I got the call at 10 PM on a Thursday. Darius, a CEO client, reached out to me just as I was about to end the day. “Glenn, my Chief Revenue Officer, just resigned, and I’m not sure what to do.”
Darius was running a rapidly-growing business that was highly dependent on a well-run sales organization. He had delegated sales responsibility to his Chief Revenue Officer so Darius could focus on engineering and product.
The good news is that Darius didn’t relinquish oversight or reporting of sales, just sales execution. It’s also true that Darius wasn’t in a panic, and we had worked on a plan for the departure of each of his direct reports.
At the moment, though, Darius and I needed to review that plan to ensure it was our best option. We checked whether or not the interim head of sales could genuinely step into the role. We discussed which accounts Darius should immediately nurture relationships with. We agreed that the recruiter we would need was still the right recruiter.
We quickly put together a communication plan on how to bring this news to the leadership team and the rest of the company. We worked on the exact next steps to interact with the interim head of sales, the director of sales operations, and HR.
Darius felt he didn’t know what to do, but in actuality, he did. We had prepared for this, and he just needed to talk it through in the heat of the moment so he could execute against the plan immediately.
