VP of Sales or VP of Marketing?
If I'm the CEO of a startup, and I have enough money for only one of these positions (VP of Sales or VP of Marketing), which one do I hire? And does it make sense to combine the two? Why or why not?
Marketing feeds sales leads, and sales is responsible changing the order of those letters from "leads" into "deals".
A salesperson without marketing needs to be able to clearly articulate your value prop, AND find new leads. This is a special person.
Another way to approach this question: Do your prospects already "get" your product, and are calling you asking for demos or more info? Or, do you need to spend the first 15 minutes of a call explaining to prospects what it is you do and why they need your product?
If it is the former - hire a sales-minded person. The hard part about sales is CLOSING. good sales people are always closing deals, and getting the money out of a customer's hands (in a good way). I find most marketer's are NOT good at closing. As long as your sales person has some leads flowing in from your site, and can figure out who is a good fit for him to hassle that turn into deals - you'll be good.
If your product is ill defined, and you need to explain it in detail or talk to engineers who "get it" before anything is ever sold, then go with someone who has a marketing mind first. Their first task is to get a very solid product story that gets people interested in your product (even if they are not an engineer). If you have a good product story, sales becomes much easier to close and will build your pipeline of deals. then you can get a sales person who is focused on closing those new deals.
Marketing and Sales should be aligned....but not run by the same person if possible.
On the other hand, we're trying to get our adoption and engagement rates of our SaaS product as high as possible before we sell anything.
It's interesting though the startups who hire a VP of Sales too early when the product has not yet been validated.