I Don’t Want to Be a Salesperson; I Want to Be a CEO
by Charles Bernard
In my small business, I am the chief salesperson and I am the brand. Very often when someone refers business to us, people say, “You should talk to Charles,” versus talking to Criteria for Success. I am still the brand, and I keep resisting this fact, even though it has been a recurring theme for quite some time.
Elizabeth and I were talking about this issue as it relates to the hiring decisions we make in our business when we started talking about how many business owners we know who are struggling to develop sales teams and transition out of sales. Based on many past discussions in my CEO roundtables and in my professional networking groups, I echoed our realization that this is a very common issue in small businesses. It was Elizabeth who said, “Wait a minute, wouldn’t this be a great topic for our forum series?” After thinking about the level of interest and the value to participants, we concluded that this would be a special session.
So with this in mind, we at CFS are cooking up a Thought Leadership Forum Session called I Don’t Want to Be a Salesperson; I Want to Be a CEO. Instead of our usual single speaker, we are inviting a panel of CEOs to talk about their experience as they evolved from being responsible for all the selling to taking a back seat in sales. The audience will consist primarily of other business owners who can participate and hopefully learn how to accelerate their own transition from chief salesperson to chief executive.
Incidentally, please don’t assume that I am advocating that a CEO shouldn’t ever go on sales calls or be involved in selling. Perhaps instead, he or she should focus more on being in a supporting or closing role, or focus on PR and strategy, but let’s wait to hear what our panelists and audience have to say. I would also love to see any comments that you would like to share on this topic!
Half a dozen of my friends who run their own businesses have agreed that this is a key issue for them, and they love the idea of an open discussion with people who have either solved this issue, or are well on their way to solving it. Now I am running it by you, our blog readers! Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
I Don’t Want to Be a Salesperson; I Want to Be a CEO will be scheduled for a half-day session in early May. Please stay tuned for further announcements.
I find the most critical factor to enable the transition from Sales Management to CEO is to cultivate the right people in your sales team. This may take a couple of years to implement, if the standard is not high, as you will need to continually replace the lowest 20% of performers until the desired standard is reached.
The goal is to achieve a team of self starting sales people who, following adequate training and coaching, require very little hands on management.
It is then possible to make an easy transition by employing a Sales Manager to begin to take over your duties knowing that the team is full of self managing, self starters.
The quality of the Sales Manager you employ is still critical as it will be his/her task to pick up the baton and expand the team whilst keeping the existing members motivated and rewarded.
I wholeheartedly agree with your point about hiring self-starters. Also, I think that transitioning out of the sales manager role is the most critical step in the life cycle of moving from chief sales person to chief executive.
We at CFS have identified the following key categories in the cycle:
1. CEO is salesperson.
2. CEO is outside sales.
3. CEO is sales manager.
4. CEO is CEO.
Would love your thoughts!