VP Sales First 90 Days: What Hiring Companies Actually Expect

There are hundreds of "VP Sales first 90 days" guides online. They all say roughly the same thing: listen first, build relationships, assess the team, create a plan, get a quick win. Solid advice. Also completely generic.

Here's what those guides miss: the company already has a specific mandate for you. They decided what they need before they wrote the job description. Your job during the interview process is to figure out what that mandate is, and your first 90 days are about executing it. The listening tour, the relationship building, the stakeholder alignment... that all happens inside the context of a mandate that was set before you walked in the door.

We've been tracking executive sales postings since January 2025. We've analyzed 1,349 of them. We run weekly company deep-dives in The CRO Report newsletter that examine specific roles in detail, including predecessor intel, board composition, and what the hiring company actually needs. Patterns emerge.

Not all VP Sales roles are the same. The first question you should be asking isn't "what should I do in my first 90 days?" It's "which mandate am I walking into?"

The 6 First-90-Day Mandates

After reading through hundreds of these postings and researching the companies behind them, every VP Sales or CRO hire falls into one of six mandate types. Each one comes with a completely different set of expectations, timelines, and success criteria. Getting clear on which one you're signing up for is the single most important thing you can do before accepting an offer.

1. Build the Team - You're the first or second sales leader. Recruiting IS the job.
2. Build Pipeline from Zero - Product exists, commercial engine doesn't.
3. Fix What's Broken - Your predecessor left a mess. Diagnose, then rebuild.
4. Close Active Pipeline - Deals are sitting there. The company needs someone to execute now.
5. Move Upmarket - PLG or SMB company expanding into enterprise sales.
6. Scale What's Working - The best scenario. Professionalize an early motion that has traction.

Let's break each one down with data from what companies actually say they want.

Mandate 1: Build the Team

Hiring is 50% of a VP Sales job. Maybe more. And for a significant chunk of the postings we track, hiring IS the entire first-90-day mandate.

We profiled Partex.AI in one of our newsletter deep-dives. They were hiring their first CRO. Seed-stage company. The posting was explicit: "Build the commercial function." There was no existing team, no playbook, no pipeline. The entire first-90-day expectation was about constructing the sales organization from nothing.

That's an extreme example, but the pattern shows up constantly at Series A and Series B companies. They've got product, maybe some founder-led sales, and they've raised enough money to hire a sales leader who'll build a real team.

What companies expect from this mandate

• By day 30: Recruiting plan finalized. Org chart defined. First job descriptions posted. You should also have a clear compensation structure that's competitive for the market. (Our salary benchmarks can help with that.)
• By day 60: First hires made or offers extended. If you're hiring AEs, at least two should be in the pipeline. Recruitment agency relationships established if needed.
• By day 90: First team members operational. Onboarding process exists. Initial sales process documented even if it's rough.

The trap with this mandate is thinking you have more time than you do. Boards and founders who just wrote a big check for a VP Sales making $167K-$251K base don't want to see a 90-day "assessment phase." They want to see bodies in seats and activity metrics moving.

Mandate 2: Build Pipeline from Zero

This is different from building the team. Sometimes the team exists, or you're expected to be an individual contributor first. The issue is there's no pipeline. No qualified opportunities. No outbound motion. Maybe some inbound leads that nobody's working properly.

This mandate is most common at startups that have product-market fit with a small number of customers but haven't built a repeatable acquisition engine. They might have gotten their first customers through the founder's network, investor introductions, or conference meetings. Now they need a system.

What companies expect from this mandate

• By day 15: Market assessment complete. You should understand the ICP, competitive landscape, and where the existing customers came from.
• By day 30: ICP definition locked. Target account list built. Outbound messaging drafted and tested. Tech stack decisions made (what tools you need).
• By day 60: First pipeline generated. Outbound motion running, even if it's you doing the prospecting. Conversion metrics from first outreach campaigns available.
• By day 90: Pipeline review cadence established. Enough data to project whether the motion will work at scale. First deals moving through stages.

The founders are watching pipeline creation metrics closely here. They aren't necessarily expecting closed revenue by day 90 (though that's nice), but they want to see that the engine is being built and fuel is going in.

Mandate 3: Fix What's Broken

This is the hardest mandate. You're inheriting someone else's problems, and the organization is already frustrated.

