Kellblog

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Emboldened by this seeming endorsement, I dashed off what turned into a lengthy email on interviewing and recruiting, a topic about which I am passionate not because I think I am good it, but because I think I am not. Thoughts on The Recruiting Process. To line of business, IT, or both? Ask a seller to role-play a sales call.

Sales Recruiting 110

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 110

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

When a company hires an executive, the business hires the executive’s network. The better the management hires for a business, the greater candidates' interest to work for a company. The management team at the time of the sale to Google collaborated for 5 years without turnover.

Sales Hiring 190

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Branding 190

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. I don’t know anything about sales.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 278

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

Over the last decade or so, I’ve compiled a metrics sheet to summarise a SaaS business. While no living document like this is ever perfect, this is currently the best board-level summary of the overall health of a business I have found. This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics.

Metrics 250

Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount 250

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

It’s the most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales … Not Right Now. No one needs another piece of business software. Every business is mostly running OK already with its tech stack, and it’s unlikely your little app, alone, is going to change the revenue/profits course of any customer. I Don’t Have Budget.

Sales Recruiting 306

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Software Review 306

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

They used the competitive advantage of recruiting out of the Midwest, where they knew the markets and the people better. As a manager, you have to do things differently. But if you know what success looks like in sales, support, engineering, etc., Half of sales and marketing resources might not exist in 24 months.

Sales Recruiting 286

Sales Recruiting AI Search B2B Sales Hiring 286

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. Find out how you can build these same tools for your business at outgrow.co/saas. Jason Lemkin: This term founder-led sales is maybe overused these days, but it is true.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

It wasn’t the case 20 or even 10 years ago, where the business models of the internet were more focused on eCommerce, marketplaces, or even advertising. The last kind of constituent here is investors and business owners. And basically SaaS revenue models is just magical for investors and for businesses. MRR, obviously.

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

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. Higher than he imagined in terms of the founder quality bar and, the stage of the business, and growth and efficiency metrics. On the sales side, people hired way too much.

Sales Hiring 294

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 294

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 9, 2013

One number investors use to benchmark SaaS startups across sectors and industries is sales efficiency. There are a handful of variants of this metric, sometimes called the magic number, but ultimately they all aim to provide some sense of the incremental revenue returned by sales and marketing investment. The raw data is here.

Benchmarks 160

Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 160

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. Starting a new sales team is not unlike doing improv.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

How do you diagnose and solve churn? She was hired because they saw a bit of softening in new business growth, and she came to help diagnose what was going on and help scale the business. Key Takeaways Creating Sales Acceleration at Lattice There are a few takeaways from Dini’s time at Lattice.

Scale 268

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 268

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2019

SurveyMonkey CMO Leela Srinivasan will outline seven tips for driving business impact through customer feedback. Expect real-world examples from businesses that are listening and acting on a daily basis. I actually worked in sales for five and a half years and that’s probably why I have tended to gravitate to B2B marketing.

Sales Recruiting 227

Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 227

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Co-founder and CEO at Greenhouse, Daniel Chait, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Greenhouse, a successful recruiting software company at $200M in ARR today. The problem is if you’re in business for any amount of time, the product gets a bit older.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 274

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

You can be like, “OK, our culture is we’re going to work super hard, and churn out a lot of features, and sell a lot of product.” It really is more of an inward facing, introspective journey to figure out, why did you come together as a founding team, and why did you start this business in the first place?

VP of Engineering 286

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 286

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

Resulting in an unprofitable professional services business (and wrecking the market for partner services). And, depending on the initial contract duration, high customer churn [1]. churn of 25%, and services margins of negative 66% when I started working with them [2]. How about attaining their first business objective?

Consulting 144

Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I started a software company in college to make it easy to update websites called Content Management Software Now, and I had this idea for Pardot, I wanted to make it easy for marketers to run campaigns online and measure their results. We started the business in 2007. We sold the business in 2012. We sold Pardot.

Sales Recruiting 198

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 198

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2019

Giraffe is a mobile job matching platform that helps medium skilled workers get access to opportunities and helps businesses to recruit staff faster, and easier, and more affordably than any other way. Businesses have disposable income, consumers have disposable income, and so you can spend money on trying out new stuff.

Scale 219

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 219

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

” And I think by that, he meant that every business process in every industry is going to be automated by software. And this does create that tremendous opportunity for our SaaStr community, to help companies use that software to automate their whole business. And so, a lot of businesses weren’t really ready.

Software Review 247

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 247

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 20, 2022

Strong sales reps are the lifeblood of your business and how you choose to invest in them matters. For frontline sales managers, attributes like competency, quality of work, ease of execution, and length of contribution indicate reps’ overall job success, but you can’t rely on those inputs to tell you if they are personally satisfied.

