Jason M. Lemkin advises founders transitioning from founder-led sales to delegate hiring and team composition to trusted sales leaders (VP or Chief Revenue). He argues founders should hire sales reps they themselves would have bought from, and that empowered sales leaders will assemble heterogeneous, creative teams—hiring product-oriented, unconventional reps and giving them room to run—so long as leaders are trusted when performing.
Chapters
Founder led sales, you need to hire the type of sales reps that you would buy from that you believe in. That's it. That you would buy for real. This is the mistake. Every time when I talk to a founder where they hit a roadblock in founder led sales is the classics ask a question. But I always ask the question, what would you have bought from Henry? And they're like, yeah, you're right. You know the resume. I didn't really buy it from here. That's the test. And you believe in them. When you have a VP of sales that actually is your wingman that you believe in, they're going to hire a much more heterogeneous type of people. They're going to hire folks that are very product oriented. They're going to hire reps that seem to have add. They're going to hire folks that are. You get uncomfortable because they seem like they nag the prospect. You're going to hire folks that you feel like don't follow up quickly enough. But a great sales leader is going to look for the positive attributes and let the. There is still creativity in sales. Even with AI, there's some creativity is going to let the creative be creative. And so I think the lesson is empower your sales leaders to hire a heterogeneous team. When you flip from founder led to VP or CR led, you got to trust them if they're performing and then just give them. And then just give folks room to run.
