How to Hire a VP of Sales That Takes Your Business to New Heights?

If you are the Founder or CEO of your company, you are probably the first-hand executive of your business to handle the sales activities. You might have been doing this for months or years, but with tons of other workloads, looking after the sales insights precisely might be strenuous.

Managing a team, sourcing clients, offering services, and handling sales all by yourself might tire you at some point in time. Even though you are successful in your quest to handle everything alone, you need someone to segment the crucial and unavoidable tasks.

Among all of the other management duties, handling sales, its representatives, and other activities are of utmost importance. Therefore, to practically ease your mind and divert your ideas towards growing the business, it is time you hire VP of sales.

We bet you have already thought of it once but are afraid of making this decision too early. But that’s not the case! When you have already set your business on a thriving track, it is probably the right time to segment your operations and lead the entire pack toward progressive growth.

Here’s how to hire VP of sales** by making dedicated considerations and benefiting your business exceptionally.

What’s the Right Time to Hire An Interim VP of Sales?

Well, to give you better clarity on this factor, here’re some signs that would indicate you need an interim VP of sales for your business operations:

1. Overburdened with Priority Tasks

If you are the Founder and are dealing with priority operations of your business, such as onboarding, coaching, deal management, operations, strategy planning, and others, alongside handling the sales team, then it is a great sign you should hire a VP of sales to segregate the responsibilities.

2. Have Excellent Value Proposition and are Aware of Market

If you have already figured out your position in the market, and are aware of your business’s value proposition, then it is time you can consider hiring VP of sales. Remember, you need to upgrade your business from the foundation level to the stabilized operations level in order to get productive outcomes by hiring a sales VP.

3. Ready to Invest For Your Business to Scale

If you have done all the groundwork necessary to set up your business and get it going, it is time you can spare money for scaling your brand. And hiring an interim sales VP is one of the several investments that can lead you to attain business productivity.

Things to Consider While Hiring A VP of Sales

Now that you have a better idea of when is the right time to consider hiring a VP of sales, here are a few of the things for you to consider on how to do it:

1. Determine Your Needs

Your primary step is to specify your service requirement from the VP of sales. And you can do it, starting by assessing the things that you already have with you.

Suppose you have a sales team with 3 or 4 members who are good at their job. But you feel like they are being maxed out with the work, and there’s a need for more qualified sales reps. In that case, a VP of sales is capable enough to help you recruit quality employees to take on the duties.

Similarly, a sales VP can handle almost anything, starting from preparing a sales strategy, recruiting, training, managing, monitoring, and improving sales attributes. So, depending on what you might need for your sales department, specify the needs and expectations of the VP of sales.

2. Have A Look At Your Sales Rate

Once you have specified your needs, requirements, and expectations from an interim VP of sales, it is important to specify your position in the sales journey. It will help you understand the type of VP; you should go ahead and look for one.

A very common mistake that most new businesses make is they look for the industry expertise of a candidate, success record, and job experience. Unfortunately, these parameters are not the right indicators of a good VP and won’t guarantee a good future performance.

Therefore, it is important for you to determine your sales stage first. Whether you are just building a sales strategy, competing with the rivals, maintaining a consistent sales pace, or growing sales efficiency, it makes no sense to bring in a VP of sales right from the building stage.

Once you are above that stage, you might need a VP after you are somehow into the competing level. In this way, you will be able to free yourself up to make your business stand out in the crowd and acquire more sales. On the other hand, the VP will collaborate his/her efforts to bring in more sales on record to make it happen.

3. Create A Proper Job Description

Once such business assessment parameters are considered, you will then have to create a detailed job description. Be transparent about your company's needs and specify your expectations from the role.

Specify your future goals, the experience you need from the candidate, and your success definition. In this way, you can ensure that only qualified candidates apply for the role without burdening you with the task of massive filtering.

4. Provide On-Job Training

Even though the VPs of sales you shortlist are experienced enough to take on the task from the first day, it is better to let them spend some time with your sales reps. Call the shortlisted candidates for an OJT (On-Job Training), and observe them for a week.

Do not stress them out with full-day work, but give them certain responsibilities which will help you judge their potential better. Later, you can discuss with your team the taste of being supervised by a VP of sales and how they predict it would be a better decision.

But remember, you have to make the final call, considering many parameters other than just the employees’ convenience of getting along with the new VP.

Get Along With The OnPoint Management Group For Easy Hiring Of Your New VP of Sales

So, these are the few things you should consider while hiring a VP of sales for your business. It might seem like a complex decision, but we are here to assist you in the process!

We have qualified candidates with experience and skills in hand to handle your sales processes smoothly. Irrespective of the industry you belong to, we have dedicated experts to meet your sales milestones on priority.

Get in touch with us to learn more right away!