Sales Recruiting 116

Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 116

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

He currently leads Atrium, makers of sales performance management software to help organizations measure and improve sales performance. Previously, he founded TalentBin, a talent search engine and recruiting CRM that was acquired by Monster Worldwide in 2014. 17:58) The importance of accountability in sales management. (22:32)

Sales Recruiting 103

Sales Recruiting AI Search AI Sales 103

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Your sales team is integral to your business’s success: not only do your salespeople bring in the big deals, but they also represent your company and culture to every new and potential prospect. So why is sales team culture still an afterthought for so many organizations? Be collaborative, not cutthroat.

Sales Hiring 143

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 143

Sales Hacker

APRIL 8, 2024

In the competitive arena of B2B sales, mastering the art of prospecting is key to ensuring a healthy sales pipeline, daily demos booked, and hitting your sales quota. Fortunately for you, we’ve sifted through the clutter and done all the legwork to bring you the top 10 sales prospecting tools. Wiza reviews 4.5/5

Scale 123

Scale Sales Recruiting B2B AI Search 123

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. In my experience both as a salesperson and as a recruiter, it’s primarily been four things: They want the work they’re doing to matter to them. Hiring sales leaders will get harder.

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 53

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

To put it as simple as possible, the health of a SaaS business is mainly determined by two factors: Customer lifetime value (CLTV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC). One could almost say that CAC and CLTV are for a SaaS company what wholesale price and sales price are for a retailer. If CTLV is high, churn can't be that big.

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. How can you capture, qualify and convert the right leads for your business while working within your means? Short on time?

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Sales Hacker

JULY 25, 2022

Here’s the thing about driving a car — and about running a sales org: Bumps in the road are inevitable. One of the best ways to ensure every part of your engine is running smoothly is to build sales performance dashboards for everyone on your team. What is a sales performance dashboard? What is a sales performance dashboard?

Sales Recruiting 116

Sales Recruiting Engineering Revenue Sales Enablement 116

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

Mark Roberge is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the former CRO at Hubspot. Mark Roberge – Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School; Former CRO at Hubspot. What is sales? What is sales? Isn’t sales really around customer value creation? It’s all about churn and retention.

Scale 265

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue VP of Engineering 265

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2019

The SaaS business model has risen to popularity for many reasons – it’s fast-paced, creates residual revenue streams, and well, the multiples are strong. Rajesh is going to walk you through the key elements of winning the long game in SaaS – how to win customers, how to create long-term relationships, and how to avoid churn.

Sales Recruiting 200

Sales Recruiting Construction Scale SaaS 200

User Pilot

JULY 14, 2024

Starting a career as a business intelligence analyst requires understanding the key steps, skills, and experiences needed for success. In this article, we will outline the typical journey for business intelligence analysts, covering educational requirements, entry-level positions, potential advancements, and long-term opportunities.

Artificial Intelligence 98

Artificial Intelligence Business Payments Sales Recruiting 98

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2019

How to Design a Sales Comp Plan to Get You to $100M with Work-Bench, Movable Ink, MongoDB and Concert Finance. This panel will speak tactically to various comp design options as a way for management to determine and promote ideal behavior in their front-line teams. Meghan Gill | VP of Sales Ops @ MongoDB. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Sales Recruiting 150

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 150

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

And so, now’s the time to start thinking about accelerating our business strategies and grabbing the opportunities it brings. When it comes to making your business case, however, try not to overthink it. Des: The goal of this conversation is really to expose ways to think about accelerating investment in your own businesses.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2021

In 2020 I was building my sales team at Livestorm , and at the time we were going through a big hiring boom. Over the course of time, I’ve interviewed and talked to hundreds of sales candidates. Why hiring without bias is essential to your business’ success. Value-based recruitment. Culture fit.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 124

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Sales compensation planning can be a tricky beast to tame — but know that you’re not alone. I asked 12 incredible sales leaders across the SaaS industry to share their biggest challenges with comp planning and how to overcome them. Related: New to sales compensation planning? Top 10 sales compensation challenges.

Compensation 124

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Finance 124

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

374: ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century—and what it was really like…the good, the bad, and most of all, the ugly. This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Annual @ Home. They had to reinvent themselves.

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Cloud 229

Stax

MARCH 18, 2025

Take a traditional business, like a furniture store. This is what SaaS applications call “user churn,” and it can affect their monthly recurring revenue (MRR) , as well as their annual recurring revenue (ARR). Churn rate. It makes most of its revenue from immediate, one-time purchases, like a bedroom set.

Scale 117

Scale Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments 117