When to Hire Your VP of Sales and VP of Marketing

Name: When to Hire Your VP of Sales and VP of Marketing
Uploaded: 2022-10-22T13:30:08+00:00
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this concise talk, Jason M. Lemkin shares practical hiring guidelines for early‑stage SaaS companies. He argues that founders should first recruit two…

22 Oct 2022 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:02

In this concise talk, Jason M. Lemkin shares practical hiring guidelines for early‑stage SaaS companies. He argues that founders should first recruit two sales reps who can consistently hit quota; only after proving that the sales model works should they bring on a VP of Sales, whose primary job is to scale the team from three to hundreds, not to create product‑market fit or a playbook. Lemkin then shifts to marketing, recounting his own experience hiring a VP of Marketing at $20K MRR. The hire, focused on demand generation rather than pure branding, helped grow the company from $20K to $800K MRR within a year, covering her cost and fueling the sales engine. He warns against hiring “logo‑centric” marketers and stresses that once a startup has a handful of customers (10‑20), a senior growth/demand‑gen marketer should be added as early as possible to accelerate lead flow.

Chapters

So find 2 reps you would buy from, work with them, help them so they hit quota, and then hire a sales leader. The other mistake people make, I mean, it's become so trite, but it, the last panel I'm sure will recite it, like it's hyper risky to hire a head of sales, even a stretch one, before you have 2 reps that hit quota because a head of sales job is to hire reps 3 through 300, not to create product market fit, not to create the playbook, but to take a really rough playbook that's, that it's not really clear why it's working, but you've proven twice, 2 reps can hit quota, a smart first-time VP sales will listen, they'll learn, they'll get on calls, they may carry a quota, they may carry a bag, and they'll hire you 3, 300. So 2 you would buy from, then wait, then hire the head of sales, right? And then the last one, then we could break, we go on along, is, and I wrote this so early and people still think it's controversial today, but I wrote one of the first SaaStr posts and I've up, updated it, which is I hired my VP of marketing at $20K MRR. It wasn't a week too early. Okay, I used to have like cuter titles, but I hired at $20K MRR. It wasn't a week too early, and I went through the math. I hired Loretta at $20K. I didn't know much about marketing at the time, but I think we went from like $20K MRR, $240K to maybe $800K in a year. It wasn't like a rocket ship, right? But you come in and all she had to do was help get me enough leads to close another couple hundred thousand dollars, and that one more than covered her cost. 2, fueled the sales team. 3, built our bones so we could do more demand gen and things. And so don't hire someone that works on your logo all day. There's another old classic SaaS post. Don't hire the wrong VP of marketing. You'll just get a bunch of pens with your blue logos on it. Half the folks here will tell you their mishire of marketing just did like branding and product marketing and corporate marketing. No, but you can't hire a growth marketer, a true demand gen marketer. You can hire them too early when you have no customers. But as soon as you have even a hand, 10, 20 customers, you can hire a great senior growth marketer demand gen to get you more leads. So hire that person as early as you can find her or him.