A Business Owner's Primary Job

Nothing in business happens without selling something first. No sales – no business.

The primary job of a CEO (or business owner, solopreneur, entrepreneur – whatever you want to call yourself) is sales and marketing. The bigger your organization, the bigger deals you focus on personally and the more you delegate the sales and marketing function. For example, if you’re the CEO of Lockheed Martin, you would only be personally involved in multi-billion dollar deals, but you would be holding your head of business development accountable for the company’s sales.

Make sense? I bring this up because sometimes CEOs/entrepreneurs/business owners forget the fact that sales and marketing is a company’s primary function. As a result, they don’t give it the attention it deserves. If this describes you, remember that this is one of the burdens you bear as the leader of your company. Your employees and their families are counting on you to keep your focus on sales.

Some thoughts:

1. Step back occasionally and remember that the purpose of every business is to find, satisfy, and retain customers – profitably.
2. The bigger your company gets, the bigger the deals you go after/get involved in. Delegate the lower-level sales (they will consume your time if you don’t).
3. Delegate, but don’t abdicate, sales and marketing. Know your strategy, know your metrics, and hold staff accountable for performance.

Want to grow your sales? We’ve helped thousands of business owners around the globe improve their sales / business development, and our network – which is also spans the globe – can get our clients access to companies/organizations where most advisers simply don’t have the scale to compete. Call (202-640-1908) or e-mail us today and start growing revenue immediately.

Ingar Grev