SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2025

So at SaaStr Annual, Dave Kellogg did a great deep dive on “5 Things Every B2B CEO Needs to Know about Marketing” In the Age of AI it’s even more true today, so I wanted to update our SaaStr take-aways from the deep dive. Better to hire for your specific needs and stage.

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Marketing Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 205

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

A VP of Sales and Success A VP of Sales and Marketing A VP of Sales and Anything Else. Is usually not really a VP of Sales. Sales managers back when I never managed sales. For signs the prospective hire just won’t work out, no matter how strong they might look on paper.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 258

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Is The Optimal Structure of an Initial SaaS B2B Sales Team? Where, roughly speaking, each sales rep brings in at least 4x-5x the total compensation they take out. Where you burn a ton of cash is “buying” sales. Shoving sales reps into segments where you don’t have enough leads / enough demand.

Sales Hiring 276

Sales Hiring Scale B2B Sales 276

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2024

Hiring and Interviewing Tips: Jason emphasizes the importance of interviewing at least 30 candidates for a role and consulting with an expert in the field to interview the final candidate. Product-Led Growth (PLG) vs. Enterprise Sales: Jason discusses the evolution of PLG, noting that it’s essentially freemium with better analytics.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Scale Interviewing 261

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2024

Probably the biggest challenge in vertical SaaS I see is scaling the sales team. It’s pretty easy to hire SaaS sales execs to sell … a SaaS sales product. But who do you hire to sell a very complex piece of vertical software? So if you hire reps for standard B2B companies, they often literally close nothing.

Sales Hiring 319

Sales Hiring Scale Sales SaaS 319

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2024

Dear SaaStr: If you were hiring a head of sales for a high-priced, niche B2B SaaS product, would you focus on general B2B SaaS sales experience or on market/customer knowledge, assuming it will be very difficult to find a candidate with both? You’ll be very tempted to hire someone with a seemingly magical rolodex.

Sales Hiring 315

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS B2B 315

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2023

As the past few years have demonstrated, it’s wise to expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to hiring. In particular, hiring for your sales team is critical in an uncertain economic outlook. Additionally, sales professionals looking for a new role should choose their next company wisely.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Compensation 244

Predictable Revenue

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Even in B2B enterprises, that buyer is a person and we shouldn't forget that. The post The Goldilocks Rule: Making Your First Sales Hire appeared first on Predictable Revenue. Ari Levine has learned to approach everything from the position of the consumer.

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Sales Hiring Sales B2B Enterprise 165

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

The event is strategically designed to facilitate 1000s of meaningful connections through 1000+ on-site “Who Do You Want To Meet” dedicated 1-on-1s for B2B founders and execs (no service providers, sorry!) VIP Networking app for B2B founders and execs attending (no service providers, sorry!)

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2024

If you’ve read SaaStr or have been around for the last decade, you might be familiar with some of the repeated GTM mistakes founders tend to make, but the world of hiring, people, scaling, and workplace expectations are significantly different today than they were before March 2020. Don’t make the hire. They weren’t getting any leads.

Sales Hiring 309

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search AI 309

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

Top Posts: #1: Its 2025 And Even Salesforces Sales Team is Kind of Phoning It In (At Least Some Of It) #2: The #1 Reason SaaS Companies Stall Out at $15m-$20m ARR #3: AI is the Best Thing to Ever Happen to SaaS. Its Unlocking Even More Budget #4: Whats Really Going in Venture Today: Deals Are Down, But Big AI Dollars Are Up.

AI 159

AI Sales Hiring Scale B2B 159

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2019

We’ve learn a lot over the years and really we only want to hire folks that know and believe in SaaStr. And ideally, have a mix of B2C and B2B experience. is a really sort of a media/community company, but our consumers and customers are all B2B/SaaS). The post What We Are Hiring for at Team SaaStr! So SaaStr Inc.

Sales Hiring 35

Sales Hiring Scale Social Media B2C 35

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Cloudinary VP of Developer Experience Sanjay Sarathy shares his journey to more than $100M and the lessons he learned along the way for building a PLG motion and an Enterprise sales motion. They didn’t initially envision being a large Enterprise sales organization. Let’s first start with how Cloudinary came to be.

Scale 315

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 315

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2023

B2B founders and sales agents feel pressured to keep up with the rapidly evolving market. SaaS companies must implement flexible and innovative sales strategies that can weather the future. The state of B2B sales in 2023 Before creating a dynamic strategy, it is essential to understand the current state of B2B sales.

Innovation 246

Innovation Sales Hiring B2B Strategy 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2024

1: Don’t hire a VP (or anyone in the early days) that you aren’t 95% sure is great. Founders between a million and $250M are talking about lowering the bar for hiring because they aren’t sure if the person is great or they’re trying to fill a gap. A great Head of Sales will move the needle. You can’t do that.

Sales Hiring 309

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Venture Capital Fractional VPE 309

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2023

and 28% from Europe/EMEA So as you can see, the leaders in B2B SaaS are very international. ARR is material and enough to fund the hire and small office. 42% start with a GM of EMEA/Europe, But the Majority Start with a VP of Sales or Marketing for EMEA/Europe. .” #2. Slow it down and make the right hire.

