TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

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Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

In this post, we’re featuring our Recruiting Manager, Elizabeth Faddis! Priority projects are focused on enhancing the company’s recruiting strategy, processes, and programs to deliver on current and future talent needs. You recently started your Recruiting Manager role at FastSpring, how are you liking it so far?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Management Technical Review 128

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2021

Q: What are some common blind spots and mistakes startups make when hiring for and building out a sales team? Some of the top blind spots founders and even VPs of Sales make: #1. You hire a sales rep to sell before you can prove you can do it yourself. You hire a VP of Sales to sell before you prove you can do it yourself.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Branding 274

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team. By building operational capacity ahead of revenue, they avoided the common trap of having sales capabilities outstrip the organization’s ability to deliver and support those sales.

Scale 185

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 185

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2021

Just make sure at least 50% of their energy goes into promoting the company, and not just their personal brand. Support and partner with sales. Own brand & brand positioning. Having a CMO that is present, that is visible, is great for recruiting and much more. CMO is a tough job. The half-life is short.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Branding Product Marketing 337

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 299

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold. They have low attrition.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 363

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

The third impact is damage to the employer brand. The management team at the time of the sale to Google collaborated for 5 years without turnover. Regardless, the shared culture and consistency of the team was a strength for the business, and ultimately a competitive advantage in execution time, culture, and employee brand.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Branding 198

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

The companies that create the SVPs you’ll need, especially in Sales and Marketing, are still mostly based in the SF Bay Area. Just in the past few weeks, 3 top, brand-name CMOs I know joined $10m+ ARR start-ups HQ’d in Berlin, in Atlanta, and in Colorado. With SMBs, you can hack it a bit more. are all here.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 349

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

Dig deeper on a lot of titles during recruiting. A "VP of Revenue" often knows nothing about inside sales or building a sales team. A "CRO" often doesn't want to do sales anymore. Corporate Marketers know how to expand your brand. A “VP of Revenue” for a VP of Sales job.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Growth Hacking Product Marketing 325

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep. Move the bottom 10% out and give the best leads to your top performer, and watch sales go up 20%. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave. You should be striving for zero voluntary attrition on your sales team.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 281

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

The toughest part in the end is always recruiting. Recruiting. Over time, that’s recruiting more and more senior folks, so the target changes. You’ll have to be recruiting new ones all the time. That means you are constantly recruiting. Dear SaaStr: How Should I Design My First Sales Rep Compensation Plan?

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Sales Recruiting Scale Compensation Business Model 240

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. Later, once you have a brand, you’ll be competing with Hot Startups nipping at your heals for top VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. Why is my sales team less efficient at $20m ARR than at $2m in ARR? This challenge never ends.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 284

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success. Employees are the brand Every employee at your organization is the brand. How they conduct themselves, engage, market the brand, and set a tone, reflect on the brand.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 261

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. They often melt. I say, you just gotta know the product. Not just with buzzwords.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 291

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. 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. 50% of the job for a VP is recruiting. At least, not until you have a brand. More here.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 313

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

This requires effort from your entire organization, and Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso outlines some changes that you can make to your brand, and your application, interview, and offer process that will help find the talent you are trying to attract and hire. Below is the transcript of Jessica’s session.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 261

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

Every prospect championing a software purchase will be asked by the opponents of the sale and decision-makers : “Who else is using the software?” And the best way to fight the inertia in sales is to equip your champions. A great customer logo slide is like a bank account. Great brands attract other great brands.

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Sales Recruiting Banking Branding Software 247

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. The ones that will benefit from taking a risk on a less-proven team and brand. The sales leader that did well, but their startup still didn’t quite make it. A 50/50 mix is ideal in general for management (half promoted, half hired from outside).

Part-Time VPE 284

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 284

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2024

Once you cross $5m-$10m in ARR, then usually: You have a brand. At least, you have a mini-brand in your niche. And that brand generates leads organically, and fairly low-cost leads. Efficiency goes down in other places (sales efficiency usually, marketing efficiency often). This helps a lot. You have redundancy.

Scale 276

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Branding 276

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Success in sales requires the right skills and a competitive, driven, and personable nature. However, scoring a great sales role takes more than just being confident in your own skills and nature. You have to convince a management team of those things as well. 1) Know whom you’ll be talking to — Sales is all about relationships.

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Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales 89

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2019

Enough with the excuses for not having hired your real VP of Sales, or that VP of Engineering, or whatever. Hire a real recruiter. Hire more sales reps in the areas where they are profitable. But in 2017, brands matter more than ever. Invest in Your Brand and Customer Marketing. Not in April. Not by June.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 325

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Marketing expertise falls into three segments: product marketing, demand generation, and brand marketing. Brand marketers are the third type of marketer who develops the market’s awareness of a company.

Scale 255

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 255

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

They have a good incentive to recruit almost as hard as you do, and network a lot to help you. A true brand name VC on your board or cap table can help attract top VPs and other candidates. Everyone is attracted to brands. They get better at this the longer they work with you. A Few Good Hires / Potential Hires. That can help.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Investment Acquisition 288

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund – sharing go-to-market advice from the top 1% of revenue operators including the 350 executives behind the fund, news, and our viewpoints from working with hundreds of portfolio companies. They put a face to your brand and underscore a commitment to the customer’s success.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring AI Search 112

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2020

You can also totally change your sales team. This isn’t easier, but 9 times out of 10, it sure is easier than finding brand new customers. In a way, this is the same point as #1, almost — except you can recruit even more of the team here. The sales team can call back every single prospect, not just the good ones.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Churn Onboarding 350

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

To have built a brand. To recruit 100 people. To answer these questions, the team must look beyond this today’s one-on-ones and this month’s engineering milestones this quarter’s sales pipeline. And in twelve months? To have raised capital. To have developed a longer term product roadmap.

Scale 257

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Startup 257

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. And when I say pillar, I mean like a product marketing problem, a growth problem, or brand marketing problem. If I’m not doing a lot to build the brand and I’m still getting inbound, then I’m like, wow, okay. The full transcript is here.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 264

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. Nine out of 10 founders and CEOs I connect with are involved in recruiting on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Many of them are learning on the fly and trying to juggle being CEO and Chief People Officer/Lead Recruiter/Brand Evangelist all at once.

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Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. Recruiting is easier, but the things that don’t change are customers don’t care.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 261

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: I can leave my horrible sales job making $240k OTE and be a solopreneur. You can listen to the full podcast here. #1:

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 302

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. Being willing to invest in an internal recruiter or talent manager (or more broadly, an HR person) early on requires pretty big balls a lot of confidence.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

Kellblog

JULY 17, 2022

What does our brand stand for? What promise does our brand make? These are some of the questions that quickly come up when thinking about branding. In general, I think branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Do want to build a brand? Do want to build a brand?

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Branding Startup Software Sales Recruiting 140

Sales Hacker

APRIL 30, 2020

What’s your approach when hiring sales reps? Companies often hire sales reps who have knowledge of, or even a passion for, the brand’s product or industry — which is great because it gives you a team of “walking brochures” who can spout off all the benefits of your product. The best training for new sales hires.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Underperforming Technical Team 118

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. She manages a huge global team. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

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Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 259