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. Hi everyone.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 264

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2023

As the past few years have demonstrated, it’s wise to expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to hiring. In particular, hiring for your sales team is critical in an uncertain economic outlook. Additionally, sales professionals looking for a new role should choose their next company wisely.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Compensation 244

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2023

A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x or more of their total compensation. CEO often struggles to manage so many directly, trains them poorly.

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Sales Hiring Scale Startup Compensation 328

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2020

Q: What is a typical organizational structure for a SaaS startup with sales reps? A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x-5x their total compensation.

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Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 308

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2020

I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS sales comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. But I did all the sales myself, and stupidly, had no sales comp plan at all ??. Then, as we first scaled up a sales team, we ended up literally copying Salesforce’s comp plan. the Moment After Sale.

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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

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.

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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. Want to see more content like this?

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Is The Optimal Structure of an Initial SaaS B2B Sales Team? Where, roughly speaking, each sales rep brings in at least 4x-5x the total compensation they take out. Where you burn a ton of cash is “buying” sales. Shoving sales reps into segments where you don’t have enough leads / enough demand.

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Sales Hiring Scale B2B Sales 278

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2024

How much more could you accomplish with your sales organization? Justworks CRO, Robert Lopez, and Director of Sales, Valeria Avila, show you how to create longevity in your sales organization and why it matters. If you’re hiring great people and giving them the tools to succeed, get out of their way. They’ll step up.

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SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

The post The Top 8 SaaStr Tips to Building an Effective First Sales Team (per Perplexity) appeared first on SaaStr. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start.

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Sales Hiring Scale AI Search Compensation 290

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

DECEMBER 27, 2020

If the founders are the highest compensated people in the start-up, at least pre-Scale (e.g., So once you’ve raised a bit, if you make sure at least someone else on the team makes more than the founders … that great VP you just hired for example … you’ve probably found the right compensation level for you as CEO.

Venture Capital 346

Venture Capital Sales Hiring Scale Compensation 346

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. It does mean a well-oiled machine that hires strong reps of all backgrounds, and gets them the help and training so they can scale up and succeed.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 363

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives? Stage 1: Management by Objectives.

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Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 195

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

So how do you simplify and speed up your sales cycles? He started as the first sales hire at TripActions when the company was small and he helped scale the business to 5,000 customers, 1,200 employees and a $5 billion private valuation. Read on for Michael’s insightful advice for driving faster sales cycles. Subscribe.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 299

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 260

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? Lesson #1: Just Say No Once he joined, Kyle quickly discovered that Owner had a leaky bucket and had either bad or no targeting on prospects, was closing a lot of poor-fit customers, and there were a lot of miss set expectations from sales so customer handoff was sketchy at best.

Scale 306

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 306

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Scaling a sales organization isn’t easy. Knowing which metrics matter and how to analyze them to increase your revenue and hit organizational sales goals is essential. . What makes a sales organization grow? What’s the best way to grow a sales organization? Are you compensating your teams to sell recurring revenue?

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Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 297

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. If you can hire only one or two handful of people with your seed round, hiring anybody who doesn’t either code or sell is hard to justify. Let’s say you want to hire 10 people in the next 12 months. Here’s why.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

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Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 260

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2025

As startups scale, effective sales implementation becomes the difference between stagnation and sustainable growth. After analyzing hundreds of sales organizations across startups, I’ve distilled the key pieces of advice that founders and leaders should keep in mind.

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Compensation 182

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

Imagine a coverage model, from end to end, for the full customer life cycle: from demand generation to sales to post-sales. Sales Cycle. This includes everything from inside sales to account executives to strategic asset allocation. Post Sales. Hire those who have proven their value. Land the account.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 277

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

I want to spend a few posts and some time on sales comp plans for early-ish stage SaaS companies (up to say $20m in ARR). Because almost all the sales comp plans you are going to read about, and learn about are great — for SaaS companies that are well post-Scale. That work great for Salesforce, or Box. Just the top rep.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Business Model 328

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2022

Hiring has never been easy in SaaS. Transparent compensation information is concern #1. Second, many of us worry about being fully transparent with compensation. It’s time to get over it. Second, many of us worry about being fully transparent with compensation. It’s always been hard. Fix this today.

