The Role of a VP of Sales: Balancing Feature Requests and Building for the Future

Name: The Role of a VP of Sales: Balancing Feature Requests and Building for the Future
Uploaded: 2024-02-19T16:33:34+00:00
Duration: 51 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this monologue, the speaker outlines the distinct time horizons that a VP of Sales, product team, and COO must operate within—12 months for sales, two…

19 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker outlines the distinct time horizons that a VP of Sales, product team, and COO must operate within—12 months for sales, two years for product, and five years for the COO. He emphasizes that a competent VP of Sales should load‑balance feature requests throughout the year, staying close to deals and listening to customer needs, even when it means taking calculated bets on integrations like HubSpot or SAP. The VP must regularly communicate budget allocations, story‑point percentages, and the current build status, providing a clear view of what is being built now and what is planned for the next two quarters. This approach ensures alignment between sales priorities and longer‑term product strategy while maintaining operational transparency.

Chapters

They will do it. They will listen and they'll say, maybe I don't need that HubSpot integration after all. Maybe, right? Because what a VP of sales should be doing is taking, look, a VP of sales, you can't, the product has to look like the COO has to look 5 years into the future. Product has to look about 2 years into the future. And you really can't ask a VP of sales to look more than 12 months into the future because that's, that's where they're next in line. But a good one will load balance feature requests across the year and they will listen to all that because they'll actually be in sales. They'll actually be in deals and they'll be listening and they'll realize, look, even though We're going to lose this deal to HubSpot. I've gotten 4 SAP requests the last— I'm, I'll, I'm going to take that bet. Even if I'm wrong, I'm going to take that bet. You got to give them that and you got to talk about it every week and say, look, here's your budget, Jane. Here's your story points, your whatever, your 10%. This is what we're currently— this is what we're building now for you objectively. And this is what we're currently planning for the next 2 quarters.