Turning down a VP of Sales Promotion

And this one time... on the sales floor....

I turned down a VP of Sales promotion. #WTF? 🤷

I observed that my boss, the current VP of Sales, was working 100+ hours per week.

And I could never figure out why he did that to himself. And then he fell asleep at the wheel while driving into work one morning and got into an accident. Thankfully he was totally fine.

And then the CEO took me out to dinner and asked me if I wanted the VP of Sales role. I said "no way! Thank you very much."

Without saying anything to the CEO, I was under the impression that the expectations of the job were to work 100+ hours per week and I wasn't going to do that. I was sacrificing enough family time already.

And then they fired my boss. Months later the CEO asked me AGAIN to be the VP of Sales. At that point, I realized I had some cards to play.

So I told him that I wasn't going to work 100+ hours per week like the last guy and he told me......

"Kevin, we don't WANT you to work 100+ hours per week. We know you can do it better than the last guy and NOT work 100+ hours per week. That's why we fired him." Duh.

💡 The learning lesson here: Being a great sales leader at an early stage startup doesn't ALWAYS REQUIRE you to work 100+ hours per week.

Yeah, sometimes you have to put in long weeks at crunch time

but you can still be a really effective and efficient sales leader while working normal hours at an early stage start up.

What do you think?

Can you be a leader at an early stage start up and NOT always work 100+ hour work weeks?

Drop it in the comments