Six Jobs That CEOs Have in Driving Sales

CEO engagement is the key ingredient of success in building a growth engine and grow from $3-8m in ARR to $20m+. Your first job, therefore, is to figure out how you, as CEO, can dedicate 20-50% of your time to sales.

That’s a tall ask and will require you to de-prioritize other projects, hire new functional leaders, and/or onboard a generalist – such as a Chief of Staff – to help extend your reach.

Once you’ve carved out this time, how should you use it? In this post, we’ll cover the six jobs that CEOs need to do to support their sales efforts.

Most CEOs focus on the first two jobs…

1. Set the Ideal Customer Profile and Go-To-Market Strategy

The CEO must set the strategic direction and articulate a go-to-market (GTM) strategy, which typically includes articulating an ideal customer profile (who we serve) and the value we create for them. Why do customers buy our product? What problem do we solve for them? Why do they pick us? How does our value proposition change over time?

The only way to get to the right answer is to spend time with customers. All companies have internal stories about who the best customers are and why they buy. Your job is to go outside and make sure the company is focused on the right answer.

“The hardest, and most important, question you need to get right as CEO is: how does your company create value for your customers, employees, and shareholders? … It sounds simple, believe me it’s not. It took me 10 years to have clarity on that at Iron Mountain”

– Richard Reese

2. Hire the right sales leader and team-members

Hiring the wrong head of sales is extremely common for first-time CEOs. To get this hire right, you need to understand your customers and their buying processes. Whoever you hire will bring their own processes, which may not fit the needs of your situation.

To understand what you need, map out your sales process and ‘jobs to be done. Organize your team structure to match the customer’s buying process. Use the six criteria to assess talent, with particular emphasis on cultural fit. Consider splitting jobs into easier-to-hire-for roles. Provide your head of sales with the right resources for success, like the support of a strong sales operations analyst or marketing person.

Fewer focus on these critical jobs…

3. Build and revamp the sales process

Roll up your sleeves. You need to be involved in building the foundations of your sales engine (e.g., sales process, presentations, onboarding training and so on).

“It’s so important for CEOs to understand they have to get involved in building the tactical [sales] stuff. You need help but stay involved. You’re not going to find someone to do this like you; no one cares as much or has the high-level viewpoint. On things like defining an Ideal Customer Profile, in fact, only the CEO can make that decision. In my case, I met every day for 1 hour for 3 months with my best sales guy and a solutions engineer to build our internal playbook, which we socialized across the full team (not just sales).” – Grayson Morris

4. Champion collaboration between sales and other functions

It’s very easy for sales to be less connected with the rest of your organization; they have a different compensation structure, and may be on the road often. You have three jobs to do:

• First, make sure that sales doesn’t become a silo within your company.

• Second, make sure that sales, product, and marketing are communicating effectively and have a common direction. Is product working on the features that matter most to your Ideal Customer Profile? Is your sales team sharing information about the market effectively? Is marketing talking about the right use cases?

• Third, mediate conflict and coach your team on managing disagreements among themselves.

5. Support and enables sales

Partner with your sales team and constantly push to remove roadblocks. Stay involved as a helper. Your team, for example, shouldn’t hesitate to pull you into sales calls. Provide assists, and never take credit for closed sales.

6. Do no harm.

Avoid big mistakes in hiring, strategy, and execution. Talk to customers, listen to your team, and get educated before any major decisions. Protect and reinforce the right culture within all your teams.