Head Of Sales
topic on 8 shows · 34 statements across 25 episodes
In Depth 
Lenny's Podcast 
the Neon Show 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 
Top Founders 
the a16z Podcast 
TBPN 
20VC
34 statements about Head Of Sales, every show
Effective enterprise sales leaders must travel eight to ten nights every month
“The hardest part is the travel. If you're doing your job right, you're out of your house. You're not sleeping in your bed eight to 10 nights every month. Eight to 10 nights every month. You're not sleeping in your bed. You're on the road somewhere. You're out,…”
Jyoti Bansal managed initial sales reps directly until Harness reached $1M
“Actually at harness, I initially didn't hire until the first million, I didn't hire out of sales. And I said, okay, I'll just hire a few reps. I know how to manage them.”
Early startups should avoid hiring sales executives removed from frontline management
“So if you're hiring your first head of sales, I would look for someone who hasn't been too far removed from a first line or a second line manager.
If they come in from a place where it's like a
Three hundred million sales org, and they are like six layers betw…”
Sales productivity means closing $250k quarterly ACV within six months
“The ultimate measuring stick for a head of sales is can you hire great people and make them productive? And to me, productive means within six months, can a sales rep get onboarded Understand how to sell the product, generate their own pipeline, and then close…”
Founders should require heads of sales to send weekly activity emails
“Every week have your head of sales, send out an email of what they did. Now, if it, if you have too big of a company, then send it just to the leadership team, but let them know like, Hey, this is what I did this week, because then all of a sudden you can star…”
Boschwitz: Future GTM leaders will manage multiple tools within one system
“I very much see the future being that a CMO and a, you know, a head of sales is orchestrating across multiple tools, but within one system.”
Rayapati: Atomicwork hired a head of customer growth before a head of sales
“Yeah, actually I think even before salesperson, we hired head of customer growth. In the US, right? So even before we hired head of sales.”
Hays: Founders who differ from their customers must hire a relatable sales head
“People want to buy products from other people like them, and so if you're not like your customer, you better have a head of sales who is”
Boduch: CEOs must hire sales leaders who model exact GTM math
“I think if you're a CEO right now hiring a head of sales, you want to find someone that is building out a process and a model and is building out the math and is getting buy-in from the other parts of the organization about what they need to do.”
Lemkin: Top Account Executives should not be hired as Heads of Sales
“Another mistake that founders often make is they hire the number one account executive at a hot company to be their head of sales. It's not the same skills. Most sales executives should not be managers.”
CMOs Must Be Sellers and Sales Heads Must Be Marketers
“So the CMO, the marketer, must be very effective at selling and the head of sales must be very effective in marketing.”
Most SaaS Startups Hire Their First AE Before a Head of Sales
“Most companies will hire their first AE before a head of sales.”
Akhund: Early-stage startups should hire sales ICs before a head of sales
“I mostly think of these things as like, I think it's a mistake when startups go and hire, like the first hire shouldn't be ahead of sales. Like, I think you should just go hire some salespeople and see if there's a repeatable process that you can come up with …”
Lemkin: First-time sales leaders still prefer joining highly valued decacorns
“I'll tell you, I've interviewed 10 or 15 up and coming first time head of sales recently. Okay? All out of Decacorns and Unicorns with good outcomes. Every single kid wanted to join whatever a Heptacorn or Penta, Penta Decacorn. There was no one, no kid, and I…”
Early-stage startups should hire a hands-on Head of Sales, not a VP
“You should probably call this a head of sales. Don't hire a VP of sales. You want to find somebody that actually has done something quite a bit like this stage recently and was successful. This is exploratory motion, and you want someone that's going to roll u…”
Weiss: Slack reached $80M-$90M ARR before hiring a sales head
“I think we got to,
I want to say, 80 or ninety million dollars in ARR before we hired a head of sales.”
Liu: Hiring a VP of sales before defining customer fit is dangerous
“If you're trying to go bring in a head of sales to outsource that for you at that stage, that's pretty dangerous, right?”
Loganov: New sales leaders should meet engineering before their own sales reps
“So if you're a head of sales, You don't go and talk to your salespeople first. You go and talk to your head of engineering or key engineering product leaders, because if you truly as a head of sales, you are going to need to work with them for the company to b…”
Logvinov: Hire a head of sales at $1M revenue or initial deals
“After you close to either several deals, or maybe you are up to maybe one million in revenue, it is time to hire your first head of sales.”
Parrish: Hire a head of sales when building out 3+ reps
“When you've got some conviction that, Hey, this is a motion that's going to require a sales team. I know that we've got capacity to hire at least let's call it three salespeople go and get that head of sales, go and get that frontline sales manager.”
Lemkin: 50-50-25 compensation structure remains effective for heads of sales
“I did an old Saster post that a lot of folks have used for a fifty-fifty-twenty-five plan. I think it works well today, if you can pull it off, which is half your head of sales comp is base, half is tied to hitting the plan for the year, and then 25% for blowi…”
Startups should hire their first head of sales at $1M ARR
“After, you know, you closed either several deals or maybe you are up to maybe one million in revenue it is time to hire your first head of sales.”
Founders should interview ten established sales leaders before hiring their first
“If you are hiring your first head of sales, and if you know, have no idea how to hire head of sales, like, and what they should be doing, go and talk to Tan heads of sales who you may possibly maybe not be able to hire much larger companies, right, for not loo…”
New sales heads should meet engineering leaders before their own sales reps
“So if you're a head of sales, you don't go and talk to your sales people first. You go and talk to your head of engineering or key engineering and product leaders, because eventually as a head of sales, you are going to need to work with them for the company t…”
Tarica: Startups should hire a Head of Sales before sales reps
“My lean, Harry, head of sales first, because I think a strong head of sales can do four things really, really well. First, they create that sales playbook that you asked about earlier, where the CEO is leading by example, but that head of sales goes Creates th…”
Stebbings: Sales leaders perform better bringing their own team
“No, listen, I'm actually with you, and I also think it's much easier when they bring their team than when you kind of throw a head of sales with an existing team that they maybe didn't craft and create, and there's that friction.”
Tarica: Startups must hire a Head of Sales after $1M ARR
“I think you can make it past a million ARR, but then once you get past that, at least from what I see, it's time. I think you have to bring that head of sales.”
Stebbings: Executive sales leader searches take three to six months
“Well, it takes six months to hire a head of sales sometimes. It takes three months, but it's not tomorrow”
Grosser: Hiring a Head of Sales too early is a startup mistake
“But I think it's hard sometimes to hire your head of sales at that point, because you may not ultimately know who you're going to wind up selling to as you get to more and more scale and different sales leaders spike in different areas. And so a mistake that f…”
Grosser: Founders must diagnose root causes before replacing underperforming sales heads
“And then the sales team needs to run a diagnostic, you have to get to root cause analysis. I would think that in general, coming out of that, you're going to uncover places in your sales process that are not well tuned that you can fix. And the sales team is a…”
Herzberg: Founders must sell the product themselves before hiring sales staff
“So the founder needs to sell the product before anyone else can. So day one, founder equals head of sales.”
Hire a sales leader before expanding to three or more reps
“I think if you have hit some level of product market fit, you're seeing traction. You know that there is a market to go grab, and it's a speed game. And like, we need to go do it fast. And you're like, I think that we can support having five salespeople, even,…”
Surfer SEO reached $3M ARR without a dedicated sales team
“No, no sales team. Oh, yeah, that's a good moment. I'm looking for a super professional sales, head of sales. So, yeah, no sales, and we would love to start it.”