Sales-system leadership
Explains how strategy, managers, talent, process, data, and cross-functional choices produced results.
Attributes performance mainly to personal relationships or one exceptional deal.
Sales & Customer Success
VP of Sales Job Description
A VP of Sales owns the sales organisation’s strategy, leadership, execution, and forecast, turning the company plan into a repeatable and accountable revenue motion.
State the growth stage, market, revenue model, team, inherited pipeline, and executive authority so candidates can judge the mandate.
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Replace bracketed details, remove anything that is not genuinely required, and obtain the appropriate internal approval before advertising.
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VP of Sales
- Location
- [Location or working arrangement]
- Employment type
- [Full-time]
- Reports to
- [Chief Revenue Officer, CEO, or Managing Director]
About the role
[Company name] is seeking a VP of Sales to lead [region, segment, or business]. You will set the sales strategy, build leadership capability, establish operating discipline, allocate resources, and give the executive team a candid view of revenue opportunity and risk.
What you will be responsible for
- Translate company goals into segment, coverage, capacity, territory, pipeline, and execution plans.
- Lead and develop sales managers while setting clear expectations for coaching, inspection, and accountability.
- Own forecast quality and intervene in systemic qualification, conversion, productivity, or retention issues.
- Partner with marketing, product, finance, operations, and customer teams on the end-to-end revenue system.
- Represent sales performance, investment choices, risks, and learning to executives or the board.
What success looks like
- Revenue plans reflect market reality, capacity, conversion, and delivery constraints.
- Managers improve team performance through coaching and evidence rather than late-stage intervention.
- Executive forecasts make assumptions, ranges, risks, and required actions visible.
Essential qualifications
- Senior leadership of a comparable B2B, B2C, enterprise, channel, or transactional sales organisation.
- Evidence of building managers and improving a sales system, not only closing individual large deals.
- Strong commercial planning, forecasting, resource allocation, and executive communication.
- Ability to make ethical, customer-aware trade-offs under growth and investor pressure.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with [market, growth stage, geography, product category, or revenue model].
- Ownership of international expansion, channel strategy, transformation, or post-merger integration.
Tools and working knowledge
- CRM, forecasting, and revenue-intelligence systems
- Planning, finance, compensation, and analytics platforms
- Enablement, call-review, collaboration, and board-reporting tools
Executive package: [State approved base, currency, incentive mechanics, equity, benefits, vesting or performance conditions, and location basis.]
[Company name] will discuss reasonable adjustments for executive assessment, travel, communication, and working arrangements.
How to apply
Apply through [confidential method] with context on the sales organisation, market conditions, decisions, and attributable outcomes you led.
Performance expectations
What good performance looks like
Use these outcomes to replace vague activity lists with the evidence the hiring manager expects to see after the person joins.
The business has an explicit sales strategy with choices about segments, coverage, resources, and capability.
Forecast accuracy and decision usefulness improve through consistent qualification and manager inspection.
Leadership succession, hiring, coaching, and performance systems reduce dependency on the VP’s personal deals.
Hiring-manager intake
Questions to settle before advertising
Record specific answers so sourcing, screening, and interview decisions use the same definition of the role.
- 1
What revenue base, target, growth assumptions, sales cycle, and customer segments define the mandate?
- 2
Which teams, leaders, regions, budgets, pricing decisions, and channels are in scope?
- 3
What are the current pipeline, forecast, retention, product, capacity, and leadership realities?
- 4
What authority will the VP have to change structure, talent, territories, incentives, and operating process?
Evaluation criteria
Evidence to use in a VP of Sales scorecard
Agree the criteria before interviews begin, then score examples against the same evidence standard.
Forecast integrity
Makes assumptions and uncertainty visible and changes action when evidence shifts.
Uses confidence or pressure to compensate for weak opportunity evidence.
Manager development
Builds leaders who coach, inspect, decide, and develop successors consistently.
Steps around managers and becomes the closer for every important opportunity.
Structured interview
VP of Sales interview questions and strong signals
Ask the same core questions in the same order, then use follow-ups to understand the candidate’s individual contribution.
1
Which sales result in your career is least repeatable, and why?
Strong answer signal
Separates market, timing, team, product, and personal contribution with unusual candour.
2
Describe a quarter when you reduced the forecast despite pressure to maintain it.
Strong answer signal
Shows evidence, communication, corrective action, and accountability without hiding risk.
3
How have you changed a sales management layer that was not scaling?
Strong answer signal
Covers diagnosis, expectations, coaching, structure, fair decisions, continuity, and outcome evidence.
Related titles
Check the scope behind the title
Sales Director — may lead a region or team with narrower executive responsibility.
Chief Sales Officer — often owns the whole global sales function and board-level strategy.
Chief Revenue Officer — commonly spans marketing, sales, partnerships, and customer revenue.
Common hiring mistakes
Problems to remove before publishing
Advertising an ambitious target without disclosing the base, market, capacity, and inherited pipeline.
Seeking a famous contact book instead of a leader who can build a repeatable organisation.
Making the VP accountable for revenue while withholding authority over talent, resources, territories, and pricing input.
Continue the hiring workflow
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Recruitment Business Development Workflow
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Recruitment Cost Calculator
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Staffing and Recruiting Sales Software
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Source and review notes
How this template was prepared
- Language
- International English
- Prepared by
- ATZ CRM Editorial Team
- Review
- ATZ CRM Recruitment Editorial Review
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-05
O*NET: Sales Managers
Reference for occupation tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, and work activities.
ESCO: occupations and skills
Reference for internationally recognised occupation and skills terminology.
Qualifications, compensation, licences, working conditions, and equal-opportunity wording must be checked for the role and location before use.
Recruiter questions
VP of Sales job description FAQs
What is a VP of Sales responsible for?
The VP usually owns sales strategy, leaders, team execution, forecast, resource choices, and cross-functional alignment for a defined business.
What should be disclosed in a VP of Sales vacancy?
Provide the revenue model, base, target, market, team, inherited challenges, authority, package mechanics, and board expectations without sharing confidential data publicly.
How is a VP of Sales different from a CRO?
A VP of Sales normally leads sales. A Chief Revenue Officer often owns the wider lifecycle across marketing, sales, partnerships, and customer revenue.