Jason M. Lemkin advises against claiming skills you do not have in sales and marketing. He emphasizes honest self-assessment—distinctly different skills are required for field sales, outbound vs inbound sales, and demand generation—and warns that misrepresenting experience (e.g., claiming outbound expertise) leads to hiring mistakes and stalled growth. The excerpt urges focus and role-appropriate honesty across sales, marketing, customer success, and product.
Chapters
Number one, don't pretend you know how to do something you don't do. If you come out of an SMB background, you do not know how to do field sales. If you've only done inbound, you do not know how to do outbound. When I see so much these days everyone has figured out you have to add an outbound playbook to inbound. And I see so many first time VP of sales, even experienced ones claiming they know how to do outbound and they don't. And they hit a wall. They hit a wall because there aren't enough leads and they've never done outbound and they claim they do. And they struggle for a quarter or two to find this magical director of outbound that they have to hire because they don't know how to hire SDRs and build a team because they haven't done it. The other one I see are VP of marketing that they don't really know how to do demand gen and they claim they do, but they don't. And they can't generate any leads or opportunities or MQLs for sales. No one in sales, marketing or customer success or product has done it all. But especially in sales and marketing and be honest about what you're good at. Focus.
