter is important, its CRITICAL that CSO's come up for air, and attempt to understand and solve the problems that will impede growth in the future. Short term thinking will lead to short term results. For example, a lot of CSO's worry about training and hiring, and performance management plans in order to address poor performance and attrition in their team - but they neglect to explore what world class manager coaching could do to solve those problems (hint, a lot!). They often address symptoms rather than taking a bit of time to explore the root cause of their challenges. The good news is, many of these issues have been solved by other CSO's. We just need an easy way to tap into other's success to replicate whats already worked well before. and most importantly, just take a moment to think through why we loose deals or why we truly don't see the account growth we expect.
2. Hired to be the expert... and so pride becomes blindness: I've heard from several CSO's that they were hired to be able to solve sales strategy problems on their own (like improve sales process, differentiate their offering, optimise a key accounts program etc.) - and on occasion, It's a reason they give for why they don't want to work with 3rd party experts. This false reasoning come from a fear of asking for additional resources to make them more effective at what they do. I've heard CEO's tell me that about their CSO's as well "I hired him to solve these problems, he should be able to do it" - so the fear is not all that unreasonable. However, that's just politics. Its not an effective way of managing the sales function. Progressive leaders don't have time to reinvent the wheel, and are humble enough to admit where they don't have all the visibility, or all of the right answers. And honestly, their CEO's respect them for it. I'd argue that strategic sales leaders are hired to make good decisions, and working through things on their own is often the opposite of a good decision. Getting the answer wrong can be risky.
3. We need to fix the basics, before we fix our real problem...huh? Alright so CSO's don't quite express it that way , ie "our real problem" - but that the essence of what they say. Let me explain through an example. When I gauge what stands in the way of sales in an organisation, many things come up. A common one turns out to be a sub-optimal sales process (some companies don't even have an official sales process). For those not in a sales leadership role, sales process is a set of steps and activities from prospecting to closing a deal (usually represented on a PDF or piece of paper - it helps sellers sell, and managers manage) Anyway, by a sub-optimal sales process, I mean that it doesn't actually make it easier to sell. After all, a process is designed to be a series of repeatable actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end (a sale in this case). In sales, that end should mean to close more deals/larger deals, faster (some companies have sales cycles that go on for YEARS!) The problem is most sales processes don't reflect how customers ACTUALLY buy. At best it reflects how top performers sell ("its the way we've always sold"). It gets in the way of a host of things, like winning larger deals etc. No Sales leaders will argue that they shouldn't improve their process - but many choose to focus their time and money on things like negotiation skills or business accumen for their sellers. But you see, negotiation skills assume reps will make it to the end of a sales cycle where they are given the opportunity to negotiate... they wont. Many deals never make it there because heads of sales don't own the responsibility to fixing the real issue far earlier in the sales process (issues like deals stalling due to group's inability to agree on their problem in the "needs analysis" stage of the sales process) The good news is, as soon as we realise that back to basics wont fix complex problems - we can make a great case to our CEO's for why we need to focus our attention on process...or coaching etc. Again, I think CEO's will respect their CSO's for that level of diligence.

None of these problems or barriers to growth are impossible to achieve. It takes thinking through them layer by layer, to uncover what's the root cause of our challenges - and finally, a little bit of guts to push our organisations to do things differently...But if you're a head of sales, that shouldn't be a problem...right?

Thanks for reading!