The step by step framework to position yourself for VP roles

The VP Positioning Strategy That Landed Me Two Offers Step 1: Decide what kind of VP you want to become I did not begin with my LinkedIn profile. I began by defining the role.   I knew I wanted to become a VP of Marketing inside a startup. That gave me a much more useful question: What would make a startup CEO trust me to lead their marketing organization?   Which capabilities would matter most? What gaps would make them hesitate? Who would need to know me before one of those roles became available?   That answers would have been different if I wanted to lead product marketing inside a global enterprise or run a mature demand generation organization.   “I want to become a VP” is not specific enough to guide your decisions. You need to understand the environment you want to lead in, the business problems you want to own, and the expectations senior leaders will have of someone at that level.   The clearer the destination, the easier it becomes to work backward.   Step 2: Find the sharp edge of your experience My experience was broad, but broad experience alone was not going to make my value explicit.   I decided product marketing would become the sharp edge of my positioning. It was close to revenue, and one of two main marketing disciplines that generate the most VPs.   I was not abandoning the rest of my background or pretending I had spent my entire career in one specialty. Product marketing became the part of my experience that led the story. It gave people a clear way to understand why I was valuable.   This is where a lot of senior leaders struggle.   You have spent years developing a wide range of capabilities, so when someone asks what you bring to the table, you try to include all of them. You describe yourself as a strategic, cross-functional leader who drives transformation, builds high-performing teams and delivers results.   All true.   Also true of thousands of other leaders.   You do not need to erase the breadth of your experience. You need to decide which part should lead.   What is the clearest reason a senior executive would pull you into an important conversation?   Which business problem are you unusually well equipped to solve? What part of your experience is most relevant to the VP role you want?   For me, it was competitive go to market motions. I knew how to find the right customers at scale. That meant that every marketing tactic that came after that was 10x more effective. And that was something CEOs wanted.   That is the sharp edge of your positioning.   Step 3: Learn how your market thinks and talks Once I chose product marketing, I went deep. For almost a year, I regularly listened to six or seven podcasts focused on product marketing.   I learned who the respected experts were, which ideas were shaping the field, what companies were struggling with, and how the strongest leaders explained their impact.   I also joined the Product Marketing Alliance because I wanted to be around people who were already operating in that world.   I paid attention to the terminology they used, the problems they prioritized, and the trends executives considered valuable enough to invest in.   I was not simply learning more about product marketing. I was studying the executive conversation and what VPs in particular were focused on.   You can have excellent experience and still struggle to position it if you do not understand how senior leaders value that experience.   Your work may be strategic, but if you describe it through tasks and deliverables, people may still see you as tactical.   Strong positioning requires you to understand what matters to the leaders making decisions: What problems are becoming more urgent? What results are executives accountable for? Where is the business investing? What separates solid functional leadership from executive-level judgment?   The deeper I went, the easier it became to connect my experience to the issues senior leaders already had on their minds.   Step 4: Reverse-engineer the people already doing the job At the same time, I began reaching out to senior marketing leaders on LinkedIn, especially VPs who had come from product marketing backgrounds. I wanted to understand how they had positioned themselves.   Which experiences did they emphasize? How did they describe their work? What helped them move from functional leadership into an executive role? What patterns could I see across their careers?   I documented everything I learned and gradually built a playbook for the day I became a VP. This was networking, but it was also market research.   You can apply the same strategy to your field.   Find leaders at the VP level who have a similar background and reach out. Ask for an opportunity to learn about their journey as you are designing your next move.   