We covered Forrester's CSO search in one of our deep-dives. The predecessor departed after what our research described as a "big gap between mandate and results." The company had hired that person to deliver double-digit growth, and CV (contract value) had actually declined 7%. So the new hire was walking into an organization where leadership had already failed once, the team was demoralized, and the board was impatient.

What companies expect from this mandate

• By day 30: Diagnosis complete. What specifically went wrong? Was it the strategy, the execution, the team composition, or the product-market fit? You should have a clear, honest assessment that you can present to the executive team.
• By day 45: Turnaround plan presented. This includes who stays, who goes, what changes, and what the realistic timeline is. Companies want honesty here, not optimism.
• By day 90: First evidence of change. Maybe it's improved pipeline quality, better win rates on specific segments, or restructured team responsibilities. The board needs to see that you've stopped the bleeding and have a credible path forward.

The tricky part: you'll feel pressure to make big changes fast. Resist the impulse to clean house in week two. You need enough diagnostic time to avoid repeating your predecessor's mistakes while moving fast enough that the organization believes things are actually changing.

In our newsletter deep-dives, we always flag when a role has predecessor context because it changes everything about how you should evaluate the opportunity. A company that burned through their last VP Sales in 14 months is a different proposition than a company whose founding VP Sales left after five years to start their own thing.

Mandate 4: Close Active Pipeline

This mandate has the shortest clock. You're walking into existing deals, an existing team, and a board that's watching the pipeline report weekly. They hired you because the previous leader left (or was let go) and there's revenue at risk.

Growth-stage companies produce this mandate most often. The team is built, the pipeline exists, but there's a leadership vacuum. Deals are stalling because there's nobody to run deal reviews, negotiate contracts, or make the call on pricing exceptions.

What companies expect from this mandate

• By week 1: Complete pipeline review. Every open opportunity assessed. You should know which deals are real and which are padding.
• By week 2: Active involvement in the top 5-10 deals. Joining customer calls. Providing air cover for reps who need executive sponsorship on stalled opportunities.
• By day 60: Closed revenue. Some of those pipeline deals should have converted. The expectation isn't that you personally closed them, but that your leadership accelerated deals that were stuck.
• By day 90: Pipeline hygiene improved. Forecast accuracy trending up. Deal velocity metrics showing improvement. Team confidence restored.

If you accept this type of role, negotiate accordingly. You didn't build the pipeline, so tying your entire comp to closing deals you inherited creates misaligned incentives. Smart candidates negotiate a guaranteed first-year OTE floor or a signing bonus that covers the ramp period.

Mandate 5: Move Upmarket

Product-led growth companies eventually want enterprise revenue. It happens like clockwork. The self-serve motion plateaus, or the board sees that the top 10% of accounts generate 60% of revenue, and somebody decides it's time to build an enterprise sales team.

This is genuinely hard work. Enterprise sales requires a completely different motion than PLG or SMB. Longer cycles. Multi-threaded relationships. Procurement involvement. Legal review. Security questionnaires. The company probably doesn't have any of the infrastructure for this yet.

What companies expect from this mandate

• By day 30: Enterprise sales playbook drafted. Target account list defined. Pricing model for enterprise-tier contracts (annual, multi-year, usage-based, whatever makes sense). Understanding of what the product needs to be enterprise-ready vs. what's already there.
• By day 60: First enterprise prospect engagement. At least 3-5 qualified enterprise conversations in progress. Sales collateral, pitch decks, and ROI frameworks built for the enterprise buyer.
• By day 90: Deal structures defined for six-figure contracts. Possibly a first enterprise deal in late stages. Clear feedback to product on enterprise feature gaps. Hiring plan for enterprise AEs if you're building the team.

The realistic expectation here is that you won't close a major enterprise deal in 90 days. Enterprise cycles are 6-12 months. But the company needs to see that you've laid the groundwork and that real conversations are happening. They're buying the process, not the outcome, in the first quarter.

Mandate 6: Scale What's Working

This is the best scenario. The company has product-market fit. They have early sales traction. Maybe the founder or an early sales hire has been closing deals and building relationships. The motion works, but it's not repeatable. It lives in someone's head. Nothing is documented. Nothing is scalable.