Sales Hiring 353

Sales Hiring Revenue SaaS Scale 353

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What do you look for when hiring a VP of Product for a B2B SaaS? In particular, the dilemma I’m facing is hiring between a SaaS expert or a target market expert. First, I’d go for a SaaS expert over a domain/target market expert in just about any senior hire — VP Product, VP Sales, VP Marketing.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring B2C B2B Engineering 322

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2023

Dear SaaStr: I’m Pretty Hands Off on the Sales Team. What Will I Learn Getting More Involved in Sales? You may think you know this intuitively, but you don’t: You may think sales organizations magically create revenue. You may not understand how critical it is to optimize a sales organization.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Scale Sales B2B 269

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. It just takes that long in SaaS and B2B, nine times out of ten. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2.

Sales Hiring 315

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 315

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. . #1: He had a friend help him hire an email marketer to send ticket emails to the events. There’s no choice. The latter has.

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 305

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2020

I recently put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn on folks’ top tip to take friction out of their sales processes. “Presumptive close in a transactional sale. “At “Help people buy how they want to buy and be as transparent as you can with pricing ” – Ken Edwards, Sales leader, Uberflip.

Sales Hiring 344

Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development Technical Review 344

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

Q: What are the common mistakes in B2B sales in the early-ish days? The list could be endless, and it can vary a lot based on type of customer, type of sale, etc. The list could be endless, and it can vary a lot based on type of customer, type of sale, etc. No prospect enjoys going through a sales process for fun.

Scale 282

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 282

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

From a venture capital perspective, there’s now a premium on driving efficient growth rather than growth at any cost. . “Sales and marketing alignment is a terrific place to figure out and improve efficient growth.” . From the get-go, ensure alignment between sales and marketing teams on goals and anticipated outcomes.

Scale 327

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Marketing 327

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2024

It’s less jack-of-all-trade hires, so the knowledge and questions they’ll ask will look a lot different. Either way, ensure the demand gen team sits down with sales and decides which accounts to go after. Either way, ensure the demand gen team sits down with sales and decides which accounts to go after.

Sales Hiring 303

Sales Hiring Scale SMB compliance 303

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

Hiring for Customer Success When Braze was looking for their first customer success hires, you couldn’t find a CSM with seven years of experience in software because those people didn’t exist yet. Every incremental hire with a small team matters, so it’s worth being clear on what you want.

Scale 294

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 294

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2023

This week we have a special 2 guest episode, with the best hiring guru’s in the game, Chuck Brotman & David Teichner. Chuck is the co-founder of Blueprint Expansion , a GTM roles recruiting firm that has helped over 50 VC-backed companies make amazing Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success hires.

Sales Hiring 127

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing SMB 127

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. There was so much budget flowing into B2B that it seemed like there could be 1,000 unicorns, even if 800 of those turned out to be junk.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 304

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2024

Canva Head of Sales and Success for EMEA, Jorge Bestard, and Head of Strategic Sales for EMEA, Daniela Nyarko, share Canva’s journey from PLG to Enterprise, strategies to navigate the PLG trap, and why it’s so attractive. You get traction in the market and raise a round to build a marketing and sales team.

Scale 286

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 286

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2024

Which is what a lot of SaaS and B2B AI is really about. They are still hiring and growing expense in all areas, from Sales and Marketing to Product to G&A. Sales & Marketing expense is up 9.8% — but that’s on 22% revenue growth. Automating away human-driven processes.

Scale 302

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring AI 302

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

They built their sales funnel in the same fashion to empower customers with autonomous product discovery and conversions. Smaller organizations don’t typically respond to the long sales cycle or constant conversations and negotiations that an enterprise needs. However, this does not mean that you should abandon sales teams.

SMB 244

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Sales execs can screw up so many things and still close a lot if they just get 1 thing right If they just are a true subject matter expert in the product they sell Yet so many aren't — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? jasonlk) January 26, 2024 I remember my first embarrassing sales meeting. But not to do all the work for sales.

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring B2B Engineering Enterprise 287

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2023

It would be so great if we could all outsource sales, sales development, sales operations, and more. And a few great insights from others in the comments : “IMO, if you’re going to hire and outsourced BDR team, they either need to 1. It really would be great. Specialize within your market Or 2.

Outsourcing Services 312

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Development Team Review Sales Hiring 312

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

So how feasible do you think that works for a typical B2B SaaS business that probably our user-base is not too knowledgeable about [inaudible] on the internet for something specific in their day-to-day use case? But I almost never see mediocre outsource SEO really work for B2B. That’s a great example. This always works.

Scale 296

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 296

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Lemkin expresses concern about the changing work ethic and loyalty of sales and marketing professionals, observing a trend of multiple job-holding and lack of commitment. Lemkin acknowledges the challenge of meeting people’s high expectations and the existential nature of finding solutions to these hiring and motivation issues.

Sales Hiring 296

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 296

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2021

But here’s my list of things I don’t think you should do, almost always, in SaaS/B2B: Committing for less than 24 months to get to product-market fit. Better to pay 50% more for a great hire that will do 500% more. More here: At About $2m in ARR, Every Great Hire Will Be Accretive. You will always be involved in sales.

Sales Hiring 296

Sales Hiring Interviewing B2B Product Marketing 296

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2024

So there’s one clear source of unhappiness in SaaS hiring. 1000+ Unicorns were born, flooded with capital, sales efficiency didn’t matter, and buyers were buying SaaS products at a rate we hadn’t seen before. More are in AI or Vertical SaaS or Security than some traditional parts of B2B, but they are still there.

Sales Hiring 302

Sales Hiring SaaS Startup AI 302

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Hiring a global team to achieve the vision What do you do when your company’s location limits your access to talent? You spread your hiring net and draw in as much talent as possible. Their first step to achieving this was hiring a sales leader to build a sales team.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 245