“Sales is a science! We need a scientist to build our sales machine” said a tech Start-Up CEO I’m working with, after another frustrating interview we had, with a potential VP of sales, who failed to explain how he led his team to overachieve last year. 

Science is a critical part of building the sales machine and the ability to be a “sales data scientist” is indeed a critical skill of any potential candidate, and given it’s a SaaS product we must find the person who thinks and speaks fluently the sales SaaS language (i.e robust playbook, conversion, clear exit criteria, predictability, and repeatability, leads rate, numeric based decision making, data-driven processes, opportunity prioritization and accurate forecasting) and we must not compromise on those.
 BUT, while these are necessary to discover the ‘when’ and ‘what’ of performance, they do not provide a holistic evaluation and are not sufficient. 

While taking an active part in building sales teams for tech startups along the way, and was fortunate to collaborate with some great sales leaders, I’v concluded, that sales is a genuinely humanistic metier as an art, requiring an exceptionally high skill level in both literacy and presentation, wrapped in creativity, risk-taking, sensitivity, interpersonal intelligence and deep understanding of humans. The best sales leaders I met were both dreamers and believers, who could articulate their vivid imagination into actionable plans and robust processes. 

A sales leader in a start-up will face a lot of challenges that will require the art of sales. Situations that no numbers can help with, and obstacles that only wisdom, daring and greet will help to overcome. Sometimes all the numbers will fit, the process will be exactly and it was designed, all the boxes will tick but the deal will be lost. Understanding those cases, seeing them coming in advance, and building the sales strategy are pure sales art. Being only an artist will bring you somewhere but not too far. Without clear metrics, numbers and fact-based decisions you will probably lose time, resources and money while looking for the right path to go. In most cases you may loose also the teams faith in your way when it’s based only on guts feelings and common sense. 

Like Plato who was a philosopher and mathematician.
In the renaissance, Michaelangelo was an anatomist who made beautiful sculptures. Leonardo Da Vinci was a great artist, painter, and physicist, A great sales leader must have both Art and Science to make the unbelievable happen. 

Tag sales leaders and reps who are both scientists and artists  
Leave a comment, and let me know what do you think