As we outlined in our previous blog about the CFO's dilemmas, the CEO of a Hard Tech B2B start-up may face one of two realities regarding his or her sales leadership team. These scenarios apply when the funnel is weak and/or revenues are not strong:
However, unlike the CFO, your role in solving the problem is different. In the first scenario, congratulations! You're now both the CEO and the VP of Sales for the next 3-6 months. It's definitely less than ideal, but it may be necessary if your cash flow is tight or it takes you that long to find the right fit for the VP position. Unfortunately, it means you will divert your focus away from your CEO responsibilities and turn toward driving sales before the next board meeting.
In the second scenario, the good news is that you can execute your CEO responsibilities because your VP of Sales is still in place. He or she tells you everything is on track. The bad news is that you have a heavily weighted front end of the pipeline – your sales team has talked to numerous prospects, but none of those potential customers are moving forward in the sales process.
The sales team can't seem to progress those conversations, move them into an active sales stage, and close the deals. And you are scratching your head as to why. It keeps you up at night, especially before you have to report to your board of directors or investors.
In either case, you must understand what is happening in your sales funnel.
You can't fix your sales problem without a proper toolkit and experienced advisors who've worked with multiple companies to solve this issue. When you have a vacuum at the sales leadership level, you need the tools and the right people to understand what went wrong before you hire your next VP of Sales. More importantly, you need to put a system in place that will optimize and increase his or her chances of success when he or she comes on board.
Conversely, if the VP is still in place, what do you, as CEO, need to know to help your VP of Sales move deals further along in the pipeline? You will need the language to support your sales leader while simultaneously uncovering what you need to do to move deals forward.
Market Operandi has developed (and successfully implemented) our proven analysis tool for opportunity assessment for all customers in the current funnel, as well as new prospects.
If you are currently in the dual role of CEO/VP of Sales, it will give you a realistic picture of your current pipeline; you will have credibility with your board and investors regarding your revenue forecasts. In addition, it will help you diagnose why your last VP of Sales didn't work out and prepare your next VP to tackle those problems on day one.
Lastly, the majority of Hard Tech start-ups, at some point, will experience a situation where the sales funnel has a large quantity of early-stage deals that don't progress through the pipeline effectively. Sales reps are "trying to boil the ocean, " yet they barely move a large number of leads slightly forward instead of making significant progress on the most likely opportunities. Using MO's tools and our program focusing on opportunity acceleration will result in improved lead analysis and qualification and improved sales process effectiveness. Our team will help your Sales VP and sales team accelerate opportunities from the discovery phase to closure through a defined process.