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Comment by travisjungroth | Hacker News Reader

That's a reason to bring on an Account Executive, not leadership for the whole department. I doubt he'll be on sales calls.

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The CEO is the most important salesperson. Meeting customers is 50% of the job.

For a small startup, yes. I could totally be wrong here, but I doubt that GCP will operate on that model.

Not to be rude, but yes you are totally wrong here. Meeting with customers is 50% or more of the time commitment for a world-class enterprise-sales-company CEO.

Other companies are huge contracts, and simply won't sign on without that level of dedication. They demand it, and the CEO's give it.

It's just as important at a bigger company. CEOs end up traveling more as the company gets larger, mainly to meet customers, and it's especially critical if the customers are also big companies.

CEOs and CTOs are often involved when working with a very large business. CTOs often end up giving presentations to the top brass about security and technological advantage. If you are high enough to have major influence on the product, you will end up doing sales.

We are an early GCP enterprise customer and Diane has met us numerous times. A class act.

Can you share anything more about this? I'd love to hear it. I think you shared the most relevant experience of any post so far.

Depends who the customer is. If you're trying to grab another Spotify, you absolutely put your department leadership on the sales call.

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