The Profit That Sits In front of the CEOs Eye

As an owner of sales placement firm, I have had the experience of working with a myriad of differing firms both in the U.S. and abroad. Naturally, I’ve seen firms grow, I’ve seen firms fail, I’ve seen revenue stagnation and employee turnover. What I have seen most and can now easily predict is a firm losing out to its competition. Overtime, I have come to firmly believe that if a CEO loses to a competitor for any reason other than a lack of funding (i.e. Mom and Pop’s Inc. could have never beaten Microsoft’s Windows Platform) or is unable to innovate new exciting products to help their most important division – the sales team, they are above their pay grade. Thus, this person is not fit to be responsible for a company and its employees. I understand it sounds harsh. However, the same way a football team lives and dies by its quarterback, a company lives and dies by its CEO.

When you’re a good sales representative, you know what the market wants and recognize how to leverage the information you gather in order to raise earnings. There are many facets to a company. We have HR, IT, Accounting, Administrative, Management, Sales divisions, etc. Though, an effective CEO realizes that one smart, inventive and ambitious sales representative can easily impact the firm more than any employees in the aforementioned divisions.

Why do I believe that a small amount of good sales representatives can be more valuable than any other employee in the building? The explanation is quite simple: true sales women and men are the ones who go to battle every day. While the accounting department sits at base camp, the sales representatives are out on the field. In fact, this same premise aided Abraham Lincoln in winning the Civil War. Instead of eating steak dinners 500 miles away from the war zone, he frequently visited and conversed with the common foot soldier. Lincoln knew that despite not having a multitude of medals dangling from their chest, they were the most informed. These men would be the first to know if the enemy had new weapons, how their moral was affecting their fighting as well as an abundance of other imperative information.

As a sales representative, you should be able to determine why or why not we are winning certain accounts. You should also be able to decipher what particular aspect of your product most intrigues the buyer. It is these factors and, of course, the ability to close that separate the great sales representatives from the Average Joe and Jane who will never see a $250,000+ year.

So, if a company has great salespeople who are able to do figure out these aspects, why sometimes does it die? Simply stated, the CEO does not take an active interest in the sales force therefore relinquishing any possibility of getting firsthand knowledge of what the market needs. He or she fails to utilize this information to both improve the current product or service and formulate new products to introduce to the customer. If this is not done, the sales force is not helped and the business deteriorates in the same way a plant with no water does.

In all fairness to upper management, some salespeople just have excuse after excuse as to why they are failing. You can only assume that you are not the reason for failure if you truly have formulated a multitude of ways to beat the competition while keeping up with the new market trends and then obviously informing the CEO of your findings. If, as a sales person, you can use your every day dealings with your clients to not only sell, but better understand the market place, you are a priceless employee.

Let’s say we find ourselves in a non-progressive company. What do we do? It’s my belief that there are many ways to leave this situation, but there are two which tend to work the best. Option one is to find a smaller company in which we have direct access to a coherent CEO who wants to continually grow the firm’s revenue (not to mention, make your life as a sales representative easier).

Option two is to open our own business. Personally, I went this route. My experience was as follows: at age 21 (right after graduating from college), I started a position with a smaller software firm doing sales. Every day, I saw myself and the other sales representative lose deals to competitors. I’ll never forget that when I attempted to tell the CEO of my discoveries, he shrugged my suggestions off, put his hands behind his head and reclined in his big leather chair which was adjacent to his pristine office windows. It was that moment that I knew this was not going to be a great company. Well, my prediction was a bull’s-eye. The firm was eventually sold for next to nothing while our competitors continued to take the proper business and financial actions to help their sales people; it paid off. Though, I am exceedingly glad that I spent a few years there because I essentially learned how not to run a business.