A short YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin offering practical advice for hiring senior sales leaders. Central claims in this excerpt: prefer candidates who can bring at least one or two proven team members with them, verify those team members will actually move, and be cautious about candidates who fabricate or overstate their grooming of leaders. The speaker distinguishes between "stretch" hires and those who have scaled a team by hiring rather than inheriting.
Chapters
And they always know, hey, when I do my I love my current company but when I do my next thing, Justin and Ellen are the two. You always hear Justin, Ellen, who I'm going to bring with you. A stretch VP doesn't have 80 people, but they better have two or one. And when you go to interview that stretch VP of sales, stretch head of sales, ask them who they're going to bring with you. That's when you're, you know, late stage. But make sure they have two and go interview those two and find out if they will come with them. Sometimes they make the two up. I don't mean grooming in the slightly toxic or pejorative sense. I mean in the old fashioned sense. They are grooming leaders. They are grooming their team month after month after month after month. Don't hire them. Oh, you might be a double stretch. You might be a great double stretch. And if you do, okay, last point. If you make the double stretch, if you hire someone that does not have anyone to bring with them, right, that has not scale, at least hired themselves. Not inherited a team. Not inherited, not was given a team, but hired to themselves. If you're going to do the.
