VP of Sales: The Role, the Cost, and When to Hire Your First One

What Does a VP of Sales Do?

A VP of sales owns the sales number and the team that delivers it. The job is hiring and coaching sellers, setting quotas and territories, designing the pay plan, running the forecast and reporting it to the CEO or board. A good VP of sales scales a sales process that already works. They rarely invent one.

In practice the responsibilities of a VP of sales come down to five things:

• Owning the sales target and the forecast behind it.
• Hiring, coaching and, when it comes to it, letting go of sellers.
• Setting quotas, territories and the pay plan.
• Keeping the sales process written down and followed.
• Reporting on the pipeline to the CEO and the board.

The vice president of sales title covers a wide range. With 200 sellers it means a leader of leaders who rarely meets a customer. With four, it means someone who still joins the important calls and writes half the playbook. Most first-VP mistakes start there.

What a VP of sales does not usually own is everything around sales: marketing, customer success, pricing and partners. That wider scope belongs to a chief revenue officer, and hiring one is a separate decision.

The Sales Seats, in the Order You Need Them

Most companies need three seats filled before a VP of sales has anything to do. The order matters more than the titles, because each seat depends on the one before it having done its job.

A head of sales and a VP of sales are often treated as one job with two titles. The practical difference is how much selling is left in it. A head of sales at a young company still carries deals. A VP of sales should be building the machine, and a VP carrying a quota of their own is usually a sign the seat was filled a step early.

When to Hire a VP of Sales

Hire a VP of sales when at least two sellers who are not the founder are hitting their targets from a written sales process, and the problem has moved from working out how to sell to managing more people who sell. Before that point, a VP of sales has nothing to scale.

Most advice ties the decision to revenue, and it does not agree with itself: anywhere from $1 million to $5 million a year in recurring revenue, or simply "the third year". Nearly all of it comes from venture-backed software. A $6 million services firm or a $20 million manufacturer can be well past those numbers with no repeatable selling at all, because every large account still runs through the owner.

Five signs are more reliable than any revenue figure, and each one can be checked this week.

Four or five of these is a VP of sales. Two or three usually means a head of sales who still sells. One or none means the next hire is a seller, and the work in front of the founder is building a repeatable sales process that a seller can follow.

The first sign carries the most weight. A first VP of sales is hired to make more of something that works. If only the founder has made it work, there is nothing yet to make more of.

Signs It Is Too Early

It is too early when the founder still closes the big deals, when there is one seller or none, and when the sales process exists only in the founder's head. A VP hired into that company spends their first months selling, which makes them the most expensive seller on the payroll.

With nobody to manage and no process to improve, the VP does what the company needs that week, which is close deals. The team never gets built, and both sides decide the hire failed when it was the timing that did.

Three options work better, in rising order of cost:

1. Hire one or two sellers and write the process down. It is the step most founders want to skip, and everything else rests on it. Founder-led sales covers what to write down and how to hand the first deals over.
2. Hire a head of sales who still sells. Someone who carries a number, coaches the first two or three sellers and builds the process as they go. Some grow into the VP seat and some do not, which is a decision for later.
3. Bring in a part-time revenue leader. Someone senior who owns the number for a set period, writes the process with the founder, makes the first hires and builds the forecast, then hands a working team to a full-time VP. It is the work Mark does as a fractional CRO, and it ends when the seat can be filled full time.

Signs It Is Too Late

Waiting has its own cost, and it is easier to miss because nothing breaks all at once.

• Five or more sellers report to the founder, or to nobody.
• The founder is back in every deal because nobody else is coaching.
• The forecast has missed two quarters running and nobody can say why.
• Good sellers are leaving, and their exit conversations mention management.

Any two of these means the seat is overdue, and the team you already have is paying for the gap.

What It Costs to Hire One

More than the salary. The package is the visible part. The larger cost is the team the VP will hire and the months before that team pays for itself.

For the package, the most reliable public figure is the US government's. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that sales managers, the category sales leaders fall under, earned a median of $148,270 in May 2025. The lowest tenth earned under $73,170 and the highest tenth over $290,540. Those figures include commissions and bonuses for hitting targets. They leave out equity and benefits, which a senior hire will expect on top. It covers the whole category, not VPs alone, so use it as a range rather than a price.

Then add the wait. The Bridge Group's 2026 research on the account executive role, drawn from 158 B2B companies, put the average time for a new seller to reach full productivity at 6.2 months. A VP who starts hiring in their second month will not see those sellers carry a full number until the second half of their first year.