Pay attention to how they communicate, which problems they own, who relies on their judgment, and what evidence made senior leaders believe they were ready.   Do not copy their career. Look for the decision criteria hiding inside it. Start applying it in your day to day.   Step 5: Build proof before you need the title Joining the Product Marketing Alliance eventually created an opportunity I could not have planned.   A few weeks before one of their events, they reached out and asked whether I could deliver a keynote. Someone may have canceled. I did not have a ready-made presentation, and I was scared shitless.   I said yes.   I knew the opportunity could help establish credibility in the exact space I wanted to own. (Side note: you don’t have to wait to get invited. You can reach out and pitch yourself)   The keynote was recorded, and I shared the video on LinkedIn. That one piece of visible proof started creating opportunities. CEOs and senior executives reached out to ask whether I offered consulting.   As I did more product marketing work as a consultant, my positioning became more credible.   At the time, I was already working on a project with Google, but it wasn’t giving me enough of the go to market exposure I needed. So I put together a plan to expend my scope and pitched it. They said yes, and I strengthened the exact reputation I was building, while doing meaningful work.   The keynote created public proof. The consulting work created operating proof. Together, they changed the story I could tell, and that changed how people saw me.   This is the part you cannot solve with a better LinkedIn headline. You need evidence.   Inside your company, that might mean taking ownership of a strategic initiative, expanding the scope of a project, advising another function, presenting to senior leaders, or solving a problem that normally sits one level above you.   Externally, it could mean speaking, publishing, consulting, advising, or contributing to an industry community.   Your positioning becomes believable when people can see you doing the work, not just talking about it. And no, this isn’t a quick fix. It’s a process that builds reputation, but when it finally falls into place you get to reap the rewards for the rest of your career.   Step 6: Build relationships that multiply your visibility By the time I was ready to pursue a VP title, my positioning was already working. My network had seen my expertise develop. I had speaking experience, consulting projects and stronger examples that supported the story I wanted senior leaders to believe.   Then I became more deliberate about who needed to know me.   It’s easy to think that if you just update your LinkedIn opportunities will magically come, but we’re not here to play the ego game. Waiting is not a strategy. If you want visibility - you need to create it.   Because I wanted to lead marketing inside a startup, I reached out to partners in venture capital firms.   One VC relationship could potentially open doors to multiple companies. An investor recommendation would also carry more weight with a startup CEO than a cold application.   By that point, I was not asking anyone to imagine whether I could operate at the VP level.   I had evidence that I already was. And (and this is an important one) after dozens of networking conversations with senior leaders, I also had the confidence to tell my story. That made it easier for senior leaders to recommend me, and those conversations eventually led to two VP offers.   The same principle applies internally.   You need relationships with people who influence opportunities. That might be your skip-level leader, a respected cross-functional executive, a business-unit leader, or someone who regularly participates in talent conversations.   Positioning becomes much more powerful when the right people can see it and repeat it when you are not in the room. Your job is to make it easier for them to see and advocate for you.   VP positioning starts before the opportunity appears The process of positioning myself for those two VP offers I landed? It took about a year because I started from zero right after moving to a new city and with no network to support me.   You might need 90 days if you have a good baseline, but the bottom line is that it’s not something you do over weekend.   You do not build VP positioning during the final weeks before a promotion decision. You build it through the strategy you follow and the choices you make long before that conversation happens.   Your resume and LinkedIn profile should reflect that strategy. But they are not the strategy.   I’m sorry I can’t give you a quick fix, but what I can offer is this: your brand and your positioning is one of the things no one can take away from you. Once you build them, they will continue to serve you and future proof your career.

