Podcast · 35 min listen

Hiring a Great VP of Sales: The New, Latest Edition with Jason Lemkin

Jason Lemkin · SaaStr Free Advanced

The number that should scare you into reading it: 70 percent of first VP of Sales hires do not make it. Ten named mistakes, including hiring someone who has quietly stopped wanting to sell, and what a mishire costs you in months.

Open on saastr.com ↗

It answers 2 questions

  1. When do I hire a VP of Sales, and what happens if I get it wrong?
  2. How do the best-run sales orgs decide someone is not going to make it, and how fast do they move?

Read with it

  1. Ten specific, named mistakes rather than principles, including hiring a VP of Sales too early and letting a bad rep linger past... SaaStr Podcast · 30 min listen SaaStr Podcast #379: The Top 10 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Sales Team Jason Lemkin
  2. Video · 2 hr watch Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) Lenny Rachitsky and Jason Lemkin
  3. Names the two ways founders get the timing wrong, scaling too early and scaling too late, and walks the progression from... Founding Sales Book · 35 min read Founding Sales, Chapter 10: Early Sales Management and Scaling Concepts Peter Kazanjy
  4. The source of the hiring scorecard: outcomes and competencies written before you meet anyone, then structured interviews... ghSMART Book · Book Who: The A Method for Hiring Geoff Smart and Randy Street
  5. 365 B2B companies surveyed on ramp, tenure, attrition, activity and comp. When you want to know whether your ramp is slow or... The Bridge Group Report · Report, 20 min read The 2023 SDR Metrics and Compensation Report The Bridge Group
  6. Zenoti's Sudheer Koneru saying plainly that his first two sales hires both failed and he had to go back to selling himself.... SaaSBoomi, The India Advantage Article · 7 min read How did you go about doing the first few sales, and at what point did you feel the need for a sales hire? Manav Garg with Sudheer Koneru
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →