When to Hire a VP of Sales, and Why Most Startups Do It Too Early

"We need a VP of Sales" is usually a sentence of desperation

When a founder tells me they need to hire a VP of Sales, my first question is why. The answer is almost always the same: "Sales are stuck and we need someone to take this." In other words, you are looking for a hero to save you.

The problem is that a VP of Sales is not a magic machine. They take a sales engine that already works and scale it. If you have no engine, if you still do not know who the buyer is, why they buy, and through what process, the VP will not build it for you in a quarter. They will try, fail, and cost you a fortune.

The sign you are not ready

You are not ready for a VP of Sales if the founder has not personally closed a meaningful number of deals. Period.

If the founder cannot sell the product, a salaried salesperson will not do better. The first sales have to come from the founder, because only they understand the vision, the customer's pain and the value. Only after there is a repeatable, proven sales motion can you hand it to someone else.

The sign you are ready

You are ready for a VP of Sales when three things are true:

1. You have a repeatable sales motion. You know who buys, why, and through what process, and it has happened more than once or twice.
2. You are starting to choke on volume. There are more leads and more deals than the founder can handle alone.
3. You need to build a team. Not one more rep, but a system of people to hire, train and manage.

Until all three are true, you do not need a VP. You need the founder to sell, or someone experienced to build the first engine.

The smart alternative for the in-between stage

There is a middle stage where you are too big for the founder to sell alone, but too small for an expensive full-time VP. This is exactly where outsourced sales leadership or a fractional CRO makes sense.

You get someone experienced who builds the engine, hires the first team and sets the standard, without committing to a senior fixed salary before you know the model works. Once the engine is running, you hire an internal VP to run it, from a position of confidence rather than panic.

What the mistake costs

A VP of Sales in the US costs between twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars a month, plus bonuses and options. If you hired at the wrong time and fired after four months, you easily burned several hundred thousand dollars, with no sales engine at the end of it. And that is before we talk about the time you lost.

The bottom line

The right hire at the wrong time is the wrong hire. Before you go looking for a VP of Sales, ask yourself honestly: do I have a proven sales engine, or am I looking for someone to invent one and calling it a hire. If it is the second, there are smarter and far cheaper ways to get there.

Related: Fractional CRO vs hiring a VP of Sales, the fractional CRO service.