Debbie Baker

If you are a growth (sales led) start up, ideally you should recruit Sales experts who;- 1. Have a demonstrable track record of sales success relevant to your field. 2. They are aligned to your strategic direction. These experts, will be invaluable to your business, helping to secure the revenue to feed the many mouths in the business. Importantly, an expert sales lead will have the experience to collaborate with internal resources to ensure the Company's best position is presented during prospect meetings. Too often, start up Company's are led by Executives who think Sales is just about chatting and they can recruit junior sales inexperienced sales staff, then wonder why deals haven't been closed.

The keyword here is "Team". The Exec team is the powerhouse of a company, typically with legal responsibilities, under Company Law, to Shareholders, Employees and Customers. Combining their collective skills and experience, they respond swiftly, encouraging open communication inter and intra business to ensure risk are mitigated swiftly, lessons are learned and systems and processes are implemented to reduce exposure. Collaboration is key. Sharing information and learning from setbacks is key to the development of business and sets the cultural tone for the management team. No one is perfect, but fostering an open culture within the Exec Team when the "chips are down", is a good place to start.

It is crucial to foster an environment which encourages open communication, let's be honest, no one wants to fail in business, whatever role they hold. Management needs to listens to potential barriers to success from Executives, assuming that for this purpose Executives are Business Development Executives. Ideally, the Management team will have senior Business Development experience to support the Executive, and indeed the Company as a whole. I could list so many anecdotes as to why technicians and Subject Matter Experts don't make deals, in the spirit of expediency it is just best to say there are wired differently.

Enterprise technology projects are never really fun! Inevitably they are going to be very hard work. Sometimes they are about a leap of faith, but mostly they are going to be about trust. Can your supplier delivery on time and in budget, conversely can you customer deliver the requisite resources to support the project? At the outset establishing a true collaborative commercial partnership is key to the success, to ensure the teams are aligned to mutually successful outcomes.