How Dumb are CEOs? This Dumb!

In today's morning post "Sales Pros Know More Than CEOs," I pointed out that the average sales rep knows more about the real problems of his or her industry than the average CEO. It occurred to me that there may be some people who don't believe that, so I decided to provide a few quotes to confirm the point. Here are a few I found with just a quick search:

• "Am I a fool? I don't think I'm a fool. But I think I sure was fooled. " Kenneth Lay, CEO & Chairman, Enron Corp.
• "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Ken Olsen, President, DEC
• "There are no significant bugs in our released software." Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft
• "Customers do not want online games." Satoru Iwata, President, Nintendo
• "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards." Steve Ballmer, President, Microsoft
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson Senior, Chairman, IBM
• "We have absolute clarity about the road ahead." Rick Wagoner, CEO, General Motors
• "We make all the same mistakes... we never learn." Dick Kovacevich, Chairman, Wells Fargo

There are a couple of lessons that sales pros can learn from dumb CEO quotes:

First, the CEO that you're trying to reach (as in "calling high") is no smarter or better than any other bozo that you meet in the business world. So there's no reason to be overawed when you pitch in the corner office.

Second, your own CEO is probably a lot dumber than you think. That's useful to know when you're assessing the likelihood of success for the latest strategy that came down from the ivory tower at your corporate headquarters.