One of the great sales managers I worked with often joked:
Everyone works for sales!
Actually, the head of sales was only half-joking, because this statement is in fact true.
Once your company is up and running and profitable, all the income that keeps your company going will come from sales. Even before profits, if you are out raising money from investors, you’ll find that growing sales will capture their interest better than anything else.
Given these facts, it is everyone’s job to make the sales process as quick and easy as possible. For the people building the product, that means listening to the feedback from the sales and marketing teams and building a product that customers want. For the marketing team, that means finding the best words to describe the product and the best paths to reach the target customers. For the finance team, it means providing a simple process for salespeople to turn orders into cash. And for the CEO, it means keeping the whole company running smoothly, so that the sales team gets everything they need to close more sales.
Even for those teams working in a mission-driven company, there can be no mission without profits, and there are no profits without sales.
Thus, whether you thought of yourself a salesperson or not, welcome to the sales support team!
