One of the CEO’s in our portfolio is hiring a VP of Sales. It’s obviously a critically important hire, and getting it wrong is very expensive. Our CEO has a candidate he likes culturally and at a high level, but now wants to know if the candidate is actually competent and can do the work. The CEO asked us “ How do we interview the VP of Sales? How do we test him?”
Great questions. At Blossom Street it is our pleasure to talk to major hires. In a situation like this, we ask the candidate to design the go to market motion of the company. To do this, first ask the candidate what data or conversations the candidate needs, and then once they have that data, they should have what is needed to design the sales team and go to market motion.
The key questions VP of Sales candidate should answer when designing the GTM are as follows:
1. What is the right sales team profile? Are we AE’s and SDR’s or just AE’s? What is the correct ratio?
2. What is the daily task of the AE? How much time should they spend outbounding and lead scoring?
3. What is the ideal profile of the AE and how do you find them?
4. How do we comp that AE and what is the salary/commission split?
5. What is the commission structure?
6. Who is the ICP that our outbound efforts should be pointed at?
7. What is the view of taking on clients that are non-ICP?
8. Who owns the upsell motion, the AE or CS? If it is the AE, how is the upsell comped for both the AE and CS? How does that upsell handoff actually work?
9. Should the AE be mining the customer base for new sales?
9. Who are the personnel you would have under you; what is the structure of the sales org?
10. What tools do you need to run the sales org?
11. What do you we do on the marketing side? Where do we point those resources and what specifically do we do? When do we bring on the marketing leader?
12. How many leads should come from marketing versus sales outbounding?
13. What is the timeline you need to have your GTM up and running?
14. What are the most important KPIs you will track?
You as the CEO should be able to look at the answers to the questions above and give them the sniff test. Afterall, you’re the company’s best seller. Ask yourself: do the answers seem correct based on what you know about the customer and your past failed or successful GTMs? Do these answers align with what past successful or failed sales leaders at your company have done? Do they sound better or worse? Do you believe the newly designed GTM will work? Do the current metrics support the answers?
In our view, this is how you minimize the risk of the VP of Sales hire, at least from a skills based perspective.
Thank you for your readership. See more blogs and SaaS data at blossomstreetventures.com. Email the author at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com.