This is a short YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin listing clear warning signs that a newly hired VP of Sales is failing and should be replaced. The speaker emphasizes behavioral and operational signals: persistent blame-shifting, a sudden drop in quota attainment tied to poor recruiting, failure to retain top reps, unrealistic/backloaded growth plans (especially in recurring-revenue models), and visible fear in the sales leader. The full video promises eight signs; this chunk covers several of them with examples and reasoning.
Chapters
Hey everybody. I wanted to briefly talk about eight signs. Eight crystal clear signs that your VP of sales you've hired that you really hope work isn't going to work out. You probably already know it in your gut. But when you see these signs, you've got to move on. The first one is the blame game. I see this again and again. And sales leaders that aren't great or they're just in the wrong situation, they might be great at another company when they're failing. They start blaming others rather than figuring how to solve the problem. They blame down. They blame the people they hired. They blame product. That's always true in part we all future gaps. But they over blame the product. They over blame the competition for losing deals. There's always competition and they blame time. They always say another month, another quarter, this amazing pipeline will close. A little of this is okay, but when you hear too much of the blame game, it never gets better. Another quarter never fixes it. You're just going to hear even more, more blame for missing the quarter as time goes on. Related to that is when you see a big drop in quota attainment. When a VP of Sales comes in and there were two or three reps doing well and all of a sudden there's 10, but all of them are closing before that's a sign that they can't recruit. They don't understand how to build a team around your product. And it never gets better. If Reps 3 through 10 are failing, Reps 11 through 50 are never going to solve the problem. Related to that is if any of the good reps you do have start leaving. A great VP of Sales will immediately figure out how to incent and keep whatever winners are on her team when she joins. Maybe one good person leaves. Even that is a flag. But if two good sales reps leave on your VP of sales, they don't know how to retain a team and the quality of your team is just going to decline. A crazy plan. If a VP of Sales comes up with an aggressive plan, I like that. I like to see an aggressive plan, but an insane plan. Especially the ones that always worry me are the ones that are always backloaded for Q4. Like this quarter, we're not going to grow. Next quarter, we're not going to grow, but we'll all make it up at the end of the year. That makes no sense in a recurring revenue model. And it's hopeless and it will just never happen. It's just another version of an excuse. And the last one, maybe the most important one is fear. It's related to all of these. But when you see fear in the eyes of your head of sales, it's too late. And you need to find someone that doesn't have it, at least not too much.
