In his book 5 Deadly Sins CEOs Make in Sales, author Jim Lewis breaks down five major misconceptions the head honcho often has about selling:

1. Marketing is the same as selling. From a C-level perspective, it’s easy to lump the two together — but that often leads to Sales getting the short end of the stick. At most companies, it’s helpful for the sales and marketing teams to work closely with one another. That way the marketing message reinforces key selling points. But the best bet is to make a clear distinction with C-level execs when it comes to budgeting and which department handles what.
2. Buyers buy because they want to. If this were true, there’d be no need for good salespeople. The reality is most buyers buy because salespeople know how to uncover (or create) a need. The philosophy that buyers buy because they want to often leads to problems when it comes to budgeting for trips to meet with prospects or other necessary expenses. It’s often helpful to perform a cost/benefit analysis of your expenses and provide execs with as much evidence as possible that those costs help to boost sales, loyalty and (most importantly) the bottom line.
3. Boosting sales is mostly a matter of observing what’s wrong in your company and fixing it. While solid metrics help sales managers pinpoint where problems lie, strong coaching skills are the key to helping reps gain back their confidence and resume their winning ways. Most sales managers are capable of identifying the problem. But it takes a great coach to put salespeople back on track.
4. Technology is the key to developing accurate forecasts. There’s no doubt spreadsheets and other technology that show past performance can help sales managers be more precise with their future sales projections. But sales forecasts are also impacted by budgets, size of the sales force, changes in the industry, fluctuations in the economy, and several other factors most technology can’t account for.
5. Great salespeople make great managers. Many sales organizations have fallen victim to this fallacy. Sometimes greatness doesn’t trickle down, and moving your best salesperson into a management position proves a double whammy — sales suffer without the anchor on board and the department suffers from poor leadership.

Can you think of any other misconceptions CEOs have about Sales? Share your thoughts in the Comments Box below.

Source: “5 Deadly Sins CEOs Make in Sales” by Jim Lewis

Tags: budgeting, CEO, Leadership, management, marketing, misconceptions, sales, Technology