Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Hi Cesar

From my own experience, you have to take the long term approach, even though “Long term” in a fast growing company can be months rather than years. There are few moments on the road to Damascus where a CEO or his board will suddenly see the light, no matter how blindingly obvious you case is to you. It might be utterly trivial marketing theory to a new employee with a good background in sales and marketing, but as far as the board is concerned, its untried, untested and most importantly, until you raised the issue, unnecessary.

After all, they are focussing on making pots of money and why not? If you happen to have a plan that will divert them from that purpose, divert some of their profits into marketing activities, simply because a theory says they ought to, they will take the “If it ain’t broken, why fix it” approach.

Even the conventional wisdom of having open communications, a mission statement and a published marketing plan are not attractive, especially if many of the results so far have been achieved, apparently, by a cabal of wise old men sitting in a closed office. Why should they even start to think of throwing away their successful formula or successful way of working just because some newcomer has some bright sounding ideas?

Well, one reason is that you may have an insight into the way things are developing that they cannot see. With the detachment of an outsider, you can see competition and market forces gathering in a way which will spoil next year’s revenues. You might see that the way the company is developing appears to be unsustainable – for example, new business revenues are falling and existing clients are making up an unhealthy proportion of the profits.

What you probably have to do is to take your professional sales and marketing skills and turn them away from the market and onto internal selling. Few customers buy your products because someone argued them into a purchase.
Few will have simply been impressed by a technically excellent presentation. Most will have bought the benefits and most will have been asked, possibly point by point, if they liked what they were hearing, whether they agreed with it and whether they wanted to buy it.

So why should your CEO and your board be any different? The product is different. It’s now your insight into modern marketing, the current and future position of your company. It’s about the profit and turnover opportunities which you are missing out on. It’s the trends you have analysed in the marketplace and in your own company sales which they should be aware of. And so on. If you seek to take these items, one by one and ask the CEO about them, with very simple questions, listen to his response and then give your answer, you will be selling your ideas to him.

Outright success is a possibility but the alternatives you face are then threefold and are faced by every customer-facing salesperson in your organisation. How you overcome them will be a mark of how professional you are in the job:

Firstly, you may lack the authority as yet, to get him to listen. You can’t get the sales appointment.

Secondly, He may listen and answer, but fail to act. Maybe your stature wasn’t great enough. Maybe your sales skills weren’t up to the job or just maybe your ideas weren’t so useful or valid after all.

Thirdly, he may listen, answer and act, but what you outlined in your proposals and predictions fails to materialise. Maybe it wasn’t executed very well. Maybe you were wrong. Either way, unless your CEO is a great believer in his staff learning from their mistakes, you are probably finished.

Now are you ready to risk the third option on the basis that you are right about your facts and proposals here and now? Or will you take a slightly longer view and build your internal sales case until the third alternative becomes very unlikely?

Over to you!

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions