Two weeks ago we discussed the trend of unconventional titles and how CEOs can best position and name their critical Product hires.
As a niche recruitment firm focused on finding product and sales leaders for venture-funded startups and scale-ups, we are often tasked with recruiting first-time leadership hires – just as often we get the question, “what should I call them?”
To simplify title selection for early-stage CEOs and/or Founders, here is a quick checklist of the basics to help you determine which title you should choose when hiring your Sales Leader:
CRO
- Reports to the Board and/or Founder/CEO
- Board involvement
- Participates in raising capital
- Often hired to participate in a pivot/reset/turn around or to scale the business to achieve an outcome/exit
- This functions owns the entire sales organization and infrastructure: field sales, account management (install base sales/growth), inside sales, BDR, presales, and sales operations
- Might also own Marketing and/or Customer Success
- Leads other leaders
- Global scope
- Focuses on the business objective, the market opportunity and how to scale and grow the revenue number
- Brought in to instill confidence in large/complex “anchor account” deals
- Engages with the market as a thought leader and ambassador
VP Sales
- Reports to a CEO/Founder
- Participates in company “town halls” as the functional leader
- Could be the senior most sales leader of a team or a subject matter expert tasked with starting a new vertical or region
- For most startups, a VP Sales is their senior most sales leader and they own the job end to end, including:
- Figuring out the value prop, the accounts needed to get other accounts (beachheads/key wins), how to scale and where (geography/patches)
- Determining support needed (BDR/Presales)
- Executing
- Holding people to the fire and managing performance (recognition, pipelines, termination, etc.)
- They may/may not have a personal quota – this depends on the age and stage of the business as well as how mature the business is
- Examples include:
- VP Sales – Financial Services, but they are really an IC sales person with a personal quota
- VP Sales – EMEA – tasked with winning the first deals to justify building a team
Hiring a VP of Sales? Make sure they have these four traits
Head of Sales
- Reports to the Founder/CEO
- This title typically exists in young modern tech startups
- Usually the first sales leader
- Their team might be an inside sales/BDR model
- Average deal size is most likely less than $35K
- Often a scrappy persona; they love startups and are hands-on in everything
- They carry a personal quota and earn extra based on team performance
What Top Sales Execs Look for in Their Next Opportunity: before hiring top Sales talent, make sure you have these 5 pieces ironed out
Looking for Marketing, Customer Success, and/or Engineering title advice? Stay tuned for the rest of our five-part checklist series.