Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Why hiring someone that was the #1 sales rep somewhere as your VP of Sales almost never works out:

19 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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1:00

Jason M. Lemkin explains why hiring your best salesperson as VP of Sales almost never works. The top AE who hit $2M while others did $700K rarely knows how to hire or train reps, and has about a 1% success rate in the role. The only exception: joining early enough to learn on the job like a co-founder.

Questions this video answers

July 19, 2023

Top AE: $2,000,000 last year; next rep: $700,000.

He says essentially 0.00% then clarifies 'Actually, 1%.'

Chapters

They will hire the number one AE at a company, the number one sales rep. They'll go find a Brex or a talk desk or Algolia, and they'll hunt around and they'll find out that Lauren was the number one AE or the number one AE in the west. Okay? And they will wine and dine her and take her out to the fanciest restaurants and meet the team. And they'll say, wow, you did 2 million last year and the next rep did 700,000. I want you to be my VP of Sales. They're ambitious, and if they want the next step, they'll take that job. How many reps do you think the number one AE ever hired? Zero. Zero. Do you think the number one rep even knows how to train anybody? Do you think she know where to find anybody good? I find that number 1 rep 0.00% of the time is successful. Actually, 1%. The only time she's successful is when they join way early, which makes no sense, because they have time. They have time to make a lot of mistakes. They have time for the first four sales reps to fail because they join almost as a founder. Once they've joined almost as a founder, they can make their a lot like the founders. They can make their own errors. And they have a year to make up for the fact they never were a director, they never were a lead.