Your Next Steps: The VP Positioning Playbook If you want to get started, follow the these six moves to build your plan:   Target: Define the VP role and business environment you want.   Sharpen: Choose the part of your experience that should lead your story.   Immerse: Learn the priorities, language and trends shaping that space.   Study: Reverse-engineer the leaders already trusted at that level.   Prove: Create visible evidence that you can solve VP-level problems.   Multiply: Build relationships with leaders who can help your reputation travel.   Your goal is not to tell people you are ready for VP. It is to make the evidence strong enough that they reach that conclusion themselves.

Confidence Under Pressure: What Execs do Differently

 

Earlier in my career, I was terrified of pushback.   If someone challenged my recommendation or asked a hard question, I would freak out. I immediately assumed they thought my idea was stupid and I didn’t know what I was talking about. My response? I thought the best thing I could do was give them more information.   So I explained. Then I added more context, more background, more caveats, and more proof that I had thought it through.   In my head, I was being thorough. In the room, I was creating confusion.   Because instead of sounding confident in my recommendation, I sounded like I was trying to justify it.   That was a painful lesson.   And I see this happen all the time with high performers. They walk into a meeting with strong work, solid thinking, and good intentions. But the second someone pushes back, they start over-explaining, apologizing, defending, or filling every quiet moment with more words.   They think they are showing competence. But the perception can be very different.   Senior leaders may hear uncertainty. They may see defensiveness. They may wonder if you are actually grounded in your recommendation or if you need the room to validate it for you.   That does not mean you are not ready. It means you have not yet trained yourself to respond like an executive under pressure. And yes, this is a skill you can develop.   Confidence under pressure is not about being fearless, perfectly polished, or having an answer for everything. It is the ability to stay grounded, think clearly, communicate decisively, and lead others through uncertainty.   That is one of the biggest differences between someone who is seen as great at their job and someone who is seen as ready for bigger scope. Because at the executive level, pressure is part of the job.   Your recommendations will be questioned. Your assumptions will be tested. You will get questions you did not prepare for. You will walk into meetings where the stakes are high, the information is incomplete, and everyone is looking for someone to create clarity.   That is the job.   The goal is not to avoid those moments. The goal is to build the skill of staying steady inside them.   The Responses That Make You Look Junior Under Pressure Before we talk about what executives do differently, let’s talk about what weakens your presence in the room.   These are the patterns I see often: Over-explaining when a direct answer would be stronger. Defending before you fully understand the concern. Apologizing when nothing has actually gone wrong. Guessing because you do not want to say “I don’t know.” Backpedaling the second someone challenges your recommendation.   None of these mean you are not capable. They usually mean your nervous system is trying to protect you. Your emotions and your instincts are calling the shots.   But in senior rooms, your pressure response becomes part of your leadership brand.   If every hard question rattles you, leadership will start questioning your conviction and your readiness for more.

