SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Cloudinary VP of Developer Experience Sanjay Sarathy shares his journey to more than $100M and the lessons he learned along the way for building a PLG motion and an Enterprise sales motion. They didn’t initially envision being a large Enterprise sales organization. Let’s first start with how Cloudinary came to be.

Scale 317

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 317

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 9, 2020

It’s the perfect storm that produces a swell of people who need to get in touch with customer support. In the midst of such a surge, it’s essential to get customers’ issues resolved quickly. In this episode, you’ll hear from: Katilin Pettersen , Global Director of Customer Support: Based in San Francisco.

Customer Support 245

Customer Support Healthcare Sales Hiring Travel 245

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. So, as you’re considering hiring your VP of Sales or Engineering, find a great executive recruiter to work with and eat the bill.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 305

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2023

As a sales exec, you may not know actually the product well. A few recent examples: Example #1: I was recently chatting with a VP of Sales about a job position, which I get he wasn’t 100% sure he wanted. Don’t hire that one. Example #2: A little while ago, I reached out to 3 top support vendors.

Sales Hiring 319

Sales Hiring Sales Customer Support Startup 319

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 9, 2017

How important is hiring for emotional intelligence? After two tests within the sales organization across several hundred people, the data revealed that cognitive ability predicted workplace performance in that company five times better than emotional intelligence. Professor Adam Grant wrote Emotional Intelligence is Overrated in 2010.

Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hiring Startup Construction Interviewing 185

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.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

If you want to hire your first sales rep and close more deals, you need to understand how the sales process works, what tools your team needs to be successful and learn to speak sales. Sales definitions you should know. CRM objects — Represent the sales relationship you have with a specific person or company.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Startup Sales Outsourced Development 322

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Help desk metrics are measurements that allow you to track your performance and effectively adjust your strategy to provide better customer support. They’re vital for gauging whether or not your current customer support solutions are meeting the needs of your customers and your organization. Resolution Time.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2020

I recently put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn on folks’ top tip to take friction out of their sales processes. “Presumptive close in a transactional sale. “At “We added slack for customer support and on boarding” — Adam Livesay, founder, Elevat. “Simplicity. “Listen.

Sales Hiring 344

Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development Technical Review 344

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

But 74% of you find your Paid Pilots convert to Paid Customers at the end of the pilot. 41% of you have sales do some customer onboarding, not just CS or other specialists. Should sales just disappear once the contract is signed? #5. On average, you got a 33%+ boost in revenue when you hired your first VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 340

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 340

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 24, 2018

How do you scale a support organization without breaking the budget or killing the quality of the customer experience? It’s an age old question for anyone leading a customer support organization, the sort of challenge that requires continuous innovation as a company and its customer base expands. Automation.

Scale 178

Scale Customer Support Scaling Strategy 178

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

CTO Hire 291

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 291

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Stephanie Couzin, the VP of GTM Strategy and Ops, and Roderick De Greef, the VP of Sales and GM EMEA, share Lucid’s transition from a PLG company to a PLG and Sales-Led company. In their first year, they had their first paying customer. Lucid hired someone with a business background under a special project.

Scale 312

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring compliance 312

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

Marketing hackers, sales hackers, product hackers. Will AI let ICs do more, with fewer managers? AI in Sales and Marketing AI is disrupting sales and marketing, particularly in support and SDR /BDR functions, due to the shortage of skilled workers and the potential for increased efficiency and cost savings.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Startup Marketing Technical Review 307

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Customer support has never been a walk in the park. To keep up with these changes, last year we released our first Intercom Customer Support Trends Report. To keep up with these changes, last year we released our first Intercom Customer Support Trends Report. Last month, we published the second edition.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Trends Technical Review Headcount 211

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Mark Roberge published The Sales Acceleration Formula about Hubspot’s journey. Account executive to SDR ratios, sales cycle lengths, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime values, net dollar retention. The first version of the SaaS GTM playbook was written twenty years ago.

Software 304

Software Sales Hiring Customer Lifetime Value Scale 304

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2023

Now is the time to hire someone who went to work for a unicorn, got laid off, and is bitter.” That’s enough to start hiring people. A tactical strategy — Hire one great person in the next six months and then another one. Obsess about not hiring a salesperson but one great AE. And then hire another.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success SaaS 246

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

The challenges facing customer support leaders are more complex than ever. They need to be able to balance efficiency with a great customer experience , meet rising customer expectations , and keep team morale high , all while ensuring that they don’t blow through their budget or burn out their team.

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

At the end of that $45k spend, they had 70 customers, which was great for a startup. Big Bet #2: Find Tomorrow’s Great Anglers — Hire Talent With A Learning Mindset In 2010 and 2011, San Francisco was the place for SaaS talent. So, if he wanted to hire customer support, it could be a biomechanical engineer.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Scale SMB SaaS 290

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Sign up for free.

