SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

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.

Sales Recruiting 331

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 331

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2020

The most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales, which will drive you nuts at first, is … 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.

Sales Recruiting 343

Sales Recruiting Sales SaaS Software 343

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

So you wanna build a channel sales program: Don’t Copy HubSpot! All these companies are great companies with great channel sales programs. . Any channel sales program goes through an evolution. There are many reasons to start a channel sales program. Everything is harder with a channel sales program.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales Technical Support Onboarding 293

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, continues a mini-series on founder-led sales with Colin Zima, founder and CEO of Omni. Omni is trying to build the next-generation business intelligence (BI) platform. They’d contact people they knew well and demand they use the product.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media Sales 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Ah the VP of Sales. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. The second post is a script for you to use (and modify as you see fit) – 10 Great Questions to Ask a VP Sales Candidate. Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales. The toughest hire. Such a high failure rate.

Sales Hiring 364

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 364

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. 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. To stick with founder-led sales longer than most folks do, i.e. past $1.5m-$2m ARR or so.

Sales Hiring 321

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 321

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

Sales Recruiting 248

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 248

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

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.

Sales Recruiting 269

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 269

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Finding and recruiting top talent is consistently ranked as one of the biggest challenges for growing SaaS companies. SaaStr Annual attracts thousands of high-quality SaaS professionals across functions like engineering, product, marketing, sales, and customer success. Meet and Find Your Next VP / CXO!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

The other day I saw a VP of Sales flame out and resign with no notice from a SaaS company doing $10m ARR growing quickly. So I thought it might be helpful to brush off the topic of alignment between Sales and Marketing by updating a classic post on the topic. The original version here on Lattice Engines’ Sales and Marketing Hub.

Sales Recruiting 306

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 306

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2022

We’ve talked a ton about How to Hire a Great VP of Sales on SaaStr, but I wanted to highlight a few VP of Sales “personas” that I rarely, if ever, see work out. Because again and again, many of your will hire this VP of Sales. Here are the types of VP of Sales that just never work out. Sales is hard.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2022

Having learned from thousands of customers and prospects, Sarah Lash, Envoy’s head of enterprise sales, will talk about what it takes to guide and scale enterprise sales programs during an uncertain future. In my first six months at Envoy , I grew the sales team from six to 17. Combine Strategies To Drive Sales.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 305

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What’s the Best Way to Get Ahead in SaaS Sales? It is important to decide which of 3 life tracks you want to be on: Super-successful sales rep / individual contributor. Successful sales manager. I.e., become a VP of Sales someday. Leverage “sales” to become a founder, business owner , etc.

Sales Recruiting 258

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SMB 258

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Brendon Cassidy, my VP of Sales wrote a version of this piece a while back. I though an updated version of this would be good for founders thinking about hiring a VP of Sales … VPs of Sales themselves … and VPs-to-be to read — Jason, ed. … 10 Rules to Being a VP of Sales in a Startup.

Sales Hiring 294

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 294

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. This shift allows business to reallocate human resources to more complex and strategic roles, or eliminate those positions entirely.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

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

APRIL 5, 2020

If we tally the reductions by category, travel, retail, fitness, real estate, transportation, and recruiting constitute the top 6 categories. Aside from recruiting, these are all consumer discretionary spend categories. ClassPass, one of the fitness startups to reduce headcount, reported a 95% drop in sales in 10 days.

Sales Recruiting 357

Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount Sales Hiring 357

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2021

But here’s what happens: They don’t know how to recruit an A+ sales team. Maybe they recruited a few BDRs to work with them in marketing, but that’s not the same. Recruiting 4, 5, 20, 50 great AEs is not the same at all. Even if they’ve owned a revenue commit — they’ve never owned a true sales number. Not entirely.

Sales Recruiting 312

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Growth Marketing 312

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

A Philadelphia native, Colin started his professional career as a Business Development Representative (BDR) 14 years ago and worked his way up to his current role as CRO. Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 179

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 179

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.

Scale 285

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 285

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2022

Scaling your sales team can be one of the hardest things to do in SaaS. What’s the best way to help your sales team navigate today’s changing markets and changing priorities? And what’s the right time to fill crucial sales leadership roles? 1 Buyers Expect Personalization in Outbound Sales. So now what?

Scale 269

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 269

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

Continuous Recruiting? You are busy being VP of 4 different functions yourself. Great cultures will create low-turn-over environments — and ones that will self-perpetuate and recruit others to join. Great cultures will create low-turn-over environments — and ones that will self-perpetuate and recruit others to join.

Sales Recruiting 286

Sales Recruiting Branding Investment Sales 286

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2021

Still, an overall deep-dive on lessons learned the second and third time around: Not Easier : Recruiting – Not Easier. You might think after (goodness) the best part of 20 years of working in tech, 18 as an executive or CEO, and 13 as a founder … I’d be pretty good at recruiting at this point. I’m not.

Sales Recruiting 361

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 361

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Gartner: Business Software Spend Still Forecast to Rise 11.3% SaaStr 602: Secrets To Combining PLG and Enterprise Sales with Grammarly CEO Brad Hoover. ?. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Billion in ARR.

Sales Recruiting 294

Sales Recruiting CTO Compensation Software Review 294

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Dedicated Slack Channel For Every Metric From the early days at Secureframe, they have had a dedicated Slack channel for every metric: every net new sale, every expansion, every churn, and every expense. Another thing Secureframe thinks about is making sure everyone understands the business equation. Why do they do this?

Sales Recruiting 292

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 292

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Conversations about the state of the SaaS market in 2022 are everywhere, and it can seem overwhelming for entrepreneurs and business leaders to make sense of everything. However, don’t this doesn’t mean that your sales teams shouldn’t bring in more revenue –– quite the opposite.

Sales Recruiting 257

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 257

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. Is a CRO right for you?

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 293

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 226

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 226

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022

Recent unicorns like Stripe and Canva have stolen the headlines, but a wide range of successful PLG businesses all over the globe have arisen. Going from sales-led to PLG is doable, but it is not easy. Going from sales-led to PLG is doable, but it is not easy. Sales-led organizations struggle to adapt to a PLG mindset.”.

Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Recruiting Business Pricing Churn 278

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

I really appreciate you coming to talk about how to attract, hire, and build a more diverse sales team in your organization. So I’ve been building top-producing sales teams for a really, really long time. So over the years, I’ve watched many sales leaders go out and say, “Brian’s my top producer.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 258

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. Lead generation tools do change, but the basic motions of sales and marketing haven’t changed much.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 278

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.

Merchant Services 253

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 253

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2020

By tomorrow, the bank will face insolvency, even though it was business as usual at the bank this morning. You’ll have been trained to answer questions in a very particular way: each answer will tie back to the main storyline of the business. What is the narrative of your business? Here are some from our portfolio.

Sales Recruiting 347

Sales Recruiting Banking Engineering Customer Support 347

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

DECEMBER 16, 2023

You really need a great CTO, not just a good business team. You have to love, or at least commit to, recruiting constantly. If you’re not willing to constantly recruit cross-functionality … you’ll never attract the talent. But the founders and CEOs need to attract even more types of managers, earlier, in SaaS.

Part-Time VPE 288

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 288