4 Things Executives Do Differently Under Pressure You know those executives who seem unfazed no matter what leadership throws their way? The ones who answer calmly, who seem to have the prefect answer to every question?   They learned how to show up that way.   Staying composed requires two things: Identifying the trigger (that fight or flight feeling), and controlling your reaction.   You can probably feel when the pressure raises and you are about to lose your cool. When that happens your job is to stop, and intentionally chose one of the responses below. This is how the best executives do it.   1. They Pause Before They Respond When someone challenges you, the natural instinct is to answer immediately. You want to prove you know. You want to show you were prepared. You want to make the discomfort go away as quickly as possible.   But speed is not always your friend.   When you respond too quickly, you are more likely to answer the wrong question, say too much, or sound defensive before you even realize what is happening.   Executives know how to pause. Not for dramatic effect. This is not a Netflix boardroom scene.   They pause because it gives them a second to think, regulate, and choose the right response. That pause communicates something important: I can handle this.   Here are a few ways this can sound: “Let me think about the best way to frame this.” “That’s a fair question.” “I want to make sure I’m answering the real concern.” “Before I respond, can I clarify what part you’re pushing on?”   A pause may feel awkward at first because many high performers are used to equating speed with competence. But at senior levels, the fastest answer is not always the strongest answer.   Sometimes the most executive thing you can do is take a breath before you speak.   2. They Clarify Before They React Push back isn’t always bad. It feels personal in the moment, but sometimes it’s just about gaining clarity or pressure testing risks before committing.   If you treat every challenge like an attack, you will respond defensively. And once you get defensive, you lose the room.   The executive move is to clarify the concern before you respond to it.   Instead of assuming you know what they are asking, slow the conversation down enough to understand what is really happening.   You can say: “Are you concerned about the timeline, the investment, or the customer impact?” “Is your hesitation about the recommendation itself or the risk of moving too quickly?” “Are you asking for more detail, or are you seeing a different path?” “Can I clarify whether you’re pushing on the data, the assumption, or the recommendation?”   This does two things.   First, it helps you answer the actual question. Second, it shows the room that you can stay steady when challenged.   You are not reacting. You are leading the conversation. That is executive behavior.   3. They Say “I Don’t Know” With Confidence A lot of people think executive presence means always having the answer. It does not.   In fact, trying to have an answer when you do not have one is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility.   You start guessing. You add qualifiers. You talk in circles. and instead of sounding confident, you sound insecure.   Executives do not pretend to know everything. They know how to name what they know, what they do not know yet, and what they are going to do next.   Here’s what it can sound like: “I don’t have that number in front of me, but I can get it to you by Friday.” “We have not looked at that metric yet. Based on what we do know, the direction is positive, but let me confirm and circle back”. “That’s a good question. I don’t have the full answer yet, but here’s what I do know, here’s what I’m still validating, and here’s when I’ll come back with a recommendation.”   That is confidence.   Not because you know everything, but because you are not pretending. You are giving the room clarity instead of noise. A clear “I don’t know yet” is stronger than a messy answer pretending to be certainty.   4. They Handle Pushback With Conviction This is the part that really shows your executive presence. Because when your recommendation gets challenged, you have a choice.   You can defend it like your ego is on trial. You can abandon it because someone senior disagreed. Or you can stay steady, listen to the concern, and respond with conviction.   Conviction does not mean being rigid or assuming you are right and they are wrong. It does not mean you can’t take feedback.   Conviction means you can explain your judgment clearly, hold the tradeoff, and adjust when there is better information.   That is what executives do.   They expect their ideas to be pressure-tested. They do not interpret every hard question as a personal attack. They understand that in senior rooms, challenge is part of how decisions get better.   Here are a few ways to respond: “I agree that’s a real risk. The reason I still recommend this path is…” “That’s a valid concern. My judgment is that the risk of waiting is higher than the risk of moving forward.” “I’m open to adjusting the approach while keeping the main goal.” “I would still recommend we move forward, but I would add one checkpoint before the final rollout.”   Notice what is happening in these responses.   You are acknowledging the concern and bringing the conversation back to your judgment. Right or wrong, that is what senior leaders want to see. Not perfection. Judgment.   Confidence Under Pressure is a Skill When I look back at the difference between how I handled pushback earlier in my career and how I handled it as a VP, the biggest shift was not that I suddenly became fearless.   The shift was that I no longer treated pressure as proof that I was failing.   I treated it as part of the job. That changed how I showed up.   I could stay grounded enough to think, ask better questions, answer more clearly, and say “I don’t know yet” without losing credibility. I could hold a recommendation without making it about my ego.   That is what confidence under pressure really looks like. It is the ability to stay steady when the room gets tense and help everyone else think more clearly.

Your Next Steps The next time you get challenged in a meeting, do not rush to fill the space. Pause. Clarify the concern. Answer the question directly.   And if you do not know, say that clearly and explain what you will do next.   You do not need to prove you belong in the room by having all the answers. You need to show that when the stakes are high, you can stay steady enough to lead.

The 10-80-10 Delegation Method

 

That’s how you stay in control without becoming the bottleneck.