We profiled Forward Networks in the newsletter. They hired Bobby Condon, who'd scaled Fastly from $2M to a $480M IPO. That's the kind of track record companies want for this mandate. They had something working; they needed someone who'd done the scaling before.

Rithum was another example. After the Service Express CRO joined, they were hiring a VP to help scale their $50B commerce platform. The product was proven. The market was there. The mandate was execution and growth.

What companies expect from this mandate

• By day 30: Existing sales process documented. Every step from lead to close mapped. Conversion rates at each stage understood. Current team assessed for ability to scale.
• By day 60: Repeatable playbook created. Onboarding program designed so new reps can ramp in a predictable timeframe. Gaps identified in tooling, process, or data.
• By day 90: Hiring plan in motion. First round of process improvements showing measurable results. Forecast model built. The organization should feel more professional than it did 90 days ago.

The risk with this mandate is over-engineering it. The motion works. Don't blow it up to build something theoretically better. Document it, instrument it, add rigor, and hire people who can run it. The CEO's biggest fear is that the new VP Sales will come in and break what's already working in pursuit of "best practices."

How to Identify Your Mandate Before Accepting

In every company deep-dive we publish in The CRO Report newsletter, we include a "Critical Questions" section. These are the questions we'd ask if we were evaluating the role. They're designed to surface which mandate you're really walking into.

Here are the questions that reveal your mandate type:

About the team

• "How many quota-carrying reps are on the team today?" (If the answer is zero, you're in Mandate 1 or 2.)
• "What does the current team's quota attainment look like?" (Below 60% attainment across the team signals Mandate 3.)
• "Are you replacing someone, or is this a new position?" (New position = Mandate 1, 2, 5, or 6. Replacement = could be anything, dig deeper.)

About pipeline

• "What's in the current pipeline?" (Real pipeline with active deals = Mandate 4. Empty or thin = Mandate 2.)
• "Where have your customers come from so far?" (Founder-led = Mandate 2 or 6. Existing sales team = Mandate 3 or 4.)
• "What does your current sales cycle look like?" (If they don't know, you're earlier-stage than they might be letting on.)

About expectations

• "What does success look like at the 90-day mark?" (Vague answers are a red flag. Good companies have thought about this.)
• "What happened with the last person in this role?" (They should be direct about this. Evasiveness means Mandate 3 and they don't want to admit it.)
• "What's the board's timeline for seeing revenue impact?" (This tells you exactly how much runway you have.)

About the company's motion

• "Are you currently selling to enterprises, or is that a new motion?" (If new, that's Mandate 5.)
• "Do you have a documented sales process?" (No = Mandate 2 or 6. Yes but it's not working = Mandate 3.)
• "What's the annual revenue target for this role's organization?" (Compare to current run rate. Big gap = aggressive expectations.)

The goal is to get specific enough that you can say, with confidence, "I'm walking into Mandate 4: close active pipeline" or "This is clearly Mandate 1: build the team from scratch." If you can't identify the mandate after three rounds of interviews, the company hasn't figured it out themselves. Which brings us to the red flags.

The Red Flags That Signal Unclear Expectations

If a company can't articulate what they expect in the first 90 days, the mandate will shift after you start. You'll think you were hired to do one thing, and three weeks in, the CEO will tell you the priority is something else entirely. This is how VP Sales tenures end in 14 months.

Other signals to watch for:

• No mention of quota or targets in the job posting. Either they haven't set them or they don't want to scare people off. Neither is good.
• Conflicting mandates across interviewers. The CEO says "build the team," the CFO says "hit Q2 numbers," and the board member says "fix the process." You're being set up to fail three different ways simultaneously.
• Unrealistic timelines. "We need $5M in new ARR by Q3" when there's no team, no pipeline, and you're starting in February. The math doesn't work and they either know it (and will blame you) or don't know it (and will still blame you).
• No clarity on predecessor departure. "It just wasn't a fit" is corporate-speak for "we fired them but won't tell you why." Push harder. You need to know.

The best companies we've profiled in our deep-dives are remarkably specific about what they want. They've done the work internally before writing the job description. They can tell you exactly what success looks like at 30, 60, and 90 days. They're transparent about what went wrong before and what's different now. Those are the roles worth taking.