I'm coaching 3 CEOs who fired their VP Sales at the end of Q1. 

I've had the same conversation with each of them and diagnosed them all with what I'm calling Product Value Denial (PVD). 

Product Value Denial is when a founder believes their product is exponentially more valuable than their customers or prospects think it is.

They focus their attention on the few happy customers they have and utilize this to reassure themselves their product is excellent. 

They think... we just need more of those customers! They must exist! 

They ignore all prospects and customers who dislike their product.

They believe "I am right and they are wrong".

This level of denial is a delusion.

The outcome for these 3 companies, unfortunately has been continued decline in revenue after letting go of their VP Sales. 

The internal conflict has grown substantially because it turns out the VPs were actually making a bad situation better, to the extent that they could.

If your struggling to hit your sales targets, I implore you to be brutally honest with yourself and USE DATA to determine what's actually wrong. 

The data I'm referring to is not your sales and revenue report... it's your churn reasons and lost deal reasons.

Those data points will always tell you why you're missing your revenue target. 

The WHY is far more important than the WHAT.

If your product isn't amazing... stop blaming salespeople and leaders.

You can't fix a weak product with a stronger sales leader. 

One doesn't compensate for the other.

The problem in today's venture capital world is everyone's more worried about formulating a compelling narrative to pitch to investors instead of formulating a undeniably compelling product offering for prospects and customers.

Founders have become overly obsessed with serving shareholder value to investors instead of serving product and service value to customers.

The end result is always the same... they blame the sales leader for all the shortcomings and they're shockingly surprised when swapping in a new leader doesn't solve the problem.

Stop buying yourself time... instead buy yourself a future by investing in what matters... your product.

Happy Selling,