What separates a great VP of Sales from a merely good one?
A great one recruits. If they have not personally hired and carried two or three quota-carrying reps before, they are a manager of a system somebody else built. The second marker is that they still want to sell: they will get on a hard call, take the objection and win the room, rather than only inspecting a dashboard. The third is that they make your product better, because they bring back patterns from lost deals instead of blaming the product. And the founder's own behaviour matters as much as the hire: the single biggest failure mode is the founder stepping out of sales the week the VP starts.
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The mistake is not the hire, it is stepping out of sales afterwards, which Lemkin reckons about two thirds of founders do and which backfires almost every time. Six specific reasons your presence still matters, plus where to redirect your hours instead.
Lemkin gives actual numbers for the decisions leaders agonise over: when to hire, how to set quota, how many reps per manager. Opinionated in a way that is useful even where you disagree.
A concrete checklist for the first closer hire: close 10 to 20 yourself first, hire scrappy over pedigreed, and expect a deal within one sales cycle. The 'would you buy from this person' test is the one most founders skip.
The most systematic treatment of recurring revenue as an engineered system rather than a set of departments, with 250+ blueprints you can lift. For leaders building the engine, not for someone still finding the first ten customers.
