Headhunter for CSO Positions

CSO – Chief Sales Officer

At the heart of every company is the sales department. Every company exists solely to sell its products and services. And doing so as profitably as possible.

At the top of Sales is the CSO, Chief Sales Officer. This officer is part of the executive board and manages the entire sales department. Ensuring the operational and strategic planning of sales, as well as its control, are among his:her most important tasks.

The most important insight here is that the role of the CSO has transformed significantly lately. It is not about the "superstar salesperson" any more. We are moving away from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric future, as Gartner states ("moving from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric orientation").

A CSO of tomorrow is first and foremost strongly strategically oriented.

Let us find the right CSO for you

As a result of the constant change of digitalization, the requirements for managers in sales are increasing both rapidly and constantly. CareerTeam supports you in aligning your management for the future. As a successful recruitment consultancy with a focus on the digital economy and cross-industry knowledge, CareerTeam has in-depth expertise in top executive search. 

Our recruiters find experts at management level for your sales force. Thanks to our algorithmic multi-channel search, we achieve a high match in cultural fit and also identify the "hidden candidates". Especially for top management it is of utmost importance to find the right person. 

We draw on our extensive and active network of over 600,000 specialists and managers. Our recruiters use this network to identify suitable candidates for the position of CSO in the shortest possible time and with the highest quality.

CSO - Leader of selling, not sellers

Fundamentally, a CSO is responsible for the entire operating result as the last instance in the value chain. And consequently also for the achievement of sales targets. As described at the beginning, the strategic aspect is the key component to achieve these goals. Furthermore, a CSO manages all resources of the sales department, controls all measures and sets targets and goals in addition to the strategy. 

In the absence of a VP Sales or Head of Sales in the company, a CSO is also responsible for evaluating the performance of the sales team as well as staffing them. Even if the aforementioned positions exist, CSOs still need to be able to recruit these. 

Hiring employees is an art. This is because they need to not only be good at selling, but also be able to fit into the existing team in terms of a team and cultural fit. An excellent CSO masters this art of recruiting just as well as selling itself.

Speaking of selling - Gartner sees the future of CSOs as "leaders of selling, not sellers." This ensures that the focus of sales will shift away from salespeople as the primary sales channel to digital sales channels. We'll come back to this topic below.

In general, the main tasks of a CSO can be divided into three areas.

1. Leadership
2. Strategy
3. Analysis

Straight selling directly by a CSO is rather rare. Nevertheless, a Chief Sales Officer is naturally an excellent seller. The sales team, including department management, implements and receives the CSO's methods and knowledge from him:her as well.

Leadership

In addition to managing the sales department and being accountable for the bottom line, CSOs are also responsible for retaining existing customers as well as growing them. They must deploy resources, seize opportunities and calculate risks.

Accountability means that they are accountable to the CEO when targets are missed and revenue declines. Just as they must hold their sales team accountable in such a case. This requires self-confidence and self-reflection. So does the willingness to take responsibility for successes as well as losses.

As already mentioned, the hiring of new employees and especially coaching is a special skill. This requires patience as well as the ability to offer constructive criticism. This is the only way to build morale and confidence in the individual and the team. And a CSO must be able to trust his team without reservation.

Strategie

A rock-solid strategy is needed to achieve sales, profitability and corporate goals. This strategy, developed by the CSO, influences a company's sales divisions, sales channels, and products and services. 

A successful strategy includes the following areas, among others: Market overview and understanding, go-to-market, sales organization in terms of markets, products and services, sales processes, sales messages and communication, sales effectiveness, sales efficiency, KPIs and metrics, and finally the technologies used. 

Analysis

Once the strategy has been set, CSOs are constantly assessing and evaluating it for effectiveness. This involves analyzing business tactics, competitive analysis, market research, sales team performance and, of course, the sales strategy. The key is to identify weaknesses. 

Good CSOs can change their plan because sales strategies are not set in stone. They close gaps in the sales plan or even in the team and react to unforeseen circumstances.

The future of CSOs

The future will bring a permanent change in sales, and we are moving toward a "buyer-centric" customer base. This means that trust in "analog" salespeople is declining, and buyers - primarily millennials - want to make their own decisions and prefer to use digital channels. These customers reward extensive virtual shopping experiences. 

The number of digital procurements will increase, ensuring that the amount of data will also increase. Properly analyzed, it can ensure an even more accurate customer profile as well as predict customer behavior. Yet most organizations are not yet able to systematically capture and cleanse this data. 

Future CSOs will have to address this issue. So too when it comes to using artificial intelligence and machine learning to manage the volumes of data being generated.

Excellent service

Our service as a recruitment consultancy is both executive search and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). We help companies to strategically build up and optimize their workforce and at the same time relieve the human resource management.

This includes a complete candidate journey management, determination of candidate insights, active sourcing as well as the complete coverage of the hiring process. We also offer employer branding and direct search.

We would be happy to discuss our other advantages and services with you in a personal meeting. Without obligation, of course. We look forward to hearing from you.