When and how should a CEO get involved with sales?

In the HBR article “When CEOs Make Sales Calls,” Noel Capon and Christoph Senn identify five archetypes of CEO Sales Engagement: Hands-off, Loose Cannon, Social Visitor, Dealmaker, Growth Champion.

According to the authors’ research, the most effective archetype is the growth champion. They write that leaders who exhibit growth champion behavior “focus on both relationships and revenue building, and as they unlock growth opportunities, they serve as role models for others in the organization.” Unfortunately, they make up only 14%. 

What makes growth champions effective is they engage with strategic customers and see things from customers’ points of view and how their company can help the customers solve their problems. 

We see an example of that with the tweet sent by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, to Governor Murphy of New Jersey and Mayor Bowser of Washington D.C. From reading the Businessweek article, Benioff knows that both Governor Murphy and Mayor Bowser have a big problem getting people vaccinated. And he knows that they don’t want to be in the news every day that they are not getting the job done. 

So he sends a tweet to see if he can help them.

Benioff probably sent this tweet in consultation with the sales and marketing team working on those accounts. 

Benioff captures the main points in the tweet.
1) What can Salesforce do for them? Replace their failed Microsoft implementation---for FREE.  
2) What has Salesforce done with other similar clients? They have 100s of success stories of vaccine implementations. 
3) How can they get in touch with Marc Benioff? Send him an email to [email protected]. 
4) How did he come to know of their problem? Businessweek article. 
5) Why send this tweet? It shows that he is a growth champion and ready to help a potential customer solve their problem. Furthermore, he is modelling a behavior throughout the Salesforce organization on how to achieve growth. And Salesforce is still growing. 

Note, I have no information whether this tweet got a reply from Governor Murphy or Mayor Bowser. But it should have.  Today, speed wins. 

Is your CEO ready to get engaged in helping you get into an account to grow business? If not, show him how Marc Benioff does it being a growth champion. Perhaps you can get your CEO to help you close strategic deals. 

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I am an author, speaker, career success coach. I guide people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, career advancement, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. I am the author of a practical  book on speaking titled Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. The main idea of the book is that if you want people to remember your speech and take action, you must create a winning speech moment. Please download the free speech checklist I created that I always use to create a winning speech for any occasion. 
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