Series B/C Sales Leadership: Target Company Market Map

At Series B/C, it’s common for the ideal sales leadership hire to be someone who’s “done it before.” 

In reality, though? It’s just that—the ideal.

With Series B/C sales leadership hiring up 52% since Q3 2023, nearly half of all hires we analyzed were step-up hires who came from a range of company profiles—everything from smaller, similar stage companies to larger, later stage (and PE-owned) companies.

We’ve continued to build our market map to show not just the company profiles of where sales leaders are coming from, but whether those were step-up hires, lateral moves, or step-downs—both in terms of title and company size changes. 

What you can see from the below is that only a fraction of recent sales leadership hires were lateral title hires who came from larger companies (in other words, the “done it before” group).

So, who fits these roles? 

Step-up title hires are the largest talent segment in the market right now, followed by the lateral-title hires. Though these leaders are coming from larger companies, they’re equally likely to be coming from similar sized companies or smaller companies.

We’ve found sample candidate profiles—for both lateral move and step-up candidates—and added them to our market map, which you can access by filling out the form below.

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