ventox35

Sales Leader

Landing a VP of Sales role

I'm interviewing for a Sales VP role next week. Would be great to hear from some in a similar role, or who have experience in this area?

I'm trying to separate my mindset from the usual SDR interview, and land my first VP role.

🎈 Mentorship

👥 Hiring

🧢 Sales Management

14 comments

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DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

Are you an SDR now? You're not giving us much to go off but build from your experience.

Also, I stole these questions/points
(not mine but I saved them for the future) from a linkedin post DISCUSSING EXACTLY THIS, but here is what to consider:
People Scaling
- Talk about your experiences scaling: Interviewing / Training / Onboarding / Culture
- Recount some of your best / worst hires and how did they impact your organization?
- What were some of your keys to success?
- What were some of your biggest lessons learned?

Scaling Velocity
- How do you know when you are scaling too fast?
- How do you know when it’s time to start adding fuel to the fire?
- What are some of the essential components in GTM that you NEED to see to start adding more resources?

Rep Modeling / Sales Model / Capacity Planning
- Conceptually, how do you think about building your sales plan?
- Lessons learned / best practices / refinements over the years?
- Where do most sales plans get it wrong?

Finding and Closing Sales Talent
- Talk about talent wars - easier or harder to come by today?
- Secret to attracting top talent?
- How do you balance industry expertise and experience?

Hiring Sales Managers / Sales Leaders
- What would you look for?
- How do you balance industry expertise / software expertise / sales leadership expertise?
- How do you cut through the BS in interviews?

Geographical considerations
- What are your thoughts on remote sales teams?
- Pros / Cons compared to in office teams
- How do you effectively manage your time when leading across multiple time zones?

Process Scaling
- Sales Process - What does it mean to you?
- Importance of People vs Process: Optimize for which?
- What are some of the best non-quota carrying hires that you’ve made in your sales organizations?
- What has your experience been with sales operations?

Playbooks and Materials
- Do you have experience writing “sales playbooks”?
- When is the right time and why should folks make time for this?
- Who’s job is it to lead sales infrastructure and process building? CEO? Sales leader? Sales Ops?

Rep Focus
- Would love to hear your thoughts on i) regional focus, ii) sector focus, iii) specialization
- How much ramp time do you think we need? What would you need to shrink that?
- Tell me how you think about sales training? Tactical vs Mental?

Technology
- What are your views on sales technology and the role it plays?
- Do you see too many tools? Not enough?
- What is your ideal sales tech stack and spend per rep/month?

Data
- Describe the difference between 'data awareness' and 'data driven'.
- What does sales data mean to you and how would you advise the team to think about data in their process?
- What lead data and also rep data do you track on your team and process?
- What have been some of the most profound uses of sales data to drive outcomes in your career?

Sales Relationship with Other Functional Group
- What are some high value thoughts/lessons/observations with how sales should interact with: Marketing / Customer Success / Product?
- What are some ways as a sales leader you can positively impact retention?
- How do you work alongside a CFO to ensure we're spending and throttling appropriately?

ICP
- How do you define your ICP when you have zero customers?
- What processes do you leverage to refine a company’s ICP over time, and why is this important?
- Good revenue vs. bad revenue?

'Can do' vs 'Has done'
- Why are you - with limited experience - the right choice?
- Why are you - with tons of experience - the right choice?

ventox35

Politicker

Sales Leader

This is great, thank you.

I'm a biz dev director now. Basically glorified AE

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

Thanks, again it’s copied from a LinkedIn post someone else made but that’s just another reason we should have a wiki for sales topics here (I made a post about it). Also sorry it looks shitty on mobile. It displays fine on the browser version.

InQ5WeTrust

Arsonist

No marketing, mayo isn't an MQL

These are great points, they should be pinned in a mega doc.

APalmoze

Good Citizen

Business Development

These are really great to consider.

alecabral

Arsonist

Director - Digital Sales Transformation

Hard to give you more than what @DungeonsNDemos gave you. All good advice!

Also, a question: are you moving from SDR to VP? Same company? Different one?

ventox35

Politicker

Sales Leader

Different company.

KendallRoy

Politicker

Management role or dressed up AE? I'm on the fence about taking the management path or doubling down as a top performing AE

ventox35

Politicker

Sales Leader

It's a bit of both. Individual contributor that also coaches sales team, and creates sales process from scratch.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Dungeons did a pretty good job here. I'll add a little.

When you discuss accomplishments, include the guidance and help you received during the process. This shows you collaborate well. Also ask them questions that show you've done your research on their company/culture/team. A good one is what does your team need that's not being implemented now?

Then hire me when you get the job 😆

ventox35

Politicker

Sales Leader

I like it!!

PhillySales

Opinionated

Director of Inside Sales

SDR to VP… whoa!

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

Yeah, I’m super confused about that.

Stratifyz

Big Shot

Account Executive

Where is Leese when you need em!?!

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ventox35

Landing a VP of Sales role

14 comments

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