As the main contact point for Jigsaw’s Community of salespeople, I am bombarded by recruiters, sales managers and company founders seeking account executives. While some of these searches are grounded in reality, the vast majority of these people have a better chance of finding the Easter Bunny and convincing him to work for their company than actually landing the applicant they seek.
Take the example of a startup technology company that I spoke with recently. They had secured their second round of funding and were interested in expanding their sales team of three. The VP used all the common words: “hunter, rainmaker, experienced enterprise sales, self starter, technical expertise, outstanding communication skills…”i.e. a salesperson. But it was the last line of the job req. that caught my eye- “Must have a strong industry rolodex with solid relationships with CxOs from Fortune 500.”
In that statement he betrayed an ignorance of the sales process that is plaguing not only start-ups, but larger companies alike.
Allow me to key on three word groupings used in that sentence that says it all:
Fortune 500: Whatever template that company founders use to get their initial round of funding (we couldn’t seem to find it in 2003 so we had to wing it) seems to come hard coded with Fortune 500 companies as the target, no matter what you are selling. The smallest Fortune 500 company has over $1B in sales and 1000 employees. You might as well try to stand out in the local American Idol audition. I’m sure Simon wants to hear how blahbablabable your whatsit is.
CxOs: C-Level. Those magical leaders of every company with nothing better to do than field calls from salespeople and shower small companies with Revenue. Whatever your product does, everyone wants to “sell high.” The company above sells a highly technical $10,000 software program and they stated that their customer target is the CFO. The CFO of a 10 person company would defer a technical decision like internet security to his IT ops person. The CFO of a Fortune 500 company should be able to have you arrested if you happen to catch him and want to talk about internet security software.
Strong Industry Rolodex: This is my favorite. I have an image of Jack Lemon coming in out of the rain with the Glengarry leads in a worn briefcase. Top executives change companies at an average rate of every 18 months. Even if you know one of these people well enough to call them and they actually have a need for your product, the days of C-Level managers making huge buying decisions by themselves over golf are over. Budget outlays are scrutinized by committees and require input from every department affected. Salespeople need to know everyone that is involved in the decision.
Anyone that has a strong network of Fortune 500 C-Level folks is one of two things:
1- a current C-level Fortune 500 exec himself
2- the future president of your company.
He’s not carrying a bag for Acme software in the square states.
       |
