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The 5 Characteristics of a Great Sales Leader

SaaStr

Q: What makes a great sales leader? The best sales managers / directors / VPs: Recruit great team members. Sales requires a linear number of hires to grow bookings. So you have to be a great recruiter to scale. But the best sales leaders know where they are #1. Decrease sales cycles.

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Why Founder-Led Sales Breaks Earlier Than You Think

SaaStr

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. But you see growth start to decline in new bookings, that's a sign. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle.

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30+ SaaS CEOs Share The Signs Their First VP of Sales … Just Wasn’t Going to Work Out

SaaStr

What was the first warning sign your VP of Sales wasn't going to work out? A new VP of Sales doesn’t always double sales in 30 days — although it can happen in SMB sales. The old playbook does help, but every great VP of Sales knows they quickly have to evolve it to any new role.

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The Top 10 Mistakes I See In The VP of Sales Hiring Process

SaaStr

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. So many VPs of Sales disagree with me here — at least at first when I make the point. Sales is hard.

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Flat Metrics: The One Clear and Simple Sign its Time to “Top” a VP

SaaStr

You’ll see: Bookings that stop increasing. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. To recruit the team and resources it takes not just to meet the plan this quarter, but the next one and the following quarters as well. But then … that’s it.

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The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with PatientPop SVP of Sales Justin Welsh (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. I was a local sales manager or regional manager.

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6+ Key Signs a VP Can’t Scale Beyond $5m-$10m ARR

SaaStr

Either by yourself, or with a Sales Ops / Marketing Ops / Some Sort of Ops leader under you. Look for dashboards, strong project management, strong pipeline projection after $5m ARR. If you don’t see things getting more organized, that manager can’t scale. Inability to hire great Directors / managers under them.

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