I can’t hold back anymore. Yet another company I admire with a strong CEO has blown it again. They hired the wrong person to lead sales and marketing.
The process is almost always the same. Conduct an exhaustive search for “The A player – the Rockstar.” Find her after a long process and announce with great fanfare to the Board and investors that the Messiah has agreed to join the team. Watch the person underperform for six months. Agonize for six more months deciding whether the person should stay or go, have countless discussions with other team members and the Board, finally decide to fire the person, pay severance after being threatened with legal action, start a new search, and suffer a material (and publicly embarrassing) setback. Over and over, this has to be the one hire that startups consistently get wrong. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
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For starters, the job spec is just wrong. Who woke up one day and thought that combining these two functions into one position made sense? What’s next? VP of Finance and Culinary Delight? Sure, sales and marketing are related, but they are not the same. And they aren’t peanut butter and jelly either. These functions require people with vastly different experience, training, education, and maybe most importantly, personalities.
A great sales leader is a battle-worn salesperson. She knows how to set goals, develop appropriate comp plans, and has a proven track record that reps respect. She can train and relate to salespeople because she succeeded in the job and loves to sell. She has received formal sales training — great salespeople are built not born. She brings an extensive network of proven sales reps and customer relationships. She is a sharpshooter, a tactician, a likable aggressor who knows how to track and close. She brings a deep reservoir of social capital and relationships that can be deployed and leveraged to close deals when the quarter is closing out.
Day to day sales leadership is about leading from the front. Salespeople are front line soldiers — they need a leader to follow into battle. A VP of Sales can manage your sales team by title, but will only lead your sales team if they choose to follow. This means she understands and contributes to the entire sales process – from cold calling to deal closing. She sets aggressive but achievable goals and stokes motivation. Great sales leaders thrive on achieving near term goals (immediate gratification) like crushing quotas.
On the other hand, your marketing leader should be strategic and cerebral–a forward thinker. Maybe even a tad nerdy. Go to Market strategy is complex and nuanced. Most startups have multiple potential target markets with different value propositions that require different messaging. The permutations are endless. Getting this right requires constant iteration and experimentation. This stuff is intellectually challenging and requires exceptional analytical and pattern recognition skills.
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Said another way, the marketing team figures out the strategy. The sales team executes the battle plan.
Sure, there are the rare exceptional individuals, the supernovas, who can lead both functions. But most mere mortals simply do not possess both skill sets. Finding such a person is the proverbial needle in a haystack, so be prepared for failure and disappointment.
If forced to choose, hire the head of sales first. Why? Early sales provide customer and market validation which greatly facilitates fundraising. Companies without revenue typically struggle mightily to raise institutional funding. More importantly, the CEO needs to set the vision and strategy in a startup. If the CEO can’t provide this, hire a new CEO, not a new head of marketing.
Photo: dangrytsku, Getty Images
Adam serves as the Managing Director of Dreamit HealthTech, a leading venture-backed accelerator. His career has focused on building early stage venture-backed health tech companies. Adam has held various senior management roles in sales, marketing, product development, clinical affairs, operations, and general management. He co-founded five health technology companies which have collectively raised over $60 million in early stage capital. Prior to Dreamit, Adam served as CEO of PhotoSonix Medical, a venture-backed company he co-founded that is developing a consumer device for acne. Previously, he served as the CEO of Bioconnect Systems and X-SITE Medical (acquired by Maquet Getinge Group). Adam serves on the boards of Safkan Ear and ZSX Medical. He is an active angel investor and has served on the boards of several early stage health companies. He is the co-chair of the Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology (PACT) medical technology advisory board and serves as a Mentor in Residence for the Penn Center for Innovation. Adam was awarded the PACT MedTech Leadership Award in 2014. He is a named inventor on seven U.S. patents. Adam holds a BSE from the Wharton School and an MBA from UCLA.
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