Why Revenue Leaders Get Replaced
Executive-level sales leadership roles are coveted positions. Yet the average sales leader’s tenure is only 18 months. CROs are often fired for behavioral issues that stem from a few common underlying traits.
1. Lack of data orientation: A sales leader’s decisions, forecasts, and management practices need to be firmly rooted in data. A sales leader who does not adhere to a well-managed CRM or does not devote attention to detail when measuring their team against objective KPIs is bound to fall behind and struggle to right the ship if they can’t identify root causes of what’s actually happening within their team.
“Sales leaders make a mistake when they think of numbers as something adjacent to the business. They are your business, just expressed in a different language,” says Paul Stansik, Operating Partner at ParkerGale Capital. “Some sales leaders are very uncomfortable speaking that language. They want to run their team instinctually — by gut feel — and believe that they don’t need an objective way to measure the business,” he says. “Sales leaders that struggle often haven’t learned how to pay attention to both the qualitative and quantitative signals that can help them tune their sales machine.”
2. Lack of team leadership skills: Elite sales managers devote rigorous attention to their team, from...