Surviving as a VP of Sales: The Essential Marketing Skills You Need

Name: Surviving as a VP of Sales: The Essential Marketing Skills You Need
Uploaded: 2024-07-01T13:00:35+00:00
Duration: 46 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this solo talk, Jason M. Lemkin argues that a VP of Sales at companies generating under roughly $20‑40 million in ARR must acquire basic marketing…

1 Jul 2024 · 1 min

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In this solo talk, Jason M. Lemkin argues that a VP of Sales at companies generating under roughly $20‑40 million in ARR must acquire basic marketing competencies to stay effective. He explains that modern sales teams rely heavily on outbound prospecting, so sales leaders need to understand outbound tactics, the demand‑generation playbook, and the definitions of MQLs, leads, and opportunity commits. Lemkin stresses the importance of working closely with a VP of Marketing, being able to evaluate marketing collateral, and even creating some collateral yourself. He advises meeting one‑on‑one with the marketing leader and building an outbound team if you lack those skills, warning that without this marketer mindset a sales leader will be unable to judge marketing quality or drive growth.

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What do I mean is as a VP of sales, you've gotta learn a little bit about marketing, at least below $20, $30, $40 million in revenue to survive. First of all, you've gotta become a bit of a marketer yourself because everyone's doing outbound. You're gonna have to learn how to do outbound unless you're in the, the smallest of SMBs. You're gonna have to learn how to add that to the sales playbook. But you're also gonna have to know how to work closely with a VP of marketing, how to know what a good MQL is, what a lead is, what an opportunity commit is. You're going to have to learn a bit of the demand gen playbook. You're going to have to create your own collateral. You want to, want to meet with a great VP of marketing one-on-one. And if you don't know how to do a little bit of this yourself, you won't know what's great. So become a little bit of marketer yourself and make sure you know how to build an outbound team to get going.