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

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Lizzie Mintus Founder and CEO of Here’s Waldo Recruiting and host of The Heres Waldo Podcast about her thoughts on: The most effective recruiting strategies for SMBs. Podcast Full Interview: Audio Listen online or find it on more podcast services. Jump to video.

SMB 106

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 106

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Specifically, she champions a metrics-based approach for developing world class recruiting teams. Because of her position, Maia has observed recruiting patterns in hundreds of companies, and has developed best practices for startups. Maia reports these five strategic recruiting metrics to the executive team each quarter.

Sales Recruiting 113

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Data Analysis 113

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

I meet with great VPs of Sales and Product in particular who are Ready. I’d like to recruit you to be a VP at one of my companies, but I get it. You’re going to have to be the VP of Sales, Customer Success, Marketing and probably Product in the early days. You’ll almost lose your Best Logo Accounts.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting SaaS Interviewing Consulting 363

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. Great at engineering. Do at least 20–30 customer interviews before you start writing too much code. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself. 50% of the job for a VP is recruiting.

Sales Hiring 313

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 313

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.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 261

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 281

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 281

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2020

There’s a common thinking that sales teams should be relatively high churn. That the bottom 15-20% of the sales team almost has to churn each year, because it’s survival of the fittest. At Salesforce, at Box, the bottom end of the sales team churns out each year. First, do sales reps really compete with each other?

Scale 293

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 293

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. In this interview, David Sacks talks about how 70-80% of investor time is spent looking at AI.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2024

As the co-founder and CEO of Intellimize (acquired by Webflow), Guy brings a unique perspective from his journey through iconic companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter, as well as his background in aerospace engineering. It includes a breakdown of the Sales AI landscape, adoption of GenAI and Sales software across buyer groups.

Scale 103

Scale Engineering Acquisition Scaling 103

SaaStr

JULY 4, 2019

Matt Schatz is SVP of Sales at WPEngine, responsible for defining and executing the global sales strategy. Matt has nearly two decades of senior leadership experience in sales and customer growth, specifically for technology companies with customers around the world including Bazaarvoice, CityVoice and Rackspace. It is hard.

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring Scale Engineering Sales Recruiting 217

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a VP, Sales. We’ve talked about the 48 Different Types of VP Sales , What a VP Sales Really Does , and a Script to Use When Interviewing a VP Sales. Imagine you are a Great VP Sales yourself. The VP Engineering you hired is all about the equity. Tons of cash.

Sales Hiring 233

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Point of Sale Sales 233

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. . #1: A senior engineer posted on LinkedIn that they worked at Spotify for four years and quit on the spot. I’m out of here.”

Sales Hiring 302

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 302

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.

Compensation 195

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 195

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

It became a part of our interview questions. What questions do you ask in the interview? It’s a team that’s only focused on a values type interview process. Every single candidate coming through Gusto does what we call a watermelon interview. I got it wrong many times myself. How do you get them to join?

VP of Engineering 293

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 293

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. Nine out of 10 founders and CEOs I connect with are involved in recruiting on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Many of them are learning on the fly and trying to juggle being CEO and Chief People Officer/Lead Recruiter/Brand Evangelist all at once.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. Being willing to invest in an internal recruiter or talent manager (or more broadly, an HR person) early on requires pretty big balls a lot of confidence.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Recruiters are still reporting it as a challenging time to fill roles, with both employers and candidates being more gun shy than previously. Nailing the interview process: Here’s one way to nail the interview process once the interview is landed: 1. Have the 1st interview. At Demandbase, data wins every time.

Interviewing 121

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 121

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2019

Come and hear about the typical pitfalls (and how to avoid them) from Pat Poels, an executive with over seven years under his belt leading Eventbrite’s now 300+ strong engineering team that sits across North America, South America, and Europe. I started right at the end of 2011, and I started in the role of VP of engineering.

Engineering 184

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 184

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

Or it can be an engineering co-founder or hardware co-founder or a business co-founder even. So if you’re an engineer and you need more engineers, having a network of engineers is an awesome thing. You don’t know how to interview them. Why don’t you interview this person?”

