I was recently reading Randy Komisar's "The Monk & the Riddle". It's a great book and provides an fresh perspective for entrepreneurs on starting a business in Silicon Valley.

In the book, Komisar talks about the different type of CEO needed at each stage of a business.

First you need a "Retriever", able to fetch together the founding team and resources. Next it's the "Bloodhound" who sniffs out the market and sets direction. Thirdly you have the "Husky" who pulls the company towards it's goal.

I thought these were all great metaphors for the different types of interim sales manager that you need at different steps in the evolution of a business.

It also reminded me of an article I posted on Ecademy back in February, Are you a "Renaissance" Salesperson or "Coin-Operated Rep"?.

This looked at how you need different types of salespeople at each stage of a company and/or market.

Renaissance Reps were the visionaries. Enlightened reps were interested in refining the sales process and, finally, "coin-operated" reps (I love that phrase) do what you would expect... go out and fill the order book.

One of the things I see most often when speaking to clients about outsourcing sales is that they fail to understand the type of salesperson they need for the stage they are at.

Hiring someone who simply wants to sell "by the numbers" when you haven't got an established and repeatable process is always going to fail. At best, they'll burn through your prospects and then retreat defeated.

Of course, as Komisar points out, that's when you'll need the last category to pull you out of the deep stuff... the Saint Bernard.

Labels: entrepreneurs, interim sales management, sales, start-ups