

VP of Sales or VP of Marketing? - ryankelly

If I'm the CEO of a startup, and I have enough money for only one of these positions (VP of Sales or VP of Marketing), which one do I hire?  And does it make sense to combine the two?  Why or why not?
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cjus
When starting off you can combine the two. Many startups do this. Find a
person who has started his/her career in sales and eventually moved into
Marketing.

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win_ini
I agree with this position the most. Frankly if you have a webpage, and you
can articulate your product's value to customers in a simple way - you have
already done half of marketing's job at a small company.

Marketing feeds sales leads, and sales is responsible changing the order of
those letters from "leads" into "deals".

A salesperson without marketing needs to be able to clearly articulate your
value prop, AND find new leads. This is a special person.

Another way to approach this question: Do your prospects already "get" your
product, and are calling you asking for demos or more info? Or, do you need to
spend the first 15 minutes of a call explaining to prospects what it is you do
and why they need your product?

If it is the former - hire a sales-minded person. The hard part about sales is
CLOSING. good sales people are always closing deals, and getting the money out
of a customer's hands (in a good way). I find most marketer's are NOT good at
closing. As long as your sales person has some leads flowing in from your
site, and can figure out who is a good fit for him to hassle that turn into
deals - you'll be good.

If your product is ill defined, and you need to explain it in detail or talk
to engineers who "get it" before anything is ever sold, then go with someone
who has a marketing mind first. Their first task is to get a very solid
product story that gets people interested in your product (even if they are
not an engineer). If you have a good product story, sales becomes much easier
to close and will build your pipeline of deals. then you can get a sales
person who is focused on closing those new deals.

Marketing and Sales should be aligned....but not run by the same person if
possible.

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ryankelly
Interesting. The reason I ask is because I just saw a startup hire a VP of
Sales, and they do not have a VP of Marketing.

On the other hand, we're trying to get our adoption and engagement rates of
our SaaS product as high as possible before we sell anything.

It's interesting though the startups who hire a VP of Sales too early when the
product has not yet been validated.

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sachinag
Marketing supports sales. A VP of Sales in a startup should make her own
marketing collateral.

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pclark
This question alarms me

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friendstock
Hire a VP of Customer Development

