SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2024

Robbie O’Connor, the GM EMEA at Notion and the first European hire at Asana and Dropbox takes the stage at SaaStr Europa to talk about the building blocks required to scale GTM teams and operations. Each of these companies had very different stories and helped shape the advice you’re about to read on scaling teams.

Scale 314

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Innovation 314

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2019

If you have a good sales team, they are leaving nothing on the table. If they aren’t — you need a new VP of Sales). Then January 2 will come, and the team will be exhausted, at least the managers will be. Whatever great work the sales team did in 2017 will be 100% behind them on Jan 2. Just harder.

Scale 277

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Churn 277

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2023

On a sales front, how do you evolve past founder-led sales, or together with it, so that you can scale your organization? Founder-led sales can be an immense strength and rapidly become a limiting factor. PST, Laura Connell, Partner at Atomico, shares how to scale beyond founder-led sales on your path to Series B.

Scale 283

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 283

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

Lesson #1: If You Aren’t Making Mistakes, You Aren’t In A Startup If you do things that always work and maintain the status quo, you’re likely at a major company like Microsoft. They hired their first VP of Sales with a wonderful pedigree and experience at some of the hottest startups. Startups experiment and make mistakes.

Sales Recruiting 298

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 298

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2022

This famous quote from self-help author Robert Collier applies to every sales organization because excellent results come through repeatable activities, not one-off wins. Alice Katwan , SVP at Twilio , discusses how you can build a high-retention sales team while being remote. Implement systems to attract great talent.

Sales Hiring 277

Sales Hiring Scale Retention Sales 277

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. For the first time in my life, I was in charge of vetting and hiring new team members at scale. This was a big challenge for me because I am very passionate about hiring without bias. First impressions still count.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 125

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. We listened to our employees.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 245

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2022

What are some of the foundational ways sales leaders can think about building their sales teams as their company continues to expand and grow? There’s no shortage of ways to tackle this challenge, but one thing is clear: build sales teams thoughtfully and intentionally. Principle #1: Ownership is Key.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

A few ideas on how to help the sales team make this your best year so far: Hire dedicated sales / revenue ops. Many of you will have little to no dedicated help in sales operations , even up to $10m ARR or beyond. If that’s you, or your VP of Sales, or even your VP of Marketing … it can sort of work for a while.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 246

Sales Hacker

JUNE 10, 2021

It’s that sales representatives are one of the toughest positions to hire for. The demand for sales reps is one of the highest of any job. Sales courses are largely absent from college curricula. Most sales managers will tell you that they’re looking above all for the right attitude. Leadership.

Sales Hiring 128

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 128

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

They focused on building a payment platform that empowers international talent and independent contractors to get paid on time in a compliant way while also ensuring that companies can hire international talent and make payments efficiently. Interview personally and define hiring values to build your team.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 278

Predictable Revenue

OCTOBER 10, 2019

We provide the framework and break down the process, fast-growing company Samsara used to hire 200 new sales reps in a year. Find out how Samsara maintains company culture and provides mentorship for new reps while rapidly growing their team.

Sales Hiring 127

Sales Hiring Company Culture Sales Revenue 127

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2024

1: Spend more time on hiring than you likely want to. When running a company, you have so many things on your plate, which can be difficult to prioritize. While we all know it’s important to spend time hiring the best people as a CEO, actually doing it when your inbox is full and you’re talking to customers is much harder.

Scale 264

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Company Culture 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Jameson Yung, SVP of Sales at Gong, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and previous CRO at Brex, share five tactical ways to get back to growing and hitting revenue targets. When everyone went remote, they worked remotely from the beach while their companies were growing. If you look at the number of Sales vs. Marketing.

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 287

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

As it grows, it changes significantly, especially as you move from hiring people who can do everything to hiring more specialized roles. Job Stopped Participating in Every Interview Early On Many founders still interview everyone when their company is at 200 or 300 people. Then, building a welcoming culture becomes very easy.

Scale 264

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

“The hardest part of closing any deal is finding it,” says Lars Nilsson, VP of Global Sales Development at Snowflake. Over his 35+ year career, Nilsson has managed 100+ Sales Development Representatives (SDR) across four continents, six countries, and ten cities. Jumpstart pipeline generation with your first five revenue hires.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Development Technical Review Management 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

As you scale up a business, you’ll see an increase in demand for product, followed by an inevitable increase in sales. As a result, you’ll have to hire more people, reform your processes, and tailor your systems to accommodate the new demand—all without breaking anything. . 5 ways to scale your SaaS and sales team.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 278

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2021

Managing the Quote-to-Cash process can be complex, since it covers the entire sales cycle, software licensing fulfillment, and revenue recognition, and it’s typically spread across many applications. That’s why this is the single most critical process that should be integrated and automated in any growing company. Customer 360.

