Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

How to Hire the Best Talent The Key Role of a VP in Scaling Your Company

10 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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Jason M. Lemkin explains that the most important role of a VP—especially a VP of sales—is their ability to attract and hire other talent as the company scales. He argues a reliable signal of a strong VP of sales is having personally hired at least two quota-meeting reps; if they can recruit two, they can scale that hiring exponentially. He recommends probing candidates by asking for those two hires and whether those hires would follow the candidate.

Chapters

The single most important thing about a VP generally for most roles is ultimately, as you scale, they're going to be about attracting other talent to your company. So the single most important thing, and this is mostly true for the VP of sales, because the VP of sales is going to hire the most people. But at least if you hire VP of sales, they have to have hired two good people. If you can hire two quota, even just quota meeting reps, you can hire four and you can hire eight and 16 and 32 and 64 and 120, you really can figure it out. But the risk for a VP of sales in particular is never having hired two great reps. And what you'll find when you meet with candidates is they'll say they managed a team, but did they really hire them? Did they really recruit them? Ask them for those two great reps and then ask those reps if they'd come with her. If two of them would come with her, she'll find a way to get you 20 great reps.