Don't Just Hire a VP of Sales. Hire the Right VP for Your Stage.
By Shawn Hamilton, M.S., DBA(c) Shawn Hamilton is a leading sales leadership advisor and doctoral researcher at the University of Houston, specializing in Sales Leadership.
Don't Just Hire a VP of Sales. Hire the Right VP for Your Stage.
It's one of the most common and catastrophic mistakes a CEO can make.
A company hits $10M in revenue, the sales team is a scrappy group of 8 reps, and the CEO (who has been the de facto sales leader) decides it's time to "hire a real VP of Sales." They go to market and hire a star VP from a $500M public company.
Six months later, the VP is frustrated, the team is confused, and the revenue plan is in flames.
What went wrong? They didn't just hire the wrong person; they hired the right person for the wrong stage. They hired a "Scaler" to do a "Builder's" job.
The "Builder" vs. The "Scaler"
In sales leadership, one size does not fit all. The skills required to grow a company are entirely dependent on its stage of development. This idea is grounded in decades of organizational lifecycle theory (Greiner, 1972), which argues that companies (and their leadership needs) evolve through predictable phases.
The two most common (and most frequently confused) profiles are the Builder and the Scaler.
The "Builder" VP (The $1M - $10M Stage): This leader is a hands-on-the-wheel operator. Their job is to create the sales process from scratch. They are part-coach, part-player, and part-process-engineer. They personally carry a bag, run discovery calls to test messaging, and write the first sales playbook. They thrive in chaos and "figure it out."
The "Scaler" VP (The $50M - $100M+ Stage): This leader is a systems-thinker. Their job is not to create the playbook, but to optimize it. They don't run discovery calls; they analyze conversion data from Gong. They excel at specialization, data analysis, sales operations, and building a multi-layered organization (e.g., hiring Directors to manage Managers).
Hiring a "Scaler" for a "Builder" job is like hiring a city planner to build a log cabin. They will try to implement a complex forecasting model when what you really need is someone to grab a hammer and help you find product-market fit.
Actionable Takeaways: How to Hire the Right Profile
Honestly Diagnose Your Stage. Before you write the job description, answer this question: "Do I need someone to create the playbook or scale the playbook?" If your playbook isn't working or doesn't exist, you are in the "Builder" stage, no matter your revenue.
Change Your Interview Questions for a "Builder." Stop asking about the size of the team they managed. Start asking: "Tell me about a time you built a sales process from zero. What were the first 90 days?" and "How do you personally run a deal cycle to test messaging?"
Change Your Interview Questions for a "Scaler." Stop asking about their personal quota. Start asking: "Walk me through how you scaled a team from 20 to 100 reps. What systems did you implement?" and "How do you use leading indicators to manage a team of managers?"
Hiring a VP of Sales is not just filling a role; it's hiring a specific set of tools for a specific job. If you misdiagnose the job, the most impressive-looking VP in the world will fail.
References
Greiner, L. E. (1972). Evolution and revolution as organizations grow. Harvard Business Review, 50(4), 37–46.