Sales Hiring 203

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 203

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. Through every sales cycle, there’s a need to share information from sales, accounting, customer success, and other teams.

Sales Hiring 325

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Marketplace as a Service 325

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

They built their sales funnel in the same fashion to empower customers with autonomous product discovery and conversions. Yet, they needed to work out some challenges to support a fully independent journey (e.g., when customers needed to switch from an old payroll solution to PayFit).

SMB 244

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 244

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 9, 2021

It was also my first official week in the People Development Program Manager role, which certainly added to the challenge! . Onboarding virtually can be tough for our new hires. We needed to lean in and provide more opportunities and space for our new hires to connect, learn, and engage with each other and the business. “By

Onboarding 253

Onboarding Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review 253

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic brought seismic change to sales teams around the globe. The dependence on the in-person sales office sharply declined, and remote workforces took their place during the height of the crisis. Yet with encouraging news about the vaccine, SaaS leaders are looking beyond the pandemic to the future of sales.

Sales Hiring 166

Sales Hiring Sales Retention Customer Support 166

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

E.g., Sales +Marketing Expenses < First Year ACV = Success ? One you may not have heard but it’s a good one — is Hire One Customer Success Manager for every $2m in ARR. If you haven’t hired a Customer (or Client – same thing ) Success Team before, it can be confusing to start.

Scale 265

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 265

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

Quickly, though, your attention turns to initial traction, your first critical hires, and building out those early business functions. With early revenue, you start thinking about churn and scalability of every aspect of the business, including product, infrastructure, customer support, sales and marketing.

Finance 334

Finance Outsourcing Services Systems Review Technical Review 334

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

But here are some things that can help in the early days: Always hire at least 2 reps to start. If you just hire 1, you won’t really know what is working, and not working, and why. Don’t expect a sales magician. You ideally need to close the first 10–20 customers yourself, and then hire sales folks to help.

Scale 252

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SaaS 252

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2022

If you’re only investing in sales and marketing, you’re missing a huge revenue opportunity. Customer Success isn’t just for established leaders; it also helps growth-stage companies compound their growth through retention, upsell and expansion. When should you start customer success? Scaling your customer success team.

Customer Success 246

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Leadership 246

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2017

This might seem like a very logical argument for differentiating on sales processes, but it’s a fallacy. First, it presumes that the most valuable skill set in sales is building rapport. Great salespeople understand how to manage a sales process and the five key people in a sales process. Trust is critical.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourced Development 100

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

Non-critical product managers, customer support and success, etc. 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. This varies by acquirer and type of deal.

Startup 306

Startup Sales Hiring Compensation Finance 306

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Leveraging survey data from 66+ enterprise SaaS companies, Matt Garratt, Managing Partner of Salesforce Ventures shares the landscape of how businesses are shifting their sales & GTM strategies to react to today’s uncertain times. Adnan Chaudhry | SVP of Sales @ Salesforce.

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 217

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

For years, our hiring strategy for the HubSpot customer support team was simple. When support reps were overwhelmed with the volume of work, we’d hire another one. This simplistic model of growth worked to get the support team to about 25 people. I had just taken over the support team at HubSpot.

Customer Support 102

Customer Support Sales Hiring Scale Acquisition 102

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2022

At Box, there was a culture and mindset shift early on that customer-facing teams shouldn’t live in silos. Every customer-facing team is on the renewals team: customer success, sales, product, customer support, marketing, and of course, renewals. Maximize and optimize for Account Executive productivity.

Scale 307

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 307

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

Kustomer’s platform is a fundamental re-architecture of customer support software. So while we wanted to think about doing a consumption model here at Kustomer, because we thought that was innovative, we realized our customers didn’t want a consumption model. You need to find customers who want it.

Pricing 277

Pricing Startup Sales Hiring Innovation 277

Totango

OCTOBER 20, 2022

Hiring team members with the right customer success manager skills is critical for the effectiveness of your CS team and strategy. Here we’ve identified the 13 most essential qualities to consider when hiring a CS manager. What Skills Are Required for a Customer Success Manager?

Sales Hiring 97

Sales Hiring Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review 97

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2020

We’ve spent a ton of time on SaaStr talking about how to think about sales and sales teams ; revenue/demand-focused marketing ; and keeping those customers over their lifetime. Slack and Dropbox got pretty far before adding true sales teams, as did Stripe. Can’t I just do that, many founders ask? Well maybe you can.

Sales Hiring 267

Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise Consulting 267

ChurnZero

JULY 6, 2021

This spotlight features, Scott Polidoro , Customer Support Representative at ChurnZero. . Scott plays a central role in providing best-in-class services to ChurnZero’s rapidly expanding customer base by giving product guidance and investigating and helping to resolve product issues. . Customer Success Around the Web.

Customer Support 98

Customer Support Sales Hiring Churn Customer Success 98