Written by Rob Darwin - September 27 2020

HelpWith...CSO

Sales are the lifeblood of your business, when you have exhausted your investment it will be sales that keep you alive! For technically orientated management, sales can be one of the riskiest and hardest roles to recruit for. There are many different kinds of sales:

• B2B vs B2C

• Commodity vs expert vs Corporate type sales

• Lead times from minutes to quarters

• Oneshot vs ongoing vs subscription purchases

• Face to face vs telephone vs Web vs Channel

etc!

Sales requires management, don't just hire a nice salesperson and expect it to work.  We have people who are good at training, designing sales pipelines/playbooks, managing sales people, coaching on leads etc

A CSO is not just a "jolly good sales person who gets promoted to CSO"

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FractionalCSO

In the early days most businesses can not afford a good CSO, so fractional is the way to start, the reasons to go from fractional to full time internalised CSO:

• There is enough work for a full-time CSO

• There is the budget and it is strategically important to internalise the role.

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MentorCSO

Sometimes it is best to help someone who is already on the team, or you may know. We can help people to grow into the role, and assist with developing the success of the board. We would assess the sales person, as to their suitability.

A sales person who is working with commission can be the best paid person in the company, it is not essential for successful sales people to be promoted to allow then to progress with success.