According to Dan Fisher, recruiters within the IT Staffing Industry make several mistakes when hiring a VP of sales.

The reason, he says, is that CEO’s tend to look for the wrong characteristics in VP of sales. These firms usually hire VP of sales to play two challenging roles: be a salesperson and manage a team. However, as IT staffing firms grow, VPs find it way too hard to cope with the responsibilities of both roles.

As Fishers states “The deal volume needed to hit your growth goals is just too high.  You need ALL of your sales reps firing off on all cylinders.  And that is what your VP of Sales is for.”

The advice Fisher provides can be applied on every business, not just IT staffing firms, so, whether you work on this particular type of companies or in a company from a different industry, you should pay close attention to the following tips.

When recruiting a VP of sales, you must take into consideration the following things he/she should be focused on:

To begin with, VP of sales should be great recruiters. They should be capable of luring amazing salespersons to come work for them, as recruiting top talent is key to achieve sales goals and they need a great team to do this.

Secondly, VP of sales must be active coaches, so they can show their sales reps what must be done and how to do it, such as getting more meeting or closing more deals. VPs of sales must work closely with sales reps to make sure they are on track, using the proper strategies and supporting them to close deals.

In the third place, VP of sales should work together with CEOs to define and implement the sales strategy for the company. They should work together on setting goals for the next year and quarter, including market expansion, customer segmentation and how capital and other resources should be invested to maximize revenue opportunity. VP of sales must be capable of setting aggressive goals but remain realistic.

Fourth, VP of sales must be able to define sales tactics and putting them into action, in order to define the sales processes of the company.

Fifth, VP of sales must be actively closing big or strategic deals themselves. However, they should not spend more than 10% of their time to close their own deals.

The final piece of advice is particularly useful for small IT staffing firms. Fisher states that these companies must capture repeatability and scalability. The basic idea is that they have some customers, some leads and are closing some deals, and they need to make that continuously repeatable. Therefore, it is key for these sort of companies to hire a VP of sales who has experience and knows how to do this.

*Dan Fisher is the founder and owner of Menemsha Group, a provider of sales enablement solutions dedicated to helping IT staffing firms.

Source: Menemsha Group