Advice for Sales Executives. . . Sincerely, "your CEO"

What can sales and sales operations executives learn from a panel of 2 CEOs and 1 Chief Sales Officer? A lot! I recently attended a CEO panel session for sales sponsored by NETSEA (New England Technology Sales Executives Association). The panelists included Bill Hewitt, CEO Kalido; Stephen Orenberg, Chief Sales Officer Kaspersky Lab; and Patrick Morely, CEO Bit9. Here are some of the highlights from the meeting including quotes from the panelists [with my commentary in brackets]:

• Help your CEO to sleep better at night: (and it may help you keep your job as well)
• "I'm already tracking the deals. . . it's what I don't know that concerns me." [Keep your CEO in the loop. . . be it good or bad news!]
• "My best sales executives provide visibility, consistency, honesty & transparency to me regarding our sales activities, pipeline, forecast, etc."
• "I just want the reality of our situation. Give me time to react, such as adding monies into specific programs."
• Sales' "Credibility Factor": [Understand your CEO's expectations of you as a sales executive (i.e., in addition to "exceed revenue and/or profit targets"), and build your credibility]:
• "We get our weighted reports, forecasts, etc; however, it is still very much a mix of art and science to really assess what's going on. (e.g., I discount my sales teams' forecast by 30%. . . I call it the 'credibility' factor.)"
• "As a CEO, I look at Salesforce.com every day to assess our standard metrics." [A sure way to ensure that your sales team actually uses your sales force automation system]
• "I need to know if my sales executive can analyze new situations across their group as well as across the market, understand how sales needs to change and then drive that change." [Have you asked your CEO about their expectations of you as a sales executive? Do you know how much you invest in sales? Are you allocating your investment correctly and demonstrating this strategic intent to your CEO? Do you have a next generation sales operations team in place to help drive strategy and productivity?]
• Creating a culture of sales across your organization
• Trip reports: "Our reps log all sales visits in a standard report format and make them available for the entire company to review." [Admittedly "sales 101ish" by the CEO, but certainly a great way to get customer insight into marketing and product development. Sales operations at larger organizations may wish to mine this type of information to improve sales productivity and effectiveness.]
• "We're planning to leverage Chatter to improve sharing of sales insight across the organization." [IDC defines this as "Social Business for Sales"]
• "Our VP sales has concept deal dissections. Every Friday a sales person has to speak for 15-20 min. about a deal (won or lost) start to finish; and it's not just sales at these meetings. (e.g., VP engineering)"
• Value of sales methodologies?
• "Sales is about listening, not selling. . and it's not about the specific sales model. [Agreed, however, there does need to be a consistent sales model used across the organization including a standard taxonomy, processes, etc. unless you're a small company. CLICK HERE to participate in IDC's 2011 Sales Methodology Survey]
• What steps can sales reps take to pursue CEOs?
• "I get 15-20 solicitations a day. . most have done no research on me and it's obvious. Tim Haller of Sales Gauge is someone that I've turned to for teaching my reps how to prospect."
• "Reps try to get a hold of me, but why aren't they going to my functional leads whom I depend upon for these recommendations/decisions?" [Check out IDC's annual buyer experience insight.]
• Marketing & sales alignment around lead management: [check out IDC's upcoming lead management webcast]
• "We have an unrealistic expectation that marketing will deliver an enterprise deal to us on a 'silver platter'! First, it takes many touches by different parts of marketing and sales to win a deal; Second, I don't care where the lead came from."
• "Sales and marketing sit down in the middle of every quarter to plan campaigns and lead generation expectations."
• Value of lead scoring: "For enterprise sales, it's too complex in many cases to depend entirely on lead scoring process (i.e., buyer behavior, human dynamics and organization behavior play a big factor here).