What separates a great VP of Sales from a merely good one?
The short answer
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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Why we picked it
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.
Why we picked it
Short and blunt: about two thirds of founders step out of sales when the VP starts, and it fails almost every time. Read it before you make the hire, not after the first bad quarter.
Why we picked it
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.
Why we picked it
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.