So how much a VP of sales makes is only the start. A quick test with your own numbers: add the VP's full package to a year's cost for the first two sellers they will hire. Whatever the VP of sales salary turns out to be, if gross margin from today's customers cannot cover that total, the seat is early, however full the founder's calendar is.

What to Put in a VP of Sales Job Description

The problem you need solved, written before anything else. Most job descriptions for a first VP of sales are copied from a larger company's listing, which is how a company with four sellers ends up hiring someone who has only ever run forty.

Write it last, after the leadership team has agreed what the first year has to fix, and make sure it answers six things. A candidate reading it should be able to tell whether they have done this exact job before.

The fourth row prevents the most arguments. A VP who finds out in month three that the founder still sets every price has been handed the title without the authority. It is also a test for the founder: if you cannot say what you will stop doing, the seat is not ready.

Builder or Scaler: Test for Your Stage

A VP of sales who ran a team of 200 ran a system somebody else built. Your first VP has to build one, usually with few people, thin data and a founder close by. Both are real skills, and they rarely live in the same person. Five interview questions separate them:

1. Walk me through your first 90 days at a company our size.
2. Which team did you build from fewer than five sellers, and what did it look like a year later?
3. What did you sell yourself in your first six months, and why?
4. Show me a pay plan you wrote, and tell me what you would change about it now.
5. Tell me about a seller you let go. When did you know, and how long did you wait?

Vague answers to the first two usually mean the candidate has scaled a team but never built one. That can be the right person for your second VP of sales, rarely your first.

How to Judge the First Year

In three stages, against things the VP controls, and not at 90 days. The sellers a new VP hires take about six months to reach full productivity, so judging revenue at 90 days measures the team they inherited rather than the one they are building.

If the first two stages are on track and the number is not there yet, that is the plan working. If the first stage is not done by the end of month three, that is the earliest and cheapest sign the hire is wrong. A capable VP struggling inside a system nobody built can often be coached through it for less than a second search costs, which is one of the situations Mark's sales and CEO coaching is built for.

Common Hiring Mistakes

Hiring a sales team goes wrong at the leadership level in six predictable ways, and most failed first hires involve at least two.

1. Hiring the big-company résumé. A leader from a famous sales team, into a company with no process. They know how to run the machine, and there is no machine yet.
2. Hiring a VP before any sellers. The seat needs a team to lead and results to learn from.
3. Hiring for the company you hope to be. A board that wants the person who can take you to $50 million can end up with someone who cannot get you to $5 million.
4. Using the VP as your best closer. Every week they spend closing is a week the team does not get built.
5. Judging at 90 days. It measures the wrong team, for the reasons above.
6. Giving the title without the authority. If the VP cannot hire, set the pay plan or run the pipeline review without the founder overruling them, the job is only a title.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a VP of sales and a head of sales?

Mostly how much selling is left in the job. A head of sales at a young company usually still carries deals while coaching a small team. A VP of sales builds the team, the hiring plan and the forecast, and should not be carrying a quota of their own.

When should a startup hire its first VP of sales?

When at least two sellers who are not the founder are hitting their targets from a written process, and the company plans to hire several more. Revenue on its own is a poor trigger, because the same figure can hide very different amounts of repeatable selling.

Should your first sales hire be a VP of sales?

Rarely. The first sales hire should usually be a seller who can close from what the founder has written down. A VP hired first has no team to lead and no results to build on, so they end up selling, at a VP's cost.

How much does a VP of sales make?

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for sales managers, the category sales leaders fall under, at $148,270 in May 2025, with the highest tenth above $290,540. Those figures include commissions and target bonuses, but not equity or benefits.

Who does a VP of sales report to?

Usually the CEO. In a company with a chief revenue officer, the VP of sales reports to the CRO instead and runs the sales team inside a revenue system the CRO owns.

Can a part-time sales leader do the job first?

Yes, when the company needs senior judgment before it can carry a full-time senior salary. A part-time leader can own the number, write the process, make the first hires and then hand a working team to a full-time VP of sales.

Final Thought

A VP of sales multiplies what is already there. Point one at a working process and sellers who hit target, and both get bigger. Point one at a founder's instincts and an empty team, and there is nothing to multiply. That is the O in Mark's UNLOCK Method, organize for growth: the seat comes after the process. Deciding who to hire next, and in what order, is part of Mark's sales consulting work.