Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Shannon Muniz, Fractional Chief Sales Officer, Sales Xceleration, Orlando, FL.

The sprint is on!

The American economy – stuck in the blocks for much of 2020 while waiting out the pandemic – has heard the starting gun and is accelerating around the track at a feverish pace.

With vaccines, optimism, sales, and profits on the rise, the time to sit on the sidelines is over. I recently talked about the surging economy with Shannon Muniz, with the goal of understanding whether the time was ripe to double down, invest in your business, and grow your base (spoiler alert – it is!).

If the recent report from our friends at ITR Economics is any indication, it’s not a question of whether to jump back in, but how quickly to move. They noted in their May 2021 Trends Report three big trends that boost the notion that the economy is moving in the right direction:

1. Personal Savings: The average consumer is saving more than they have in many years. Of course, during the pandemic, everyone stayed home, so it’s little surprise that they’ve accrued a nice stash of cash in their bank account.
2. Capital Goods: Business to business activity, particularly around new orders, is also reaching stratospheric levels. The Business Confidence Index, which measures this type of activity, is at its highest level since December 1983.
3. Business Bankruptcies Trending Down: Though its seemed that the pandemic crushed a lot of companies, this has had the effect of strengthening those businesses that were left standing.

The takeaway of all these trends: With pandemic fears being mitigated, and money to burn, the consumer is again ready to consume. But how do you jumpstart your engine when it’s been idling for so long?

The answer might lie in fractional executive services – in particular, the one-two punch of a fractional Chief Sales Officer (CSO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), who can juice small and mid-sized businesses that want to gain traction quickly. There are a host of benefits that this kind of right-sized senior leadership can provide, including:

1. Boots on the ground: It’s not adequate to just throw a bunch of salespeople out into the landscape. You need sophistication and strategy – the expertise of fractional CSOs. They can help you to develop or fine tune your sales strategy and help you scale quickly to keep pace with the market.
2. Seasoned expertise: By hiring a fractional CMO or CSO, you’ve given your business an instant shot of experience – 20 years or more in leading sales/marketing teams like yours. They know how to position your company, quickly, for growth, and to maximize your potential.
3. Less risk: Forget about a big investment of time and money to land a CSO or CMO who may not work out in the end. You can hire and position your fractional executive in your leadership paradigm immediately and get off to a fast start.
4. Avoiding random acts of marketing: Rather than toss your marketing dollars at the first shiny object to appear, your fractional CMO can help you give your marketing engine a tune-up – building a plan that will help you focus resources against the strategies that will have the biggest impact. And by twinning your fractional CMO and CSO, you’ll give your sales funnel the biggest upgrade since Microsoft rolled out Windows!
5. Improved retention: Your CMO will recommend strategies that will keep the customer abreast of new developments – serving upsell opportunities that will act as low-hanging fruit for the sales team.
6. Outbound like a boss: A lot of companies think their digital lead generation efforts begin and end with their website. But in order to grow, you have to take a skillful foray into outbound sales efforts – with a marketing team driving qualified leads, and a sales team that is acting quickly to get them into your funnel. Fractional CMOs and CSOs can work together to make this happen for you.
7. Future vision: Your outsourced CSO and CMO can be very helpful in looking beyond what you're doing today – taking a global view as to what your market has to offer, and developing a plan to expand your reach in that direction – with the right balance of sales and marketing support.

Can you see the shot in the arm that this type of joint leadership can provide? We think of it in these terms: Consider sales strategy as a beautiful new Tesla that you've just purchased. If you don't have marketing working with sales, the Tesla simply won’t charge, and, in turn, won’t run. Marketing is almost like your driver, in a sense -- driving your program and driving the strategy so that sales can execute.

So when is the right time to jump in? How about now! As we mentioned at the top of this blog, markets are accelerating, as there are grave risks for those businesses that try to piecemeal a plan to take advantage. Consider these right-sized executive engagements as both a necessary investment in your ability to be competitive, as well as your speediest route to a measurable return.

While a fractional CSO or CMO is not the right fit for every business, the only way to find out is to dig in and learn more. If we can help in that endeavor please reach out via the contact information below.

Authors

Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders 
https://www.chiefoutsiders.com/profile/paul-sparrow
psparrow@chiefoutsiders.com

Shannon Muniz, President of Strategic Sales Management, powered by Sales Xceleration
smuniz@salesxceleration.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonmuniz/