Jason M. Lemkin says the best VP candidates for Sales and Product roles plan to meet customers in their first two weeks, not sit in meetings. Top performers aim to talk to around 20 customers and ask to be left alone to do it.
What are some tips for people when they're interviewing these folks? It's interesting. VP of Sales, a VP of Product. I look for the same answer. One of the Columbo style questions I ask them and I mean, I mean, this is so, it's, it's barely even counts as a question is what do you, what do you want to do your first 30 days? What do you want to do? Actually, I usually ask what do you want to do your first two weeks? And in B2B, if I don't hear from the VP of Sales or the VP of Product that I'm going to go meet customers, out, I'm out. There's too many VPs of product to Lenny that don't want to meet customers anymore either. The majority of VPs of products that I interview, they don't. And they don't say meet customers. Every single great VP of Product, Chief Product Officer I've ever worked with in my entire career, you know what the first thing they do in the first two weeks they'd like, Leave me alone, I'm going to go talk to 20 customers. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, I'm going to go talk. They don't want to sit on meetings and look at PRDs and talk out of their navel on endless internal meetings. All the best ones, they say, they just leave. They literally say some.
