This week I had a similar situation occur in a number of businesses I’m involved with.
The salespeople went to a lot of effort to close a sale only to find there were problems with being able to deliver.
Here’s a story told to me recently:
“When I was with Sun we were fighting HP for the Comm Band’s structured network system. At the time HP thought they had the deal done as they were cosy with the project managers.
I took … into a meeting with the Executive Committee. He turned it around and won us the business. Except for one minor thing. Sun did not have a solution to offer. We scrambled for a couple of weeks but survived to implement.”
This story had a good outcome but there were a couple of weeks with a number of people running around like “chooks with their heads cut off”.
Good salespeople are often exciting to be around.
They’re vibrant, dynamic, enthusiastic and make everyone around them feel great and that anything is possible.
This is terrific; except when the sale is done, the salesperson moves on and buyer’s remorse kicks in.
In a good team, the salesperson (aka Account Manager, BDM, Business Development Manager…) is backed up by people who are able to fulfill the expectations the salesperson has created in the client.
In the above case the Sun people had the resources and the skills to provide the solution the salesperson had sold.
Sadly, that’s not always the case.
Sometimes (I’m reluctant to say “often” but I suspect it is) the salesperson makes promises which cannot be met.
The reason, I believe, is quite simple.
A salesperson is driven by the desire to make the sale.
With this highly focused objective they often lose sight of things like budgets.
In my coaching business I’ve come across the scenario more often than I like to recall where the desire to close the sale means that margins are so small the business ultimately struggles to survive.
The salesperson feels great: “Got another one across the line”, “Closed two more today” but the business is bleeding.
So, here’s why a salesperson shouldn’t be the CEO.
Being in the position of CEO (or owner) means there’s probably no-one there for a reality check, no-one who’ll pull you up and say “hang on, this isn’t what our business really does”.
In small business, the owner is usually the person who’s most passionate about the business and so is the best person to do the selling.
Because of the desire to close the sale, they often find themselves making sales to clients who don’t really fit the ideal profile of the business.
This results in the direction of the business becoming confused, the staff no longer have a sense of moving together along a clearly defined path and so they stop being proactive.
Decisions then fall back on the CEO/owner because the other team members are no longer clear on what they’re doing.
Sadly, the characteristics I outlined above, of the good salesperson, are the same attributes that get people into senior roles and so we often find business owners/CEOs who can never find “good” people.
The challenge for an employee in that situation is they either have to be excellent mind-readers or they wait around for directions, which owners often respond with “it’s quicker to do it myself than explain to someone else what’s required”.
This is clearly a recipe for disaster because nothing in the business in duplicateable and the owner ultimately having to do, or be responsible for everything that happens, resulting in them crashing and burning and taking their business with them.
One excellent solution I heard about was a plumber who loved being a plumber – makes sense.
The thing was, he was so good at it and so full of passion about plumbing that he built a very successful business resulting in him spending all his time running the business and not doing any plumbing work, which was the part he loved.
He solved this problem by employing someone as the CEO, which allowed him to go back to being “on the tools”.
There were times when he’d have conversations with the CEO where it was ‘owner to CEO’ and other times when it was ‘CEO to plumber’.
He had the sense and wisdom to make these conversations quite distinct.
The result was, he continued to do what he loved, and he had someone else who was responsible for the day-to-day administration, sales and many other aspects of a successful business which needed to be carried out.
If you’re a business owner, what’s your role?
Are you a salesperson who loves the thrill of the chase and is excited by the close (even if it’s not exactly what your business does)?
If that’s the case, consider employing a CEO or have someone who’s able to keep you in line, a good business coach may do this for you.
And be very careful that your business isn’t simply a mechanism for you to fulfill your personal need for the adrenaline rush.
Be clear about where your business is going, who an ideal client is and what goods and services you offer.
Then, as they used to say in the ad “when you’re on a good thing – stick to it”.