I spend a lot of time recruiting go-to-market (sales and marketing) talent for startups. Founders typically come to me post Series A—once there is product-market fit, customer repeatability, and revenue traction (at least $1M in ARR)—seeking their first Head of Sales or Head of Marketing. Over the last few years, I have been asked several questions about how these two functions complement one another. Below are the topics founders are most interested in when building their first senior GTM or revenue team.
For my (Series A or B) company, who should I hire first, Head of Sales or Head of Marketing?
The journey away from founder-led sales and marketing is complicated and risky. Until a certain point, the CEO usually lands enterprise customers. They know the product best (they just built a new technology and fundraised after all!), so they can clearly articulate the use case and build relationships that will be the foundation for future revenue. They’ve established ICP (ideal customer profile) and are hyper crisp on the differentiation. They likely would have hired the first few reps themselves. However, once a company reaches a certain level of repeatability, it needs someone to build a playbook and a fully dedicated revenue team.
Where should a founder start? 9/10 times, I help a company with a Head of Sales search before Head of Marketing. However, at that time, there is typically a marketing program manager, or someone focused on collateral, awareness and demand generation in place. But when the time comes to bring on a dedicated senior sales leader, the CEO must hand the torch to the new Head of Sales. So, it’s critical to establish trust and confidence throughout an interview process when building a new revenue function, as this person will be the newest external face of the product, handling the bulk of the early messaging. They will be hiring reps, and contributing to the early pipeline before there is a full-fledged marketing team.
As for your Head of Marketing, I suggest beginning this search as soon as the Head of Sales has ramped up (usually after a quarter or two of success) to help drive messaging and create demand. Have your Head of Sales be a meaningful part of the search process. In fact, there’s a good chance they may have recommendations for candidates as well. Once the CEO has completed a first interview with a Head of Marketing and feels confident in their experience and abilities, the next step should be for the Head of Sales to evaluate the Head of Marketing candidate on:
- How they think about pipeline metrics
- How they message the product and how well they understand the technology
- What they have built in prior roles that directly contributed to revenue growth
- What campaigns they have put together and how they measured campaign effectiveness
- Definition of marketing in their prior companies, and what programs they prioritized
- Philosophy around how to partner with the rest of an executive team
- … as a starting point!
Regardless of who joins first, they must be well-suited as a revenue team as both roles share many of the same requirements…
How can my company’s first Head of Sales and first Head of Marketing work best together?
Once both revenue leaders are on board, they must be willing to wear multiple hats. In the early days of ramping revenue teams, SDRs might be building their own outreach templates before there is a formal enablement function, and content writers might be getting in front of customers to answer technical questions. It takes time to scale sub-functions of revenue teams, so both leaders need to be hands-on and lead from the front. They must influence and encourage their teams to be resourceful.
Both leaders should have experience in early-stage companies where they were part of taking a similar (often complex) product to market. There is a good chance a first time Head of Sales will carry a quota themselves, and that a first time Head of Marketing will write campaigns and influence the company’s marketing tech stack. Both must serve as thought partners to the founder/s and act as the eyes and ears of customer and competitive intelligence.
At least one of these executives must have domain expertise that’s relevant to the product you’re selling. Both would be ideal, and either way they MUST have similar GTM philosophies (i.e. a PLG-first marketer will have a hard time partnering with a purely large enterprise seller, so these are all things to suss out in an interview process). Both must take ownership and be first-principle thinkers.
Which function owns which metrics?
We all know about Marketing versus Sales Qualified Leads. Especially at an early stage, these lines can blur. I suggest going beyond this and establishing more granular metrics and KPIs.
Heads of Sales should hold themselves to a new logo acquisition target, define forecasting, and be able to articulate what they need from marketing to make them successful (i.e. leads per period of time, collateral, training, and enablement). They will ultimately own the numbers and pipeline. They will close deals themselves, set targets for reps, and establish an early outreach cadence (for an outbound-selling company). They will develop a plan to increase ACV and NRR over time and will set hiring goals when the company reaches certain milestones.
Heads of Marketing should come in knowing which programs to prioritize, have a clear idea of content activity, and measure the effectiveness of campaigns. They will establish their own metrics with the Product team and a timely feedback loop. They will help the Product team measure new launch success, and influence how Sales works with the technical team. They will hire a Director-level key lieutenant early on, as it’s unlikely at this stage they will have perfectly mastered both product marketing and demand generation.
These leaders should develop lead scoring and qualification criteria together in the early days. They will co-build the early Sales Ops and Marketing Ops functions.
At what phase should I consider upleveling my VP Sales to CRO?
The CRO title comes with an increased scope of responsibility and ownership, often including customer success, revenue operations, marketing, and business development. Bringing on a more senior CRO may make sense when a company has reached $25M+ in revenue, and/or when there is a need for longer-term strategic direction. This type of leader is less tactical and more focused on managing, training, developing, and coaching their team. A new CRO can come in when there is a change in product or GTM direction, or when the CEO needs someone with more domain expertise, or more enterprise selling experience.
When making this decision, loop in your marketing leader sooner rather than later. No one wants to be upleveled by surprise, or not be part of the strategic decision to bring on a CRO. This could also be a good time to consider a CMO — someone who can build a formal communications, brand, and AR function — to work alongside the CRO. It’s good to think about this well before IPO readiness.
An alternative is hiring a Head/VP of Revenue before a CRO. This is an executive who is ready to take on a broader remit, but can still be hands-on enough to close deals. This approach will appeal to and attract a segment of the talent market that’s not quite ready for a CRO role but is eager for a broader scope and an elevated title. It can also be an excellent stepping stone for a COO or GM role if they want to own more than purely sales. A Head of Revenue will likely own all go-to-market pieces except for marketing.
Conclusion
The short answer to all of these questions is that there is no perfect formula or one size fits all solution. Sometimes, a company shifts from sales-led to product-led growth, and the enterprise reps they recently hired become irrelevant and they need to hire a self-serve leader. Other times, companies launch new products and need a Product Marketing leader to work for a DG-oriented VP Marketing to own the story and evolution of a new product. I’ve even seen early marketing leaders shift to Product functions to help with the roadmap.
My biggest piece of advice is to remain nimble, ready for changes, and focus on what you can control, which is to bring on great talent for unique situations! Especially in these current market dynamics, you must do what serves the ICP best, and give your revenue team autonomy to scale so you can focus on broader, long-term initiatives!
Please contact me at allison@spmb.com to chat through any of these scenarios, or to discuss your specific GTM hiring needs.
