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

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

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

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

Ryan’s previous company, ImportGenius , was the largest provider of business intelligence to the import-export industry, which gave them access to an extremely valuable list of customers, trade data, and understanding of the international trade market. Very early on it’s weighted towards product vision and sales.

Sales Recruiting 317

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 317

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

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 5, 2020

Over the weekend, I analyzed Roger’s data to answer this question. However, there doesn’t yet seem to be a daily or weekly increase in the data. If we tally the reductions by category, travel, retail, fitness, real estate, transportation, and recruiting constitute the top 6 categories.

Sales Recruiting 357

Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount Sales Hiring 357

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

MARCH 18, 2025

Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team. This simple yet powerful signal helped Wiz respond to market opportunities more quickly than competitors relying on processed data that might be weeks old.

Scale 179

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 179

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. Work with Great Executive Recruiters ”The first time I saw an invoice for an executive search, I think I had a heart attack,” Shrav joked.

Sales Recruiting 292

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 292

Sales Hacker

MAY 18, 2021

On today’s episode of Sales Hacker podcast, we have Mike Levy of TitahHouse, a transparent and effective platform, loaded with in-depth career and job intelligence, exclusively designed to connect tech-focused sales professionals with their next great position. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Special Announcement.

Sales Recruiting 103

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Data Sales 103

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

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

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. For a CFO, do you require a accounting or finance background?

Sales Recruiting 110

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 110

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 198

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 198

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2024

Kyle Norton CRO of Owner is kicking off a new podcast for Pavillion with revenue leaders, and we were lucky enough to be guest #001 here: It’s a great convo on many SaaStr themes — but from the perspective of a VP Sales / CRO. Never play the blame game As a revenue leader, it’s crucial we take accountability for sales performance.

Technical Review 291

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 291

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 286

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

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The backup of 2020 was great, 2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns and everyone can burn 500 million a year or have huge sales teams. But the meta point is this, if you’re recruiting in 2024, beware of the “Lost Generation” candidate and persona you may come across. It’s part of the job now.

Sales Recruiting 306

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 306

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps. Take say 100 leads a month spread across 2 great reps, then bring in a new VP of Sales that hires 4 weak reps. At least, don’t move on from that VP without doing an honest, data-driven root cause analysis. Then, manage a small team. And quickly.

Sales Recruiting 253

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 253

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

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

Data-driven optimization Use data to measure success at every step. GTM 120: Avoid the AI Sales Skills Atrophy Trap with Peter Kazanjy Pete Kazanjy is a serial founder, and seasoned early stage Saas executive, advisor, and investor. Nine lessons from going multi-product, drawing on examples from both Stripe and Watershed.

Scale 111

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring AI Search 111

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2023

So I was on a group Zoom with a number of CROs and VPs of Sales the other day and a consistent theme came up: everyone was surprised how high OTEs (On Target Earnings) had held up in the current environment. You can see this in third party data, in RepVue and other places, but some of the root cause is less well understood.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Enterprise Sales 246

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. Execution is not just a sales process. Demand Generation.

Scale 268

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 268

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2020

2020 becomes the decade of data. The 2020s will be the era of data companies boosting massive markets. Database startups, data movement startups, data quality startups, data lineage startups, machine learning startups will be the zeitgeist of the decade as they shape the next wave of massive innovation.

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Blockchain Banking Machine Learning 279

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

Recently, Redpoint Office Hours welcomed Allison Pickens to clarify the COO role and when startups should consider recruiting one. Chief of Staff - a founder recruits a CoS to combat an increasing workload of project work. The CoS doesn’t manage anyone. This archetype oversees all GTM including marketing, sales, and post-sales.

Sales Recruiting 212

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Scale 212

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Daniel, you grew to 3 million in ARR before you hired a VP of Sales. You had all the reps and SDRs reporting to you, managed it all yourself. How’d you manage all that? Daniel : We followed a lean start up approach to building our sales process. An engineering team and the sales team was me with a laptop.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 269

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

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The Accounting Team Responsibilities: Financial recording and reporting Compliance, Audits Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable Tax, Treasury Your accounting team makes sure every financial transaction is recorded correctly and categorized. They will also take charge during an audit if the situation arises.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

Sales Hacker

APRIL 30, 2020

What’s your approach when hiring sales reps? Companies often hire sales reps who have knowledge of, or even a passion for, the brand’s product or industry — which is great because it gives you a team of “walking brochures” who can spout off all the benefits of your product. The best training for new sales hires.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Underperforming Technical Team 120

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2019

Enough with the excuses for not having hired your real VP of Sales, or that VP of Engineering, or whatever. Hire a real recruiter. Hire more sales reps in the areas where they are profitable. Figure out what you can do with data. Pick a few that work for you: Get That Key VP Hire Done in Q1. Not in April. Not by June.

Part-Time VPE 321

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 321

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Build trust with founders and then offer your own data-backed take on why a founder’s decision might not be the best decision they could make. You were the shoulder I would go and cry on anytime I would have some sort of executive-level problem or executive recruiting problem. Leading by influence, not directive.

Sales Recruiting 89

Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 89

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 8, 2018

In a time where buyer behavior has rendered cold calling nearly obsolete, successful sales prospecting begins with using tools like live chat and social media to build relationships. He’d go on to become the VP of Sales at Sprinklr, guiding the company through its own high growth period, before striking out on his own.

Social Media 186

Social Media Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 186

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)? The VP of Sales. Great VPs of sales have gravitas and tact, command the room and hold their end of the table regardless of who is on the other side. Singular focus on sales. As the title would hint at, the VP of Sales should focus on sales.

VP of Engineering 121

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 121

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

At the same time, you want to give trust and power to people who recruit, and you do that by ensuring they understand what the culture is. So that support person, Mafalda, started doing sales, too. Job always thought he’d hire a sales leader and be done with it forever. Your culture can’t be ephemeral, where only the CEO knows.

Scale 257

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 257

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Storyblok started with a leadership-first hiring plan and a recruitment strategy that involved the following: A test to know how candidates handle different tasks and their expertise level. Their first step to achieving this was hiring a sales leader to build a sales team. With time, the bigger picture will unfold.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 245

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 18, 2024

Areas with the greatest data are those that are furthest developed” – Mike Levy (CRO of SalesIntel) Mike’s comment underscores the fact that while AI is rapidly advancing, there’s still much to learn, and the most progress is happening where data is abundant. “Lots of interesting things, but nobody has figured it out.

Sales Recruiting 107

Sales Recruiting Software Review Scale AI 107

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2019

I actually worked in sales for five and a half years and that’s probably why I have tended to gravitate to B2B marketing. Worked as an AE and then a sales manager. Decided to go to business school, did that for a little bit and then came out in management consulting, a company. So, they’re a B2B piece.

Sales Recruiting 227

Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 227