Jason M. Lemkin says a VP of Sales will fail if they won't admit when they miss targets. A VP should own misses fast, stop blaming others, and name 2-3 concrete steps to fix it. Honesty in monthly reporting matters more than the miss itself.
The number one sign I know a VP of sales will never make it is when they don't own up to a miss. And I can already see in their board decks and their presentation who's positioning it is not a miss and who's owning up to it. Now you miss every quarter. Obviously you know the startups in trouble and you can't make it as a VP of sales. But a miss is a miss and you've got to own up own up to it. And you've got to own up to whether it's a hard miss, that is it's down from the prior quarter or a soft miss, which is growth from the prior quarter but not the growth we'd hoped. A soft miss is not great. I hope you had a realistic plan with your CEO, but be honest about each month. Be honest about why you missed it. Don't blame others. Transparency builds. When things aren't going well, they stop sending them. And VPs of sales don't, don't own up to a miss, own up to a miss, own up to a miss. They own up to a miss as soon as they can't do anything about it. Maybe it's a couple days before the end of the quarter if you're enterprise because it's just too late. But they own up to the miss. When it happens, they take responsibility and they tell you the two to three things they're going to do better they're to going.