Sales Hiring 325

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Marketplace as a Service 325

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

I walk them through this when I hire them. Mistake: On the other hand… not betting on the team that got me there “Everything will be fine once we get a new head of [X]” -every startup CEO ever (also me, frequently) When you launch a company, the initial team is usually whoever you can get. The execs that we hired too quickly moved on.

Sales Hiring 331

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success Scaling 331

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 328

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Marketing 328

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2022

The role of a VP is to own everything required to hit the goals for a functional area – Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Finance, or Customer Success. If not, you aren’t hiring a real VP. You’ll end up needing to hire someone else, probably much sooner than you planned. This includes: Recruiting the team.

Sales Recruiting 299

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Finance Engineering 299

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2022

The company needed to hire more leadership roles and middle management to keep up. Says Khusid, “It’s not only about bringing in the right people, it’s also about onboarding them into the company and building processes that support the scale of the organization.” Focus on the product and build the best value you can.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Company Culture B2C 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. It’s happened to me, and I think for whatever my faults, I have a pretty high EQ and am a half-decent manager. In my first start-up, there was one engineer we had no choice about. Everyone hated him.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 290

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.

Sales Recruiting 287

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 287

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2022

It’s the never-ending stereotype –– marketing and sales are eternal “frenemies.” However, this push-and-pull doesn’t have to be part of your organization as long as you hire and empower the right leadership. Tip One: Don’t Believe the Hype As You’re Hiring. It all starts with you as the leader of the company.

Leadership 244

Leadership Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale 244

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team. She was my first VP of Sales. Brendan Cassidy, second VP of Sales at EchoSign.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 195

Sales Hacker

APRIL 25, 2019

Early in my career, I saw firsthand how a $20M funded company went from startup to NASDAQ IPO to being delisted in the span of three years due to frivolous spending (but that’s a story for another day). My cost-conscious lens (plus our proven outbound sales program) has served my company, Leadium, well. Software costs.

Outsourcing Services 99

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 99

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success. Hire a leader who will not only agree with you but someone you can disagree with in a respectful and productive way. Meet with people you can learn from and share ideas, even if it doesn’t convert into a hire.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 264

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 27, 2014

The chart above compares the contribution of two hypothetical inside sales people with $400,000 quotas to an early-stage startup’s finances. In this case, contribution is the 18 month revenue of sold customers tallied cumulatively minus the salary costs of $100k annualized of the sales person.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Customer Lifetime Value Company Culture 100

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2023

We’ll explore key aspects such as building customer relationships based on trust and honest feedback, defining company culture amid rapid growth, and hiring strategies that prioritize team chemistry over expertise. Focusing on team chemistry while hiring people outside your field is significant.

Scale 246

Scale Artificial Intelligence Technical Review Software Review 246

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. I should have hired someone in some role like six months ago, a year ago.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 264

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2023

Take the time to create onboarding documents showcasing your company values and the expected behaviors leaders must align with to uphold those values. Things don’t always get better by hiring someone new. It’s easier to swing and miss when hiring someone new vs. betting on the people you already have.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing Customer Success 259

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

MAY 14, 2020

“Hire people with same values, always tell the truth and consistently put your own personal needs after theirs. “ Hire the right people and trust they do the right thing + give proper space for mental health discussions openly by setting the example yourself” – Pim de Witte, CEO, Medal.tv.

Sales Hiring 321

Sales Hiring Communication SaaS Company Culture 321

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2020

No one can manage the roadmap. Lose your VP of Sales? Who’s going to manage all those SDRs and AEs … oy. Your need a VP of Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering and Customer Success by this stage just to scale. Encourage them to hire someone even better than they are, or at least were, adjusted for time.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Scale Management Scaling 259

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2023

Obsess how you bring on talent Hiring processes are loose and inconsistent in even the biggest businesses. As a $20M business, you likely can’t afford an HR chief, making your hiring standards and disciplines even more important. Get conscious about who you are trying to hire and the process you want to take them through.

Sales Hiring 241

Sales Hiring Scale Strategy Metrics 241

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. Leverage Your Network First When you’re ready to hire your first AE, don’t create a job posting and see who comes in. Instead, leverage your network.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media Sales 246