Learn the four Sales Superpowers.

Review the four superpowers with your CEO – or if you’re the CEO, review them yourself. Rank them from order of “most essential” to “least essential” based on what you need from your sales leadership.

Codify your CEO’s Superpower.

Tease out your CEO’s Superpower. Ask whether they're more focused on closing deals or building company culture, or whether they'd rather see a detailed Excel model or a list of potential deals that their teams are focusing on. It might be difficult to decide, knowing that all of these strengths are objectively important. Still, push them to decide. “If you absolutely had to pick between closing deals or hosting a company offsite, which excites you the most?”

Determine which Superpower your company desperately needs.

The same line of questions applies, this time focused on what’s best company. Every sales department at a company should have someone in the leadership who idealizes each superpower – likely, there’s a hole in your current team that this new sales leader could fill.

Go find someone to match your Superpower.

Your new VP of Sales’ superpower should align most closely with your CEO’s. At the end of the day, even a sub-optimally aligned sales leader that can communicate effectively with your CEO will be more successful than the opposite.

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