VP of Sales Search

VP of Sales searches have the highest first-year failure rate of any executive search. Studies put the number at somewhere between 40 and 60 percent. The search firms who run them, the CEOs who commission them, and the candidates who accept them all know this. The failure rate doesn't decrease, because the root cause is not addressed.

The root cause is a brief problem, not a talent problem.

Most VP of Sales searches are written by people who are thinking about what the company's best sales rep looks like, amplified. They want someone who is excellent at selling, who has a track record of closing, and who can "take the team to the next level." This profile describes a great individual contributor with some management experience. It does not describe a VP of Sales.

The difference between selling and building a sales function

A VP of Sales is not primarily accountable for selling. A VP of Sales is accountable for building and running the system that produces consistent, scalable revenue — regardless of which specific individuals are doing the selling.

This is a fundamentally different job from being an excellent salesperson, and the capabilities it requires are not the same. The VP of Sales who builds a great function designs the sales process, defines the territories and quotas, hires and develops the team, builds the forecasting systems that make revenue predictable, creates the onboarding programme that makes new reps productive fast, and works with marketing to ensure pipeline quality is adequate. They spend very little of their time selling.

The candidate who is excellent at these things — at building the infrastructure of a sales organisation — is often not the same candidate who is the best individual closer. And the candidate who is the best individual closer is often not the candidate who will build a system that works when they're not the one in the room.

The two profiles that share the title

The builder. This VP of Sales has either built a sales function from scratch before, or has scaled one that already existed. They have designed the process, hired the team, and created the systems. They measure themselves on the metrics that indicate system health: pipeline coverage, win rates, average sales cycle, ramp time for new reps, and forecast accuracy. They are comfortable operating in ambiguity and know how to make decisions without full information.

The manager. This VP of Sales has managed a team of salespeople but has not been accountable for building the underlying system. They are good at motivating reps, managing individual performance, and maintaining team culture. They are less experienced with the structural decisions — process design, compensation architecture, territory design — that shape whether the sales organisation can scale.

Neither profile is wrong in the abstract. The question is which one the company needs. A company with an established sales process that needs to scale it needs a strong manager. A company that is building its commercial function for the first time, or rebuilding one that has broken down, needs a builder. These are different searches.

What the first 90 days reveal

The VP of Sales search that produces the wrong hire typically becomes obvious in the first 90 days, and what it reveals is almost always one of two things.

The first is a builder hired into a manager role. This person immediately starts redesigning processes that the team has been running for two years, disrupting relationships and creating uncertainty, because building is what they know how to do. The team experiences this as instability. Revenue dips during the transition. The CEO wonders if they hired the wrong person.

The second is a manager hired into a builder role. This person manages the existing team well but doesn't build the infrastructure the company needs. The forecast remains unpredictable. Ramp time for new reps stays long. The onboarding programme doesn't get built. The CEO wonders why the VP of Sales isn't having more impact.

Both outcomes trace back to a mismatch between the brief and the hire — not to a failure of capability.

What strong VP of Sales candidates evaluate

Strong VP of Sales candidates at the builder end evaluate the quality of the sales infrastructure they would be inheriting. Not because they want a head start — because the state of the infrastructure tells them something about how the company thinks about sales as a function. A company that has invested in its CRM, has a defined sales process, and has clean pipeline data is a different operating environment from one where everything is managed in spreadsheets and institutional knowledge lives only in the heads of the longest-tenured reps.

They evaluate the CEO's relationship with the sales function. A VP of Sales reporting to a CEO who is a former salesperson — or a CEO who does not respect the operational complexity of running a sales organisation — will be managing upwards constantly. This is not impossible, but it needs to be understood going in.

They evaluate the product. A VP of Sales who inherits a product with a clear value proposition, a defensible market position, and a short sales cycle has a different job than one who inherits a product with a confused positioning, long sales cycles, and a market that doesn't yet fully understand the category.

What closes the VP Sales search

Resolve the builder vs. manager question. Assess the current state of the sales infrastructure honestly. Write a brief that describes what the VP of Sales will inherit, what they will be accountable for building, and what success looks like at 6 and 18 months. Candidates who have done that specific kind of work before will engage with specificity. Candidates who haven't will self-select out.

Majhi Group runs retained VP of Sales searches. The engagement begins with the builder vs. manager conversation, because without it the search will produce the wrong shortlist.

If a VP Sales search has been running more than eight weeks without a close, or has produced a close that failed within 12 months, request an assessment.