Why the executive who can unlock growth may not be another Chief Sales Officer
Imagine If…
It is Monday morning. The leadership team is reviewing another quarter that missed the target. The pipeline was healthy. The market is there. The sales team worked hard. Yet the number on the screen is red again.
The immediate questions are predictable. Do we need tougher targets? Better salespeople? A new sales leader?
Perhaps. But before replacing anyone, I would ask something less comfortable: what if sales are being held accountable for a problem the sales function cannot solve?
The Apparent Problem is Sales Performance
Marketing celebrates a strong volume of leads. Sales says too few are qualified. Pricing approves discounts to close deals. Channel partners chase customers the direct team is already calling. Customer success inherits promises that are hard to deliver and then struggles to renew contracts.
Each function may be doing its job reasonably well. Together, they produce an expensive, inconsistent customer experience.
When growth stalls, the visible symptom often appears in the sales forecast. That does not mean the root cause lies in sales.
The Real Problem is a Fragmented Growth System
Revenue is not created by a single department. It comes from a chain of connected decisions: which customers to pursue, what value to promise, how to price it, which route to market to use, how to deliver, and how to earn the next purchase.
If those decisions are made in isolation, the company loses value at every handoff. More leads merely create more friction. Better selling can win unprofitable business. Discounts may rescue a quarter while damaging the next three.
The commercial challenge is not simply to sell more. It is to make growth repeatable, profitable, and coherent.
Why the Organizational Chart Misses It
Look at the chart. Marketing has a leader. Sales has a leader. Pricing sits within finance or product. Channels have their own targets. Customer success reports elsewhere. Everyone owns a piece of the customer journey. Who owns the whole thing?
This is where companies reflexively ask for a new Chief Sales Officer. But a brilliant sales leader cannot necessarily redesign pricing, incentives, channels, and customer economics across functions, especially without the mandate to do so.
Before discussing titles, I would ask:
- Where do we lose profitable growth?
- Which decisions create conflict?
- What would have to work differently for our growth targets to be credible?
The Capability the Business Needs
It may need a Commercial Business Architect: someone who can connect strategy to execution across the full customer lifecycle. Not another layer of meetings, but a clearer system of choices, ownership, and accountability.
Such a leader could align customer segmentation with the sales motion; connect pricing to value and margin; clarify direct and partner channels; and make retention and expansion integral to the growth model, not an afterthought. Crucially, they would design shared measures, so functions stop winning locally while the company loses overall.
This requires more than sales leadership. It requires commercial judgment, operating discipline, cross-functional influence, and experience in taking responsibility for business outcomes.
The Executive may already Exist, under a Different Title
The person who has done this before may be running a business unit with full P&L responsibility. They may have led a regional transformation, integrated commercial operations following an acquisition, or built a profitable route to market across several countries.
They might be called a General Manager, Managing Director, Regional President, or Chief Commercial Officer. The title is secondary. What matters is the evidence that they can connect the system.
A title-led search for a CSO could exclude precisely this kind of executive before the conversation even begins.
Reverse Headhunting Starts with the Business Challenge
This is the logic behind my approach at Belleville Management Consulting. I do not begin by asking which vacancy needs filling. I start with the missing business outcome, then examine which proven executive capabilities could change it.
Through Reverse Headhunting, I connect executives who have solved relevant challenges with businesses that could benefit from their experience, whether or not a conventional position has been advertised.
Sometimes the answer is a stronger sales leader. Sometimes it is a redesigned commercial operating model, led by someone the existing chart has not yet accommodated. The point is to diagnose before prescribing.
Before You Change the Sales Leader…
Return to that Monday meeting. The red number is real. Accountability matters. But if marketing, sales, pricing, channels, and customer success are pulling in different directions, asking sales to run faster will not fix the road.
The more useful question is not “Who will own next quarter’s target?”
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