Jason Lemkin: recommendation

Transcript context

…You mentioned that you actually just asked them in the interview. The first question is, "Do you actually want to sell?" What other questions do you ask for either ... Let's go through both. You said you have these questions that you ask for the early hires and then the VP of sales. What are some tips for people when they're interviewing these folks? It's interesting. VP of sales or VP of product, I look for the same answer. One of the Colombo style questions I ask them, and this is so odd. It barely even counts as a question is, what do you want to do your first 30 days? What do you want to do? Actually, I usually ask, "What do you want to do your first two weeks?" In B2B, if I don't hear from the VP of sales or the VP of product that I'm going to go meet customers, out, I'm out. There's too many VPs of product too, Lenny, that don't want to meet customers anymore either. The majority of VPs of products that I interview, they don't meet customers. Every single great VP of product, chief product officer I've ever worked with in my entire career, you know what the first thing they do in the first two weeks? They're like, "Leave me alone. I'm going to go talk to 20 customers. Leave me alone." The first two weeks, they're like, "Leave me alone. I'm going to go talk to 20 customers. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, I'm going to go talk..." They don't want to sit out on meetings and look at PRDs and talk out of their navel on endless internal meetings. All the best ones, they say they just leave. They literally say, "Leave me alone. I will see you in two weeks. I'm going to go meet with 20 customers." And that's what products should do. Sales, whether it's prospects or existing customers, it can vary, but they should be like, "On my first day, I want to join five calls." And when you hear that story of, "I don't want to travel out of Pleasanton," or they say, here's what you're going to hear from the wrong person for anything, even up to 50 million in revenue, "I'm going to spend that first month working on process," "I'm going to spend that first month getting Salesforce up and running," "I'm going to send the first month on territory planning, Lenny, because we really, with our three reps, I really want to make sure we've nailed territories, right? Lenny will do the south, Elaine will do the east, Jason will do the west." When you hear process, process, process, from any, from marketing, product, sales, customer success, too, boy, it's the death of customer success. It's just... And it's not that you don't need process, it's just, it's even worse than it was than a few years ago. And I know this is going to trigger some people, but the truth is they don't want to work. They don't want to work. They don't want to work. I literally just got this LinkedIn email to work with me at SaaStr, from this person who'd been reading SaaStr for eight years. You're like, "I want to run account management, customer success for you. Here's what's, you're doing wrong, here's how to do it." I'm like, "Oh, this is pretty good." And I DMed her back, I'm like, "Great. To be honest, you realize that you're actually going to have to talk to customers and sponsors yourself in the beginning." No response. Just out. Just out. And that was the best one I got the last 30 days. honest, you realize that you're actually going to have to talk to customers and sponsors yourself in the beginning." No response. Just out. Just out. And that was the best one I got the last 30 days. That was the best inbound that I personally got. I know it sounds triggering or critical, but as founders, we have to be honest that there's this vast pool of veterans with great LinkedIns and great resumes that are so burnt out, Lenny. And let's not blame them. I know it sounds like I'm blaming them or being negative, and I'm trying to not be negative. I'm empathetic. I am empathetic to the burnout, but don't, you can't hire these. There's too many. The industry is littered with the burnt out. They're littered with it. And if you hear a touch of cynicism, if you hear anger, if you hear, "I don't want to meet customers in any..." and I'm going to say any VP role, product, sales, marketing, customers... If they don't want to meet customers their first, let's make it a 14-day test, you know they're never going to want to meet customers.…

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