How CEOs Can Drive Sales — or Kill Deals

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Marketing, Teams, Business/entrepreneurship, Harvard, Management, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Hbr, Business/management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Innovation, Communication

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christoph Senn, marketing professor at INSEAD, has spent years studying how top executives involve themselves in B2B sales. Some are very hands-off. Others make only social calls. Still others sit at the negotiating table. Outcomes vary widely. Senn explains the best combination of approaches for top executives engaging with core customers. And he shares how account managers and other employees can benefit from knowing their leader’s style. Senn is the coauthor, with Columbia Business School's Noel Capon, of the HBR article "When CEOs Make Sales Calls."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast, Women at Work, is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.0	and practical advice on navigating divorce, disability, and career failures.
0:14.0	Listen for free to HBR's Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts.
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR ID a cast from Harvard Business Review.
0:37.0	I'm Kurt Nickiff.
0:44.0	Closing a big sale with an important client is stressful enough.
0:48.0	Imagine bringing a top executive into that maker-break meeting.
0:52.0	That's what happened in one case that today's guests studied
0:56.0	and account manager had the division president join the final negotiation.
1:01.0	But when the client suddenly asked for more price reductions,
1:05.0	that executive was so hell-bent on sealing the deal,
1:08.0	they were about to agree to something that would have cost the firm $2 million.
1:13.0	Chorified and dumbstruck, the account manager faked a heart attack to end the meeting early.
1:19.0	It's not uncommon for CEOs to engage strategic customers around key negotiations,
1:25.0	but there's a fine line between successful outcomes and counterproductive disasters.
1:31.0	Our guest today has spent years researching the role of top leaders in B2B relationships,
1:37.0	and he's going to share how the best CEO succeed at it.
1:40.0	Spoiler alert, being a hands-off CEO or a loose cannon is not it.
1:46.0	Kristoff Zen is a marketing professor at Inciad,
1:49.0	where he co-directs the Marketing and Sales Excellence Initiative,
1:53.0	with Columbia Business School's Noel Capon.
	...

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