ManageSmarter.com offers an article I could have penned – The CEO as Salesperson.  I can relate to this sales call:

After initial introductions, the CEO took over the meeting and, ignoring the agenda, began a detailed demo and discussion of the product. He set about to demonstrate the superiority of the product and his own knowledge of the industry. He argued with the prospect, dismissed their questions and points of view, and then couldn’t understand why they didn’t buy immediately. It took the regional manager nine months to recover and get the sale.

My experience with the CEO in a sales call most often followed a similar form with even worse outcomes (lost the prospect all together).  I know there are good sales CEO’s out there and my experience is limited, but I still would be hesitant to bring the CEO on a qualifying call.

The author does provide a checklist for the call and the right tact for the CEO to take (my editing):

The key to effective use of the CEO lies in the discipline of call planning. This can be time-consuming and the CEO might need to be educated about it, but the payoff is huge.

Consider the previous example in which the CEO did the demo; in reality, sales staff can and should perform this role.  A higher-value and more appropriate role for that CEO would have been to sell vision, strategy, ideas and relationship, not specific features and functions.

Finally, an over-reliance upon the CEO to close prospects becomes problematic for one very simple perception:

According to one financial services representative, “The
client exec told me that if the CEO had to go on every sales call, we must be poorly run or desperate for business, and that made him nervous. Even a small
company’s CEO shouldn’t be going on every sales call.”

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