The Danger of Hiring a New VP Without A Strategy in Place First
Ryan knew that there were fundamental issues with the foundation of his sales team, and when we spoke he laid out a few very nicely for me.
Sense of urgency is missing.
Team culture is too passive.
Team size didn’t match up with their prospect database.
But then the conversation came to a halt.
“I have a bad apple in my basket, so I can't invest the time with you to improve performance.”
He made a good point. Aren’t we wasting time and energy revitalizing processes and enhancing the team if a key player can’t help turn this new vision into a reality? Don’t we need everyone on board to champion this effort and lay the groundwork for transforming the team?
Shouldn’t Ryan wait until he has the perfect sales team in place before making changes?
If he does he’s going to be waiting a long time. Forever, really, because frankly that’s never going to happen. There’s never the perfect team or perfect time to rethink what isn’t working. (If you had the perfect team, you wouldn’t have anything that wasn’t working!)
My proposition to him: let’s work on the foundational issues of your sales strategy and structure to get your current team on the right path and then find a person who fits the philosophy and vision.
When you hire first, before addressing fundamental issues, you may be selling yourself short
How do you want your new VP spending their time when they join the team? Probably not fixing problems. You want them building relationships with their team, running with fine-tuned processes, and helping to close deals. By hiring first, your new VP has no choice but to learn about and focus on everything that is broken. This might take months (or even years) of their time and focus away from what really matters: learning the industry, the team, management, etc.
The key point: where do you want the new hire to spend their critical and extremely valuable time?
But that’s not the only issue in hiring first. By bringing someone into a broken team, you’re opening doors that you may rather keep closed. Think about the interview process. Are you going to ask your potential new VP how they’ve fixed broken team foundations in the past? How they’ve built a stronger team structure? How they’ve created more urgency within a team? You could. But you’ll be planting seeds that your sales organization isn’t humming along and that they’ll be coming into a company that isn’t primed and ready to go.
Rather, the interview should be focused how your potential VP helped a company grow.
It’s better to discover the candidate’s experience in driving a team, building strong relationships, and focusing time on executing battle plans to achieve maximum results. That’s a better interview and will help your recruiting team find the person who can lead your sales team into the future.
In the end, the goal is to find an ideal fit. If we go back to our “bad apple,” this is someone who was chosen for his role. But if he’s failing, what could that potentially mean about the current interview process? Is their candidate profile updated and recruiting know what to look for? And the interview process?
A sales consultant creates an interview process to identify the right candidate that fits your new strategy and can execute from day one to set you up for long term success with less headache.
There is no perfect time to tackle internal problems
Stop waiting because there is no one perfect day for fixing what is broken. Working with a consultant guarantees focus and attention and time spent on rebuilding your infrastructure now so that decisions you make in the future garner real results. Rather than trying to spare some of your hours here and there to focus on improving your sales team, a consultant will ensure issues are tackled.
How do you choose the right sales consultant?
Great consultants have a stellar track record in the real world and they are always prepared to adapt and systematically look to find the best route to solve issues. They ask good questions and make sure they fully understand your core problems before suggesting ways to address them. Be open to having a consultant work on one of your challenges, this allows you to test the waters and see if the ROI is there.
Back to Ryan
Why should Ryan invest in time with a sales consultant to make change for the better when he has a weak link at his company? Because success lies in hiring and integrating a new VP into a sound foundation versus a broken one. And the power of a strong foundation is appealing to the top talent that you want to attract.
Let your new VP focus their time on building relationships with their team instead of facing the burden of trying to address the fractures in your foundation. With your company’s priorities (good strategy, driving growth, develop reps) and foundation (processes, structure, team alignment) in great shape, your awesome new VP can focus on building relationships, driving to hit the number, and ensuring the team is following the proper protocols for how the business is run.