Hiring a VP Sales or CRO? It's the highest-stakes hire you'll make.
Strive runs VP Sales, CRO and Head of Revenue searches for SaaS companies - the appointment that sets your revenue trajectory for the next few years. We help you work out who you actually need, then go and find them.
Get this hire wrong and you lose a year
Your next sales leader sets the pace, hires the team, and owns the number. Get the appointment right and everything downstream gets easier. Get it wrong and you don't just lose the person - you lose the team they built, the quarters they ran, and momentum you can't get back.
It's the hire founders most often rush, and most often regret. The stakes are exactly why it's worth slowing down on the profile before you speed up on the search.
VP Sales or CRO? They're not the same hire
The two titles get used interchangeably. They shouldn't be.
A VP Sales builds and runs the sales engine
Hands-on leadership of AEs and SDRs, quota ownership, pipeline and process. The right hire when you need someone to get in and drive the number, usually from around Series A to B.
A CRO owns the whole revenue picture
Sales, plus marketing, customer success and RevOps aligned under one leader. The right hire when you're scaling past a single motion and need revenue run as a system, usually later stage.
Hiring a CRO when you needed a VP Sales gives you a strategist when you wanted a builder. The reverse leaves you without the cross-functional glue. Naming the role correctly is half the search.
What good looks like
The strongest sales-leadership hires we place tend to share a few things.
They've done your next stage, not just your current one
Someone who has scaled a team through the phase you're heading into, not the phase you're leaving.
They still sell
At VP level especially, you want a leader who will carry a bag alongside the team, not manage from a spreadsheet.
They fit your motion
Product-led and sales-led, SMB and enterprise, are different sports. Pattern-matching the wrong motion is the most common miss.
They can hire
Your leader's real output is the team they build, so a track record of attracting talent matters as much as their own number.
How SaaS teams have got the leadership hire right
Anonymised examples from searches we've run. Details changed to protect client confidentiality.
“We thought we wanted a CRO. Strive pushed back and helped us see we needed a hands-on VP Sales first. The person they placed rebuilt the AE team and doubled new-business pipeline before we ever needed the CRO layer.”
Series B B2B SaaS - first senior sales-leadership hire.
“Our founder had run sales personally for two years. The CRO we hired through Strive took revenue off the founder's plate entirely and aligned sales, marketing and CS under one number for the first time.”
Scale-up SaaS - first CRO, founder-led to leader-led transition.
Built for GTM leadership search
We calibrate before we search
We help you pin down whether it's a VP Sales or a CRO, and what good looks like for your stage and motion, before a single approach goes out.
GTM is all we do
Sales and revenue leadership from VP to CRO is our specialism, not a side desk in a generalist agency.
Quality over volume
A tight shortlist of leaders who can actually do the job at your stage, with honest guidance at every step.
VP Sales & CRO hiring: FAQs
When should we hire our first VP of Sales?
Usually once the founder or a couple of early reps have proven a repeatable sales motion and you need someone to scale it. If the motion isn't proven yet, a VP Sales will struggle to build on sand.
What's the difference between a VP Sales and a CRO?
A VP Sales builds and runs the sales team and owns the number. A CRO owns the whole revenue picture - sales, marketing, customer success and RevOps - as one system. VP Sales tends to come first; a CRO makes sense once you're scaling multiple functions.
Should our first senior hire be a VP Sales or a CRO?
For most companies making their first dedicated sales-leadership hire, a hands-on VP Sales is the better starting point. Bring in a CRO when revenue needs to be run cross-functionally rather than just sold.
How long does a VP Sales or CRO search take?
A well-calibrated senior search typically runs from a few weeks to a couple of months from kickoff to offer. Getting the profile and success criteria right at the start is the biggest time saver.
What does a great sales leader actually look like?
Someone who has scaled a team through your next stage, still sells alongside the team, fits your specific motion, and can attract talent. The team they build is their real output.
Do you recruit sales leaders internationally?
Yes. We place VP Sales, CRO and Head of Revenue leaders across the UK, US and Europe, including for companies expanding into new markets.