The Latest from SaaStr: 10 Signs Your VP of Sales Just Isn’t Going to Work Out

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to find a great VP of Sales, what the risks are, what risks to take, etc.

We’ve also summarized a few critical factors that will tell you, within 30 days, if your VP of Sales won’t work out.  This post was pretty controversial originally, but I think most folks now agree with its conclusions.

But given how often folks still don’t pull the plug on a bad VP of Sales hire for up to a year … I wanted to bullet out a longer, 10-point checklist of Warning Signs.  That she or he just isn’t going to work out … at your start-up. 

Maybe at a different one, at a different time, or stage, or subject matter, they might be successful. But not at your start-up.

#1 The Blame Game – Down.  As soon as you hear a VP of Sales start to blame their own reports for missing a number, it’s over.   These are their hand-picked team members, after all.  When a VP of Sales has lost confidence in their ability to hit a number, it’s always easy to blame someone on their team.  But a great VP of Sales never does.  They just … take care of their mishires.  In fact, if the issue really is a mishire, that person is gone before the issue even needs to be discussed.  So the Blame Game – Down is an almost 100% clear sign your VPS isn’t going to make it.

I was curious the other day how many of the recent Cloud and SaaS IPOs had founders that were equal co-founders from an equity perspective.  That was how I was brought up (the first start-up job I had, the founders were equal shareholders).  And I generally thought that 50:50 was the default, albeit with many exceptions.

Well, I was wrong.

Only 4 of the most recent ~30 SaaS/Cloud IPOs I looked at had equal founder ownership at IPO, Atlassian, Pagerduty, and (close enough) MongoDB and Amplitude.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Secureframe

Secureframe makes it easy to get SOC 2 compliant. With guided workflows and one-click integrations, the entire process is automated.

Former CEO and founder of Yext and current CEO and founder of Roam, Howard Lerman, shares successful strategies and lessons learned building two successful startups with Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, in this week’s episode of CRO Confidential.

“Always trust your gut. There are a lot of experts out there. They know what’s best for them, but only you know what’s best for you,” says Lerman.

SaaStr events couldn’t happen without our partners, and we wanted to give a special shout-out to some of our newest sponsors for SaaStr Annual 2023. At the 9th ever SaaStr Annual, ~200 of the best and hottest companies on earth will go BIG as partners/sponsors. Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr!

Creating urgency is an art.

Most founders are great “middlers”. They are great at explaining not just what the product does, but what it can do to solve your problems. No one is better than a founder at this.

And then … the deal often never quite closes.

The prospect got interested, took the call and the meeting, but … didn’t ask for a contract. Or sign up herself.

What a great sales pro will learn is how the heck to add thoughtful urgency to a sales process. When really, almost any SaaS purchase can be put off a month or two.

It’s not easy. But the tricks include:

• Discounting. Easy to do wrong, but done just right, creates urgency. Done wrong, it just devalues the product and/or leaves you with less revenue than you’d otherwise have.  Or even slows down the deal, if it looks like desperation or a used car salesperson’s attempt to create urgency.
• Asking. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.  But this only works if you’ve truly added value to the prospect during their discovery and trial process.
• Asking — After Having Provided a Ton of Value. The prior point. If you have helped your prospect plan, upgrade, and even pilot an important and valuable change to their business process, they you have added value. Ask for a favor back after (“Can we get it signed this month? It would help me a lot.”). It often works.
• Getting Used to No. Sales is hard. You get a lot of Nos.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Secureframe

Secureframe makes it easy to get SOC 2 compliant. With guided workflows and one-click integrations, the entire process is automated.

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