The 10-80-10 Delegation Method The First 10%: Set the Direction Before Work Begins This is where a lot of delegation breaks.   Leaders think they are delegating because they assign the task. But handing off a task is not the same as transferring context.   If you say, “Can you take this?” and then disappear, you should not be surprised when the work comes back in a different direction than you expected.   Delegation fails when you hand off tasks without transferring context, then blame people for not reading your mind.   The first 10% is where you slow down enough to make the work clear before it begins.   This is where you define the outcome, explain why it matters, clarify the audience, name the tradeoffs, and set the decision boundaries.   Instead of saying: “Can you put together the deck?”   You might say: “We need this deck to help the leadership team decide whether to invest in this initiative next quarter. The goal is not to give them every detail. The goal is to make the tradeoff clear. I want you to show the business case, the risks, and your recommendation. Before you build the full deck, come back with the storyline and the key decision we need them to make.”   That is a very different handoff.   Now the person knows what they are solving for. They know what good looks like. They know where they have ownership and where they need input.   A strong first 10% should answer five questions: What outcome are we trying to create? Who is the audience or decision-maker? What does good look like? What constraints or tradeoffs should they consider? Where do they have decision rights, and where do they need to come back to you?   This is also where you can give examples.   Not to micromanage the exact output, but to calibrate the standard.   For example: “Here’s a deck that landed well with this audience before.” “Here’s the level of detail I’m expecting.” “Here’s what I don’t want this to become.” “Here’s the decision this work needs to support.”   And if the work is complex, don’t rely on a rushed Slack message and hope for the best.   Record a quick Loom walking through the context. Send a voice note explaining the business goal. Share a rough outline. Give them the strategic ingredients before you ask them to cook the meal.   This is the part many leaders skip because they are busy. Then they spend five times longer fixing the work later.   The first 10% is not extra work. It is how you prevent rework.   The Middle 80%: Let Your Team Own the Work This is the hard part for high achievers. Because once the work is in motion, you will see things you would do differently.   Someone will write a sentence you don’t love.   They will make a slide too complicated. They will miss a nuance. They will take longer than you would.   And every instinct in your body will want to jump in and fix it.   But this is the moment that matters. Because the middle 80% is where your team builds judgment.   If you take the work back every time it gets messy, you are not building leverage. You are building dependency.   That was the lesson my employee taught me.   Fixing the work is not the same as developing the person. If you want people to grow, they need feedback, not for you to rescue them.   That does not mean you stay completely out of it. This is where people misunderstand delegation.   You are not throwing the work over the wall and hoping for the best. That is not leadership. You still need checkpoints. But the checkpoints should force better thinking, not create more dependency.   I like to think about the middle 80% in three checkpoints.   Checkpoint 1: The Direction Check Before they go too far, ask them to bring you the outline, storyline, plan, or initial recommendation.   This is where you want to catch direction issues early. Not after they spent two weeks building the wrong thing.   The goal is to confirm they are solving the right problem. This is how you catch the big issues before they become expensive.   Checkpoint 2: The Decision Check The second checkpoint is about tradeoffs.   At this stage, you are not asking, “Did you do the task?” You are asking, “How are you thinking about the work?”   This is where you build judgment.   Ask: “What options did you consider?” “What did you rule out and why?” “What tradeoff are you making?” “Where do you need a decision from me?” “What would you recommend if I were not in the room?”   That last question is especially important.   Because if someone can only move when you tell them what to do, they are not building decision-making capacity.   The middle 80% is where people learn to think like owners. But they only learn that if you ask them to bring opinions, not just updates.   Checkpoint 3: The Risk Check The third checkpoint is about what could derail the work.   This is where you ask: “What could go wrong?” “Who needs to be aligned?” “Where might we get pushback?” “What are we underestimating?” “What would make this fail?”   This is where you help your team think beyond the task and start thinking about execution, influence, and risk.   That is the kind of thinking senior leaders notice. And it gives you visibility into the work without forcing you to become the person doing all the work.   Instead of saying, “Send it to me and I’ll clean it up,” you can say: “Bring me the recommendation and the tradeoffs you considered.” Or “Walk me through how you got there.”   This keeps you close enough to guide the work, without becoming the person who owns every detail.   Because if your team always waits for you to fix, approve, rewrite, or rescue the work, you are not leading through others yet. You are just doing lower-level tasks with an executive salary.   The Final 10%: Review for Judgment, Not Perfection The final 10% is where your leadership still matters. You are not abandoning the work. You are changing the altitude of your involvement.   At this stage, your job is not to rewrite every sentence or rebuild every slide. Your job is to pressure-test the thinking.   This is where you move from editing to elevating.   Editing says: “I would write this differently.”   Elevating says: “The recommendation is buried.” “The risk is not clear enough.” “The business case needs to be sharper.” “The story is too tactical for the room it is going into.”   The first makes your team frustrated. The other makes the team better.   When you review the final 10%, use a simple executive filter: Is the business question clear? Is the recommendation easy to understand? Will this land with the decision-maker? Does this solve the problem?   This is where your experience creates leverage.   You are not there to prove you could have done it better. You are there to make the work sharper, clearer, and more useful. That may still require edits. But the way you respond matters.   If you fix everything yourself, your team learns that your standard exists somewhere inside your head and the only way to reach it is to let you take over.   If you give clear feedback, they learn how to think at a higher level next time. Thats how you empower your people and scale the work, which the proof point senior executive look for when evaluating VPs.   Why This Matters for VP Readiness If every project still depends on your personal involvement, you may be seen as valuable, but not scalable.   At VP level, the surface area is too large for you to personally touch every decision, every project, and every deliverable.   You cannot be the smartest person in every room, the backup plan for every team problem, and the final editor of every important document.   Your value has to come from setting direction, building leaders, creating systems, making decisions, and raising the quality of thinking across the organization. That is the real promotion signal.   And this is why “it’s faster if I do it myself” is such a dangerous trap. It might be faster today.   But if you keep doing that, you are borrowing against your future capacity.   Eventually, the bill comes due. Usually in the form of burnout, team dependency and missed growth opportunities