Revenue 306

Revenue Sales Hiring Compensation Startup 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

You Have to Train Sales Reps 3–10. You have to start formal sales training by rep #3. Hire Early. Customer success teams are critical for SaaS companies as they own the customer relationship from start to finish, managing up to 75% of revenue through renewals and upsells. And you can start very small. Or they fail.

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Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 289

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

Dear SaaStr: As An Employee, As an acquired employee, How Do I Negotiate My Compensation in an Acquisition? They pretty much never get any really incentives to stay, maybe some standard stock options as new hires. and in some sad cases, sales and marketing — the acquirer doesn’t even want.

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Compensation Acquisition Sales Hiring Finance 185

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. Because founder-led sales worked really well for most of the early stages, but you eventually start running out of juice around $15M ARR.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 278

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Back in the day, premium comp for some software sales execs made simple and easy sense. Traditional software had 90% gross margins, and the classic enterprise sales reps, the best ones, could close a million or more dollars a year. Sales reps in low NRR and high churn environments got paid almost the same as enterprise reps.

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Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring Sales 345

Tom Tunguz

MAY 2, 2013

To many entrepreneurs, hiring the first salesperson is a mystery. The great part about sales teams and sales departments is that they quantitative - sales teams thrive on numbers. At the most fundamental level, sales productivity has to exceed costs. The output of that salesperson - sales productivity.

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Sales Hiring Compensation Forecasting Pricing 113

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2019

As you scale your salesteam, unless you are very careful whom you hire and how you train them, incentives being what they are in variable compensation, some negative behavior will creep in. Clawback sales commission for customers that churn quickly. Tie bonuses to revenue and NPS, or even better, sales rep NPS.

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Scale Churn Sales Hiring Sales 259

SaaStr

OCTOBER 19, 2023

One thing I have learned, though: If the founders are the highest compensated people in the start-up, especially pre-Scale (e.g., pre $10m ARR) … IMHE, something is wrong.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Marketing 299

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2022

If the founders are the highest compensated people in an early-stage start-up, at least pre-Scale (e.g., At least the VP of Sales. The second time, I funded the prototype myself ($0 salary) and then we raised a $2.6m seed and I took a small salary (no need to be $0 anymore, but anything large would decrease the runway).

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Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Engineering 296

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Q: Should sales reps be compensated differently based on how much prospecting they do? It often makes sense to pay reps more from raw accounts they prospect than inbound leads. And the sales cycles are much faster from inbound leads. And a related post here: A Framework For Your First SaaS Sales Comp Plan | SaaStr.

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Sales Hiring Compensation Sales Strategy 259

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

App Layoffs Were Brutal, And Hiring Is Slowly Resuming If you haven’t worked in Fortune 500 or tech companies, you’ve never seen this. The reality is there was an explosion in sales and marketing and other categories in 2021 when the goal was to grow, grow, grow. They’re a public pure-play leader in sales and marketing.

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Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 289

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

If your sales team has 20 plus reps, we’re confident Apollo could be a game changer for you. Topping the list of most-loved sales platforms, Apollo has a 4.8 Hiring, Scaling, and the Impact of Price’s Law He scaled Procore over 8.5 Hiring, Scaling, and the Impact of Price’s Law He scaled Procore over 8.5

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Sales Hiring Scale Development Team Review AI Search 121

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2023

Organizations using Bob are able to accelerate hiring, retain the best talent, and elevate employee engagement. QuotaPath is the most adaptable compensation solution to bring Sales, RevOps, and Finance all on the same page. Companies waste up to 30% of their SaaS spend. appeared first on SaaStr.

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Cloud Scale Startup Sales Hiring 264