article |
July 2, 2014
How to Spot a World Class Chief of Staff
By:
How much time do you get to spend executing your sales strategy? You’ve set your vision for the sales force. At sales kickoff or quarterly business reviews, you reinforce your strategy.
However, demands on your time mean you have to trust your leaders to execute. You can’t be everywhere at once. Sometimes, execution doesn’t happen how you envisioned.
This post is for sales leaders looking to bridge the strategy and execution gap.
You are not alone. Many of your peers are having this problem too. They lay out their strategic vision to their teams. They get pulled in other directions. When they check in, they realize the strategy is sitting on the shelf.
What you’d really love is a lieutenant who can execute on these things. And do it well.
Here’s a tool for you: Core Competencies of a World Class Chief of Staff.
There is an emerging role in large sales organizations: Chief of Staff. This is not a management-level sales ops resource. It is an executive level role designed to help implement the sales leader’s strategy. They are your right-hand person.
Leading companies like Riverbed, Mitel and Microsoft all employ this role today.
An Emerging Class
Last April, SBI identified the Top Sales Ops Leaders to Watch. In it, we provided tips for Sales Ops leaders to improve their brand promise. It was the most downloaded tool of the quarter.
This is an emerging group of leaders who aspire to become Chief of Staff. These are examples of profiles you might consider.
How to Spot Your Chief of Staff
These executives are proficient at supporting sales leaders in new ways. Here are 4 from the tool:
These are things you’d love to do, but you are time starved. This is why the Chief of Staff is so critical for you.
A great Chief of Staff is not easy to find. It starts with knowing what “great” looks like. The tool will help you with this. Hiring one will give you time back to focus on strategic issues.
Marketing leaders have faced numerous difficulties over the past year, but one challenge is not excl...
The software industry has experienced more disruption in the last 6 months than in the previous 10 y...
While the world innovated rapidly and continually adopts many advanced technologies, the sales envir...
If you’re like most Sales Leaders we’ve worked with, you’re glad the first half is...
Any CEO can attest to the current level of difficulty in closing deals. Customer sentiment and indiv...
Running a sales transformation is difficult. In our experience at SBI, we have found that the organi...
As a newly hired sales leader, it’s tempting to sit back and enjoy the honeymoon phase of the ...
The New York Stock Exchange dates to May 17, 1792, with the signing of the Buttonwood Agreement&mdas...
SBI TV episodes bring you Sales and Marketing insights from B2B industry thought leaders and growth experts, on topics like product, pricing, customer experience and success, and go to market. Catch up on new and previous episodes here.