The VP of Sales Who Saves or Sinks You

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Every founder eventually learns that a VP of Sales is either your growth engine or your silent killer. The difference often comes down to how they view one thing: churn.

A bad VP of Sales will chase deals like a sugar-crazed toddler at a birthday party—grabbing anything within reach, even if it makes them sick later. A good VP of Sales is disciplined. They know that selling to the wrong customer is like planting weeds in your garden: it looks green at first, but soon it chokes everything around it.

Let’s break down the difference.

The Bad VP of Sales: Growth at Any Cost

A bad VP of Sales is obsessed with hitting the number—this quarter, at any cost. Their philosophy boils down to: close every deal, even if it’s a bad fit. They’ll sign customers on 30-day outs, toss out desperate discounts when engagement flags, and happily agree to deferred payments so long as they can still count it as ARR. In their world, closing any deal is better than no deal.

On paper, this VP looks like a hero. They hit targets, rack up logos, and high-five the board. But underneath, they’re quietly loading the company with toxic customers. Those customers don’t stay. They churn, they flood support with complaints, and they demand features that don’t fit your roadmap. Worst of all, they distort your perception of product-market fit.

Plenty of companies brag about landing big-name logos early, only to see those accounts churn within a year. The deals look great in a press release, but leave behind support headaches, wasted sales effort, and a reputation that makes it harder to close future customers.

The Good VP of Sales: Playing the Long Game

A good VP of Sales takes the opposite approach. They know the right customers are the ones who renew. A closed deal that will churn is worthless—and in fact, worse than worthless because it costs money. If a prospect can’t abide by contract terms, that’s not a signal to cave; it’s proof the value hasn’t been sold. Heavy discounting is viewed not as a win but as a sign the sale wasn’t executed properly.

This VP understands that bookings are only half the story. The other half is renewals and expansions. If customers don’t stick around long enough to cover their acquisition cost and then some, you don’t have a business—you have a Ponzi scheme with demos. It takes discipline to walk away from a deal that might make the quarter but is destined to churn. Yet that’s exactly the discipline that builds a company capable of compounding growth over years, not just months.

Why Churn Kills

Let’s pause here and go deeper. Why is churn so deadly?

When a customer churns, you lose the acquisition cost immediately. If you spent $30,000 landing them and they leave in six months, you haven’t just lost revenue—you’ve burned the $30,000. Your growth rate stalls too: if you sign 100 customers but 30 churn, your net growth is only 70. That doesn’t even account for the distraction churn causes in support, success, and marketing.

The damage doesn’t stop there. Former customers don’t leave quietly; they tell peers, “Don’t bother. It doesn’t work.” In industries where reputations spread quickly, that word-of-mouth kills future deals. And churn erases your future pipeline. A customer who leaves will never become a $1M account. You kill long-term potential every time you bring in the wrong fit.

This is why investors fixate on customer retention. If you’re losing customers faster than you’re adding them, you’re not scaling—you’re leaking.

How Bad VPs Create Churn

The behaviors of a bad VP map directly to churn. They over-promise, saying “yes” to every feature request so customers expect magic that never arrives. They discount heavily, teaching customers to value the product at half price and then watching them balk at renewal. They push loose contracts with 30-day outs, leaving customers free to walk at the first hiccup. And they sell outside the ideal customer profile, almost guaranteeing failure.

Churn is a disease, and a bad VP doesn’t just fail to prevent it—they actively spread it.

How Good VPs Prevent Churn

A good VP behaves like a doctor, preventing disease before it starts. They enforce discipline around the ICP, making sure reps qualify hard: Does this customer truly need us? Will they see value quickly? They practice value-based selling, refusing to cave on terms until the value is clear. Discounts are rare and justified, not a reflex. They align tightly with customer success so that onboarding is smooth and adoption happens quickly. And they build a renewal-first mindset into the culture, treating the first sale as only the start of the relationship.

The result is lower churn, higher lifetime value, and a sales culture that scales.

The Metrics That Matter

If you want to know whether your VP of Sales is good or bad, look at what they measure. A bad VP only celebrates new deals signed. A good VP tracks how much revenue you keep from existing customers, whether accounts grow over time, how fast you earn back your sales and marketing costs, and whether customers stick around long enough to be profitable.

If you never hear these questions, worry. If you hear them often, you’ve likely got the right leader.

The Hidden Cost of the Wrong Hire

Hiring the wrong VP of Sales isn’t just a six-month detour—it can set a company back years. The average VP of Sales at a venture-backed startup earns $250,000 to $350,000 in salary, plus equity and bonuses. But the real cost is opportunity. A bad VP burns the pipeline, poisons early customer relationships, and distorts your market signal.

By the time you realize the mistake, you’ve lost a year of growth. Morale in the sales team has cratered, investors are questioning your judgment, and competitors have scooped up the customers you mishandled. In dollar terms, a mis-hire at this level can easily cost seven figures when you add up wasted sales expense, lost renewals, and the expense of recruiting and onboarding the replacement.

The cultural damage lingers even longer. Reps trained in bad habits don’t immediately unlearn them when leadership changes. A bad hire leaves a shadow you’ll feel long after they’re gone.

What to Look For in a VP of Sales

When evaluating a VP of Sales, pay attention to the way they talk about growth. Do they emphasize ideal customer fit as much as closing? Do they have a clear qualification process beyond just “budget and timing”? Do they see discounting as failure, not strategy? Do they talk naturally about renewals and expansions? And do they understand efficiency basics like whether customers stick long enough to make the business profitable?

If the answers are yes, you’ve probably found the right kind.

Building a No-Churn Sales Culture

So what does a no-churn sales culture look like in practice? It starts with a clear ICP and the discipline to walk away from customers who don’t fit. It ties compensation not just to new deals, but to retention. It enforces discount guardrails and reviews them rigorously. It measures retention monthly instead of waiting for the board meeting to reveal leakage. And it celebrates renewals with as much energy as new logos—ringing the gong not just when customers arrive, but when they stay.

The Final Word

At the end of the day, the difference between a bad VP of Sales and a good one comes down to short-term wins versus long-term survival. A bad VP looks like a genius until churn exposes them. A good VP may seem slower and pickier, but they’re the one building a foundation for sustainable growth.

Put bluntly: churn will kill your business. The right VP of Sales won’t let it. 

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