Your Next Steps The next time you catch yourself thinking, “It’s just faster if I do it myself,” pause. Look at the project and run a quick 10-80-10 audit.   Start with the first 10%.   Before you hand off the work, ask yourself: Have I explained the business outcome? Have I clarified what good looks like? Have I given examples, a walkthrough, or enough context to calibrate the standard?   Then look at the middle 80%.   Ask: Am I letting them own the work, or am I stepping in every time it gets uncomfortable?   Then review the final 10%.   Ask: Am I giving feedback they can use to improve? Or am I training them to wait for me?   That is how you stop being the bottleneck. And that is how you start operating like someone who is ready for bigger scope.

How to Get Promoted When You Switch Jobs

 

Something shifted in the room when I said this: “If your resume says Director and the role says VP, most people will not do the imagination work for you.”   I was teaching a three-hour bonus workshop inside Success Builders called The VP Leap: How to Level Up to VP by Switching Companies, and I could feel the reaction immediately.   Not because it was shocking. Because it explained what so many people had already experienced.   These were smart, ambitious, high-performing leaders. The kind of people who had already led teams, owned big outcomes, influenced across the business, and operated at a level that often exceeded their title. And yet, when they thought about applying externally for VP roles, the same doubt showed up.   “Will they take me seriously if my title still says Director?” “Do I need to take another lateral move first?” “Am I being unrealistic?”   This is the part nobody tells you about senior-level career moves.   More often that you think the problem is not your experience. The issue is whether the market has enough context to understand your potential. And when your current title does not match the role you want next, context matters more than most people realize.   Because if you apply cold to a VP role with a Director title, you are asking a recruiter, hiring manager, or executive to connect a lot of dots in a very short amount of time.   This is why so many talented Directors apply to VP roles, hear nothing, and assume the silence means they aimed too high. So they shrink the goal.   They apply for another Director role. And they tell themselves, “I’ll make the leap next time.”   But that “next time” can quietly become another two, three, or five years.   I see this pattern all the time. And the people who break it usually do one thing differently: They stop waiting for the market to figure them out. They make their value obvious.   The Real Problem With Trying to Make a VP Leap Externally The traditional job search process is built for obvious matches.   Director applying to Director. VP applying to VP. Head of Marketing applying to Head of Marketing.   When the title, scope, and story all line up neatly, the market does not have to work very hard. But when your current title says one thing and your target role says something bigger, the burden of proof changes.   Now you have to make the case. Most people try to make that case by polishing their resume. That makes sense, but it is incomplete.   A better resume can help, but it cannot carry the full weight of a skip-level move. It cannot explain your judgment in a conversation. It cannot show how you think through trade-offs. It cannot build trust with someone who has never met you. And it cannot create access to opportunities that are never posted or are already being discussed quietly behind the scenes.   The real challenge is not just getting your materials ready. The real challenge is helping the right people understand why you are the right bet before your title becomes the filter.   That is the difference between a regular job search and a skip level VP leap.   A regular job search starts with applications. An external VP leap starts with positioning.   And this is not theory. This is the strategy that helped Jessica go from Director to VP in six months.   It helped Shauna go from Director to VP in 90 days. And it helped Jennifer, D.J, Samir and Nick do the same.   Different people. Different companies. Different paths.   But the pattern was the same: once they stopped relying on their current title to tell the whole story, they started creating better opportunities.   Inside the workshop, I taught a simple framework called POLO: Positioning. Offer. List. Outreach.   That is the heart of the strategy.   You need clear positioning so people understand where you fit. You need a strong offer so they understand why you are the right bet. You need a focused list so you are not networking randomly. And you need outreach that opens conversations before the formal hiring process reduces you to a title.   Let me show you how that works.

