The Job of a Sales Leader at a PE-Backed Growth Stage or a Lower MM Company

Unlike a VP of Sales at a larger Mid-Market SaaS company, a VP of Sales at a $5M-$20M ARR Growth Stage SaaS business is more focused & hands-on:

• Sales motions
  • Helps create or improve the optimal Go-to-Market (GTM)
  • Develops the right Messaging for sales: Positioning, Unique Value Proposition, the Elevator Pitch and Differentiation
•  Execution
  • Focuses on getting the team to execute effectively to achieve results and make the sales organization succeed
  • Has the methodology for how to Make the Number (attain sales goals) – knows the way, shows the way and goes the way
  • Can develop the sales team’s core sales skills
  • Sells and closes key sale deals directly and helps their sales reps bring in deals for a soft landing
  • Can work on high velocity mid-market deals & more complex enterprise deals
• Recruiting
  • Recruits, attracts, and hires A-players
• Sales Management
  • Develops, trains and coaches the team on all aspects of the selling process
  • Implements a consistent selling methodology like Sandler, MEDDIC, CHAMP, etc.
  • Can follow these 4 Steps to create Repeatable, Predictable Selling Motions
  • Creates a repeatable and consistent Sales Process
  • Metrics-Driven Sales Management ability and can do the right Sales Analyses and set and track the right Sales KPIs/Metrics
  • Effective at Pipeline Management & Sales Forecasting and can coach reps on Pipeline Management, Prioritization, etc.
• Alignment with Marketing
  • Understands the key levers of B2B Demand Generation as it is the “#1 lever that drives Revenue Growth” (as Jason Lemkin & Aaron Ross wrote in their SaaS best-seller “From Impossible to Inevitable”) – it drives the Sales Pipeline (a great VP of Sales needs this knowledge for those times when they don’t have someone in Demand Gen to help you or for the times they need to align with their counterpart running Demand Gen)

 

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