The #1 Mistake I See Founders Make When They Hire Their First VP of Sales
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So much of classic SaaStr content is on getting that first VP of Sales hire right. ? Getting it wrong so often sets you back a year, and burns half your cash.
But the reality is many of you will hire a Pretty Good First VP of Sales.? Just not a truly, truly great one.? And that can be fine either for a while, or if they grow into a great one, forever.
And then I see the same mistake again, and again, and again.? A founder hires a Pretty Good First VP of Sales.? And just … exits sales.
They didn’t love doing founder-led sales.? Or they want to get back to doing product.? Or they think they are sort of done with this.
I can tell you almost 100% of the time, any but the very, very best first VPs of Sales fail if the founder steps out of sales.
Why?
So again and again, I see a Pretty Good VP of Sales hired at $1m, $2m, $3m, $4m ARR.? And the CEO is off to the next thing.? And sales — decline.? They don’t even flatten, they decline.? Because you’ve lost your best asset on the sales team.? Sometimes, if you hire a VP of Sales that was already a customer / user, they already know a lot.? And the very, very best do figure it out.? But otherwise, it’s the Titanic if the founder exits sales.
As CEO, assume you never get that time back just because you hired a VP of Sales.? You always have to put the same amount of time into sales.? No matter how great a VP of Sales you hire.? It’s just, what you do with your time in sales should change.
You shouldn’t have to send contracts out, or do routine follow-up.? The VP of Sales will make sure that all happens.? But you still have to put as much time into sales.? Just in more valuable parts of the process.? In the middle of sales, and just in bigger deals, and smoothing over issues.? And building relationships.? But not stepping out, or putting in less time overall.
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Exit sales, and watch sales fall.? I can almost guarantee it, unless you truly hire the best of the best.? And most of us don’t.
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1 年As a salesperson helping to transition away from founder-led sales, having my CEO involved in basically every deal for the first full quarter was critical. Would’ve been a big uphill battle without that involvement.
Strategic RevOps Consulting for B2B SaaS
1 年You're rolling the dice if you do this. You'll step back, focus on other things and then wait 12-18 months before it sets in that you've failed and you might go out of business as a result. There's a BIG difference between delegation and abdication. And it's pretty hard to delegate something when you haven't even figured out what that something is, what the sales process is, what works as you scale it up, what metrics you should track etc etc. If you step out of that your plan is a hope and a prayer your VP can figure it out on their own and if you're wrong you could lose your entire company.
Pretty accurate