Our VP of Sales has excellent relationships and drives revenue, but she refuses to build or use any sales processes. We are preparing for an exit and need scalable systems. How do we make the Right Person, Right Seat call when her conative profile shows she actively resists structure?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic right-person-wrong-seat dilemma. Your VP of Sales is a superstar revenue generator and fits your core values, but her seat requires her to build and enforce scalable sales processes. If her Kolbe score shows she is a low Follow Thru, she is conatively wired to resist structure. She will naturally find building repeatable systems painful and will avoid it.

You must recognize that you cannot change her conative wiring. No amount of coaching or management will turn a natural non-systemizer into a process builder. You have two choices.

First, you can keep her in the seat but modify her responsibilities. You can hire a sales operations manager who has a high Follow Thru score to sit under her and build the CRM systems and playbooks. She remains the strategic leader and relationship builder, while her assistant manages the structure.

If that is not financially or operationally viable, she does not GWC her current seat. You must move her out of the VP of Sales seat and into a strategic individual contributor role, such as Global Account Director, where she can focus on relationships without managing systems.

You then hire a VP of Sales who naturally excels at building systems. This protects your revenue, respects her natural talents, and ensures you build the repeatable processes needed to prepare your business for a clean, high-value exit.