The POLO Framework In Action 1. Positioning: Know the VP Lane You Are Playing In The first thing we worked on in the workshop was positioning. This is where a lot of ambitious people make the same mistake. They try to stay open to everything because they do not want to close doors.   They say something like: “I’m open to VP Marketing, VP Strategy, Chief of Staff, Product Marketing, Partnerships, or anything where I can make a bigger impact.”   I understand the instinct. Flexibility feels safe. But at the executive level, broad positioning often creates more confusion than opportunity.   If someone cannot quickly understand where you fit, they cannot easily refer you. They cannot introduce you to the right person. They cannot hear about a role and immediately think, “This is exactly who they need.”   Your positioning has to make you stand out for something specific.   That does not mean you are only capable of one thing. It means you are choosing a lane so the market can understand your value.   In the workshop, I had everyone build what I call a VP Thesis. This is not a tagline. It is not a LinkedIn headline.   It is an internal strategy memo that helps you decide what roles to pursue, what opportunities to ignore, and what stories to lead with.   A strong VP Thesis answers a few simple questions: What VP lane are you targeting? What business problem are you best equipped to solve? What proof do you have that you can operate at that level?   Weak positioning sounds like: I’m looking for a VP Marketing role where I can use my background in growth, brand, product marketing, partnerships, and strategy.   There may be nothing wrong with that experience, but the message is too broad. It makes the listener do too much work.   Stronger positioning sounds like: I’m targeting VP Marketing roles where I can own pipeline and revenue outcomes for a B2B SaaS company that needs to improve conversion, efficiency, or expansion.   Your positioning should help people place you. If it does not, it is not working hard enough. 2. Offer: Turn Your Experience Into a Future Impact Pitch Once your positioning is clear, the next step is learning how to talk about your value in a way that resonates at the executive-level. This is where many strong Directors lose momentum.   They finally get in a conversation with a recruiter, senior leader, or potential referral partner, and when the person says, “Tell me about yourself,” they walk through their career history. They explain where they started, what they owned, what team they managed, what projects they led, and how they moved from one role to the next.   It is accurate. It is also usually not what they were asking for.   At the VP level, people are not listening for a full timeline. They are listening for judgment, scope, ownership, and repeatable impact.   They want to know: What problem do you solve? How do you think? Where do you create leverage? Why should I believe your success can translate here? That is why we build a Future Impact Pitch.   The pitch has four parts: Positioning: what you do best in business terms Proof: one story that shows scope, judgment, and outcomes Fit: why your strengths match the company’s current mandate Operating system: how you approach the work in a repeatable way   Here is a simple version: “The through-line in my work is building revenue systems that are measurable, repeatable, and not dependent on heroics. In my last role, we had strong marketing activity, but inconsistent pipeline quality, so I tightened our ICP, rebuilt the handoff with sales, and shifted spend toward the channels that were actually producing revenue. That improved conversion and gave leadership a clearer view of where growth was coming from. For a company trying to scale without wasting budget, that is exactly the kind of problem I know how to solve.”   That is only four sentences, but it does a lot.   It gives the listener a lane. It proves the lane with a real business problem. It shows judgment and decisions, not just activity. And it connects your experience to the kind of impact the company likely needs next.   This is the part people underestimate.   When you are trying to move from Director to VP, your story cannot just be a record of what you have done. It has to help people see what you can be trusted to own next. That is a very different conversation. 