Issue #103

The Route to Sales VP - What They Don't Tell You

We all know that most Sales VPs (and CROs) didn’t get the job because they were the best salesperson.

Great salespeople are goal focused, not people focused, which is a problem if you want to lead a team.

No, they got the gig because they looked the part, spoke the language and could present to the board without sweating through their shirt.

They knew how to manage teams, build narratives, stay calm when others panicked, and never say too much in the wrong room.

That’s not cynicism, that’s the job.

The higher up you go, the more it becomes about perception, trust, and judgment under pressure.

You’ve Got To Have The Invisible Skills

If you want to get, and keep, your seat at the big table, here’s your WYAD (what you actually do):

1. Self-Promotion Without Smugness

Your wins don’t speak for themselves.

But if you brag like a toddler with a gold star, you’ll repel your peers and worry your boss.

The trick is to make your team the story.

Highlight their growth, their success and their outcomes.

You’ll look good because they look good, without looking desperate. It is also genuine best practice for your team to see this support.

2. Political Skill (Not Politics)

Politics implies backstabbing, but political skill is different.

It means reading the room, managing stakeholders, and knowing when to push vs. pull.

Can you get the CFO on side without going through your boss?

Can you brief a founder in 30 seconds flat with no jargon or waffle?

Communicating to people in their own language is the skill to practise here. Use numbers, stories, metaphors, whatever they like.

You can read more about these skills here or click the picture above.

3. Resilience and a Cool Head

Everyone says they’re calm under pressure.

But most Sales VPs only find out how calm they are when Q4 implodes and they’ve got 17 reps panicking.

Resilience is not just personal stress tolerance.

For a sales leader, it is emotional containment, being the one who doesn’t panic, lash out, or make it about themselves.

You must be the calm centre of focused action to solve the problem, mitigate the damage and learn the lessons.

And importantly, this must be seen, the world is full of unrewarded heroes. They don’t get the corner office.

4. The Ability to Build a Real Sales Strategy

This is where many fail because they never find out what goes into a sales strategy.

Ask most Sales VPs for their strategy and they’ll show you a spreadsheet of logos.

That’s a pipeline, not a strategy. You do need a pipeline, but you also need a plan to fill it, qualify it and implement it.

And a defined goal to achieve, capabilities to develop, tools to implement, weaknesses to cover ,strengths to build.

A strategy is a clear path from a vision to a measurable result. It has achievable actions, with consideration for risks and costs.

Sales leaders know how to:

• Assess and build team capability
• Create and iterate a playbook
• Target the right segments
• Define their market positioning
• Drive predictable revenue
• Secure internal investment

If you can’t do that, then you need to learn, as quickly as possible.

5. Emotional Intelligence in High-Stakes Rooms

Remember this -

• Your CEO isn’t impressed by big claims.
• The CFO isn’t sold by your energy.
• The COO doesn’t trust your pipeline.

Different stakeholders have different fears, needs and languages. They chose their career to suit their personality and their world view, you need to respect that.

Your job is to read the emotional and political climate and make your point in a way that sticks.

You can’t do that with sales swagger, it requires signal clarity.

Clarity enables trust (they know what they are getting). Find out more about trust here and get the carousel below.

​Trust vectors C.pdf​

A Simple Framework

Here’s what I talk about when coaching clients to Sales VP success:

First you focus on survival, then stabilise your position and then you look to scale and grow.

1. Survive: Build alliances all over the company. You know how to sell, so use that skill internally. You will need to be careful not to embarrass your boss. Pick battles carefully and make noise only when it helps (you).
2. Stabilise: Create a repeatable sales system. Find and fix the bottlenecks (people and processes). Make the machine run and your stock will rise.
3. Scale: Identify areas for growth, secure budget to experiment there. Shift to wider company strategy and org design. Keep close to big deals and important customers, they are your currency.

Each stage needs different skills. All your mistakes will be visible as your profile gets higher. They need to become learning points that can be defended, very quickly.

​Read this to see how that works (or the picture).

Each win must be claimed and celebrated without being cringey or looking like outright self promotion. That way you become associated with good news in the eyes of the board.

Finally

The truth is that most sales leaders are winging it. They copy what their last boss did and pray it works.

But if you want to actually lead through chaos, politics, pressure and change, then you need a real system.

When you’re in the middle of a crisis, there’s no time to create a new philosophy, you need concrete steps you can follow to get you out of the shit.

That’s what I build with my clients.

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If you want to know more about how I help people succeed in sales team management, drop me an email by replying to this.

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