Jason M. Lemkin (YouTube video excerpt) warns professionals—especially VPs of Sales and Marketing—not to overstate their experience. He emphasizes that inbound experience does not equal outbound or field sales expertise, and that marketers who claim demand-generation skills they lack will fail to produce leads or MQLs. The consequence is hiring mismatches and quarters of poor performance; Lemkin urges honest self-assessment about what one can actually do.
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 because they don't know how to hire SDRs and build a team because they haven't done it. The other one I see our VP of marketing that 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.