3. List: Strategic Networking That Opens Doors The list is the least glamorous part of the process, but it is an important one. Once you know your positioning and pitch, go to LinkedIn and build a list.   A company list: the companies you would want to work for, and you are uniquely positioned to help. And a people list: The people inside those companies who might hire you.   The company list should include organizations where your background makes strategic sense. If your strength is building scalable go-to-market systems, look for companies where growth is getting messy and the business needs more structure.   If your strength is operational transformation, look for companies dealing with complexity, inefficiency, or integration.   The people list should include leaders inside those companies who would be the ones hiring you. This list is your access to the hidden job market.   This matters because VP opportunities often do not work the way individual contributor or mid-level manager roles work.   By the time a VP role is posted, the company may already have a short list. Someone may have been referred.   A trusted leader may have already made an introduction.   If your entire strategy is “I’ll wait for the perfect posting and apply,” you are showing up late to a conversation that may have started months earlier.   That is why the external VP leap is not just a resume strategy. It is a positioning and access strategy. And this list is how you get access in advance. 4. Outreach: Create Conversations Before You Need the Job This is where the strategy becomes powerful. Most people only network when they need something, which is exactly why the outreach feels awkward.   They reach out and say some version of, “I’m looking for my next opportunity. Do you know of any openings?” The problem is not that the message is rude. It is that it asks too much, too soon.   If someone does not know you, they have very little reason to put their reputation on the line. And if they do not have an opening, the conversation ends before it starts.   Strategic outreach makes the first step smaller.   You are not asking them to solve your job search. You are opening a conversation around something relevant: their career path, a topic they have spoken about, a challenge you are studying, or a transition they have made that connects to your own goals.   A weak message sounds like this: “Hi Sarah, I’m exploring my next career move and would love to pick your brain about your leadership journey. Are you open to a call?”   A stronger message sounds like this: “Hi Sarah, I listened to your interview on leading through a turnaround, especially the part about resetting priorities without burning out the team. I’ve run into a similar challenge as I’ve taken on bigger scope, and I’d love to ask you 2–3 questions about how you made that shift. Would you be open to a quick 20-minute conversation in the next couple of weeks?”   That message works because it gives Sarah a reason to respond. It is specific. It is human. It shows you did your homework.   And it does not make her responsible for your job search five seconds after meeting you.   Then, if the conversation goes well, you can share what you are exploring. You can explain the kind of role you are targeting. You can make it easy for the other person to connect the dots between your experience and a possible opportunity.   This is how people begin to experience you before they ever lay eyes on your resume. And when an opportunity comes up, you are no longer a cold resume in a pile. You are a person they already understand.   That is the real advantage.

Your Next Steps Your title matters. I am not going to pretend it does not.   If you are a Director applying for VP roles, some people will overlook you. Some recruiters will filter you out. Some companies will decide they want someone who has already held the title. That is real.   But it is not the whole story.   Your current title is one data point. It is not your entire business case.   The mistake is letting that title decide the size of your next move before you have even made the case. If you are not ready for VP, close the gaps. Build the scope. Get the experience. Strengthen the proof.   But if you are ready, or close enough that the right role would stretch you in the right direction, do not assume a lateral move is your only option.   Follow the POLO framework. It generated dozens of VP promotions, including my own.