Why Sales Tenure is short

An average head of sales lasts a year and a half. Why is that?

There are a few factors:

1.. Unrealistic growth goals set by the VCs and the founders.

2. Lack of leads to support the pipeline.

3. Product gaps to execute an end to end use case and be competitive.

4. But the real reason that over time, the problems that we are agreed upon as blockers become the fault of the Head of Sales.

You may have identified true deal blockers (SOC2, Active Directory) and the rest of the leadership team agreed to deliver. But if the engineering misses deadlines and product team pushes out launches, the blame, over time is still on the head of sales.

This is why it’s important to really understand how good the company is at winning deals, creating pipeline and shipping product.

During the interview process look for omissions. Is the CEO vague about where the ARR is? Have they not showed you a demo? How often is the response, “We are working on it”/”This is something we will build”.

More often than not the real timeline to build a competitive product is longer than the head of sales has to prove themselves.

Finally, this note is about observing the realities of human nature, not bitching about the job. Founders have the best intentions when they promise the sales lead a lighting fast roadmap. But when the the rubber hits the road, VP Sales is responsible for revenue.

They will likely have to fall on the sword. Tell this story, when you get pushback around a huge OTE.