Shoutout to CEOs: Give “Undue” Attention to your Sales Team

When I first moved to sales, after a very frustrating tiny (only) stint as an engineer, everyone I knew looked at me with pity. Some of my "well-wishers" even got me competitive forms for PSU and bank entrance exams. Some asked me to follow in the family's footsteps and take the UPSC exam - the nirvana of India. Rest prodded me to study further and do my Master's; I had a couple of deferred admissions from reputed US schools, basically 'do anything but selling'.

I can imagine what went through their mind. A salesman (woman) is stereotypically a glib-talking, often falsifying, street-smart individual, who is otherwise unfit for any other serious ethical job. Sales guys (or girls) are hustlers! Add to this the amount of rejection that sales folks have to bear every day, it’s a sheer miracle that they are all not depressed zombies. Maybe that’s why drinking is such a common trait with most salesfolks.

As weird as it sounds, even today, sales isn’t strictly a discipline that parents aspire for their kids. The key reason is perhaps sales isn’t yet a real discipline. It's akin to snake oil vending. Any profession becomes a discipline only after rigorous academic approval.

Think about it! Barring sales, every other major function in a company can be directly linked to an academic discipline, where there are set objective function of input and output, which is missing in sales. There’s rarely such a thing as MBA in Sales.

For most people, sales is an accidental stumbling of sorts. The vast majority of the sales folks are a product of some sales orientation or training where they’re provided with a concoction of experiential tools, a set of tricks and tackles, some product literature and USP, and hopefully, with great luck, they find a manager-mentor who coaches them well.

But like in any people-dependent process, how do you really measure the efficacy, quality and true success?

The simple answer is the achievement of goals: PO, revenue, pipeline etc. Yes, numbers (as salespeople say) are great measures. But how often do we find that the territories are so different that comparison between two different sales reps, even in the same organisation, is grossly unfair? It’s like a competition between a monkey and a turtle, where the monkey is asked to swim across a river, or the turtle to climb a tree. Then comes the kind of products, the stage of the customer, hunting versus farming, local competition, etc etc.

But still, sales remain the arrowhead function of the entire organisation. The organisation survives because the sales folks go out and close business. That customer money runs everyone’s kitchen fire, even the CEO’s.

I want to implore every chief executive to give direct support and attention to your organisation’s sales process, especially to the goal-setting and review process. It’s too important to be delegated just to your sales and to your HR function heads. Find a skip-level method, deploy analytical tools, create management by walking around culture, etcetera, but do have a direct handle on the sales function.

Sales is the ultimate general management function - yes I am biased and I am open to arguing, where without the CEO’s personal attention and diligent follow-up, you are better off taking your money and playing your hand at the Las Vegas strip.