Most Companies Can’t Afford a REALLY Good VP Sales

But do they really need one?

A lot of founders and CEOs secretly hate their sales costs.

Not publicly, of course.

Publicly, everybody talks about “growth,” “scale,” “go-to-market strategy,” and “building world-class sales organizations.”

But behind closed doors?

Many CEOs and founders look at their sales department and think:

“How are we spending THIS much money and still struggling to close deals?”

And honestly, sometimes that frustration is completely justified.

Especially after:

• bad VP Sales hires

• inflated pipelines

• missed forecasts

• SDR teams producing noise instead of meetings

• endless sales meetings with no real execution

• burning hundreds of thousands of dollars without meaningful revenue growth

I’ve seen founders go through two or three sales leaders in under two years.

Not because all those people were terrible.

Because many companies simply are not ready for a traditional enterprise-style sales organization yet.

The Real Cost of a “Real” VP Sales

Most founders dramatically underestimate what a GOOD VP Sales or CRO actually costs.

And I don’t mean salary alone.

A truly experienced sales leader in today’s market can easily cost:

• $250K-$350K per year

• plus bonuses

• plus equity

• plus commissions

• plus recruiters

• plus onboarding

• plus tooling

• plus the team they immediately need built around them

Because the moment a VP Sales comes in, the machine starts growing.

Now you suddenly need:

• SDRs

• AEs

• CRM systems

• outreach platforms

• reporting structures

• pipeline management

• onboarding processes

• sales enablement

• compensation plans

• forecasting systems

• weekly meetings

• dashboards

• management layers

And before the company even has a stable and repeatable sales motion, it’s already carrying enterprise-level overhead.

That’s where panic usually begins.

The Problem Most Founders Don’t Want to Admit

A lot of startups still haven’t fully figured out:

• who actually buys

• why they buy

• which messaging works

• what objections kill deals

• what their repeatable sales process even is

But they still try to build mature sales structures anyway.

I’ve seen startups with:

• weak positioning

• unclear differentiation

• unstable pricing

• inconsistent messaging

…trying to operate like publicly traded SaaS companies.

So now the company has:

• dashboards

• reports

• meetings

• forecasts

• “pipeline”

• activity metrics

But not necessarily revenue.

One of the biggest startup killers I’ve seen over the last 20 years has nothing to do with product quality.

It’s premature sales infrastructure.

Companies build enterprise sales overhead long before building enterprise revenue.

The VP Sales Trap

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Many founders hire a VP Sales hoping that person will magically solve uncertainty.

But uncertainty is not solved by management layers.

It’s solved by:

• understanding the market

• sharpening positioning

• improving execution

• closing deals

• listening to buyers

• fixing messaging

• refining process

And ironically, many VP Sales hires end up spending more time:

• recruiting

• managing

• forecasting

• building structure

…than actually helping close deals.

That doesn’t mean VP Sales leaders are unnecessary.

Far from it.

Great sales leadership is incredibly valuable.

The problem is timing.

Many companies hire enterprise sales leadership far too early.

The Market Is Changing

The interesting part is that the market is slowly adapting to this reality.

Today companies have far more flexible options:

• freelance salespeople

• outsourced SDR teams

• external closers

• fractional sales leadership

• commission-only structures

• full sales outsourcing models

And honestly?

For many startups, those models make much more economic sense in the early stages.

Especially now.

The market became much less forgiving toward inefficiency.

Investors are paying more attention to:

• burn

• execution

• efficiency

• revenue quality

• operational discipline

The old “grow headcount first and figure it out later” model is becoming dangerous.

Why I Built My Model Differently

Years ago, after serving as VP Global Sales & Business Development myself, I kept seeing the exact same pattern again and again.

Good companies. Good products. Smart founders.

But completely overwhelmed by the cost and complexity of building a real sales organization.

Especially internationally.

So instead of forcing startups to build everything internally from scratch, I built a different model.

I step in as a Fractional CRO.

And under one roof, we already have:

• leadership

• process

• infrastructure

• trained salespeople

• execution systems

• international business development experience

Companies move faster without spending years building the machine alone.

Sometimes the smartest thing a company can do is NOT immediately build a massive internal sales hierarchy.

Sometimes they simply need experienced execution without enterprise-level overhead.

And honestly?

A lot of founders are finally starting to realize it now.