Fatal Mistake 1: Not Taking Responsibility For Understanding Sales and Lead Generation Everything begins with the CEO. Even when a CEO hires executives to run lead generation and sales, the CEO cannot delegate their own understanding of how lead generation and sales works. The CEO must understand the fundamentals in order to set effective goals, coach executives, and solve revenue problems. One of my own fatal mistakes as the CEO of LeaseExchange was my delegation of both the execution and my understanding of lead generation and sales to others. Not only did I help create arbitrary revenue goals, but I also failed to really understand the “why” when results didn’t come in as expected... which means that I didn’t have a clear idea of what needed to change in order to get the desired results. By having an understanding of how sales and lead generation works, your CEO can help create realistic plans and visions for the team. The CEO can avoid arbitrary goals, assumptions, and plans, and thus run a much faster growing, profitable company. Solution: The CEO takes full responsibility for educating themselves, whether indirectly through coaching, or directly by getting involved in actual projects.