Enter the CSO

by Graham Denton

In their 1997 book Selling Machine, Diane Sanchez, Steve Heiman, and Tad Tuleja (all formerly of Miller Heiman) argued that in these days of increasingly savvy customers and global competition, a company's effectiveness could be measured by just one thing: the degree to which it put muscle as well as mouth behind "full organizational commitment" to the selling effort. Market leaders, they said, must be "selling machines", in which everyone from the CEO on down was a part of the sales effort, and in which managing customer relationships was universally understood to be everybody's Job One.

In the August 1999 issue of Sales and Field Force Automation magazine, consultant Jim Dickie puts an even finer point on this solid argument, by championing the emergent leadership position of CSO. It's not simply a catchy acronym, the president of Insight Technology Group insists. As sales becomes more and more recognized as every corporate entity's life force, it is imperative to acknowledge the sales function as a "C level" operation, and to place in charge of that function Chief Sales Officers whose authority is parallel to that of other executive commanders.

Dickie argues this, as did the authors of Selling Machine, because of a fundamental shift in corporate thinking that began around the beginning of the 1990s, and that is still going on. A decade ago, as so many companies were "reengineered" and as product life cycles began to collapse asymptotically, suddenly "having a product edge was no longer enough." Companies "had to start figuring out ways to add value to products, which required understanding what it was that customers valued." As they sought that grail throughout the 1990s, "exceptional customer service" became a new benchmark, virtually replacing the zest for "quality" of the "Excellence Eighties." By now, Dickie says, citing an Andersen Consulting survey of 200 firms, even though 44 percent of them are still "product focused," a trend is clearly afoot: In five years, say nearly half the firms, they will have switched from a product-focus to a customer-focus. No wonder the lastest buzzword is Customer Relationship Management.

To make it more than a buzzword, Dickie argues, you need a single vision at the executive level directing all those troops who are focusing on the customer. You can no longer afford to have six ideas of how to manage a major account or a target marketing campaign; somebody has to "own" the CRM function. That person can have numerous direct reports, sure. But to break ties and make final decisions, you need one person. Dickie sums up his customer-centric vision this way. "If it is critical to the success of a company to have one person chart the overall business strategy, one person oversee the back-office operations strategy and one person develop the information technology direction, then one person also needs to be in charge of the CRM vision. That person should be the CSO."

This may be resisted by other C-level players - the majority of whom do not rise through the selling ranks. But it's an idea whose time may have come, because of its very simplicity. If it's CRM that keeps you running, shouldn't somebody be in charge of it?