HopalongPetrovski
I'm Spartacus!
I think "sales"has always reported directly to Sean.Sounds to me like CS has been made redundant - a re-evaluation of the sales function perhaps? I wouldn't be surprised if the sales function will now report directly to Sean.........after all that was his claim to fame coming in....... FWIW
He told me at the AGM get-together that his day starts at 4am and every Monday is a sales meeting to track strategy and progress.
He struck me as a serious dude who knows how it's done and what it takes having cultivated the skillset himself.
Sales, for people that haven't actually done it, looks easy from the outside, and a good salesperson tends to make it seem so.
And, like most skills or talents, some have an innate gift and other's have to work at it.
But, when you're selling something new or an alternative to an existing and evolved "works good enuf" product, there is an inertia that takes time to counter. You have to "be there" long enough to prove you're not just another flash in the pan that will evaporate leaving your clients stuck with another Edzel.
You have to talk the talk and walk the walk and prove your product with existing users.
You won't win them all in the early days.
Many promising leads will wither on the vine after you have spent extensively in time and effort, and you'll find out later that even though you had the superior product, they, or the individual representing them, where bought off by their big pocketed existing supplier.
Often you were just being used as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a better deal.
It all happens, and you just have to keep getting back on the horse.
Eventually you'll establish mutually beneficial relationships with some new players not already enmeshed and some older hands who are either disillusioned or disenfranchised by the extant "big boys" behaviour and you'll be away.
But, like the science fiction writer searching for readers, it takes time.
We have a product that was perhaps slightly before its time, but the world is catching up rapidly now.
We are more and more in the news and the hype train around AI is continuing to grow.
The techies and engineers have been playing with us for a few years already and we are establishing ourselves as a player in numerous eco systems.
Steve's moved on. Good luck to him.
Sean has another year of data points of experience to overlay on a candidate who can "sell us" to prospective users.
Bring on the new salesperson whose success will be both Sean's, and ours.