Merchant Services 274

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 274

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 122

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 122

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I started a software company in college to make it easy to update websites called Content Management Software Now, and I had this idea for Pardot, I wanted to make it easy for marketers to run campaigns online and measure their results. SalesLoft, why was that Pardot, I tried to recruit this guy, Kyle Porter, to come run sales at Pardot.

Sales Recruiting 201

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 201

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

As an engineer by training, in pressure situations he tends to “lean to the quant.” It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. Mark Roberge knows which he prefers.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. We actually think it’s about where the customers are when it comes to our sales and customer success and then where our product development center should be. We do have a network of recruiters.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 274

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 26, 2024

This is a guest article by Swati Garg , founder and CEO, Melo Associates , and Lindsay Lynch , senior recruitment consultant, Melo Associates , a recruitment firm focused on customer success hiring for SaaS and tech companies nationwide. 2+ years of experience specifically in a customer success or account management role.

Technical Review 52

Technical Review Sales Recruiting Customer Success Sales Hiring 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 146

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 146

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2019

Or it can be an engineering co-founder or hardware co-founder or a business co-founder even. So if you’re an engineer and you need more engineers, having a network of engineers is an awesome thing. You don’t know how to interview them. Why don’t you interview this person?”

Merchant Services 222

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 222

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

by Rich Archbold, Senior Director of Engineering at Intercom. In this battle, I’ve found a secret weapon hidden within one of our core engineering strategies, an idea called Run Less Software. When I say “execute”, I don’t simply mean the engineering challenges of building something. The same is true in software. The talent.

Outsourcing Services 224

Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

If you’re new to hiring a sales team internationally, the challenges can be overwhelming. Related: How I Built a Successful International Sales Team From Day 1. Building an international sales team: Strategy. Start with which roles your sales team needs for its next stages of growth. How to choose a country?

Sales Recruiting 104

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing 104

User Pilot

AUGUST 21, 2023

In this ultimate list of product manager interview questions, we have tried to simplify the process of hiring great product managers. Product management encompasses the entire SaaS lifecycle from ideation to launch and everything that follows. How would you manage a team that works across time zones and remotely?

Interviewing 98

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Management 98

OPEXEngine

APRIL 12, 2022

The other day a founder asked me about interviewing because a candidate had described me as “a great interviewer,” and she wanted to know why. I find interviewing and recruiting difficult, have made plenty of mistakes over the years, and the consequences of those mistakes are invariably painful. Use work test samples.

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

Process overly favors either Engineering or Design to the detriment of the other. Each bank of desks is a product team, with our PMs, Designers, Engineers, Researchers, Analysts and more sitting together. You don’t even know where the Sales team sit, nevermind who they are. You have little influence in changing the process.

Sales Recruiting 188

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Leadership Systems Review 188

Sales Hacker

MARCH 8, 2018

Sales interviews are nerve-wracking. Not just for candidates, but also for hiring managers. You may have to pass on hundreds of excellent sales hires—it’s definitely frustrating. Prepare For Your Next Sales Interview with These 5 Pro Tips. Be an active participant in the interview process.

Sales Hiring 80

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 80

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

As they grow, startups often create ad hoc managers I call team leads. Team leads manage 3 to 5 people. They work alongside their team, whether engineering, sales or marketing and contribute actively to achieving the goals of that team team. He’s a different kind of manager, a team builder.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Scale 100

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way. Use sales conversations as a tool to get product feedback. So how do you get there?

Sales Recruiting 121

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 121

User Pilot

MAY 30, 2024

Product managers focus on building the right product. They pair this with swift execution, where they collaborate with engineers and designers to devise solutions that solve user problems in a manner that works for the business. This execution involves defining requirements, managing priorities, and shipping.

Product Marketing 103

Product Marketing Interviewing Management Scale 103

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

In this episode of the Sales Hacker Podcast, we have Hakim Myers , Business Recruiter at Nextdoor , where he recruits for people, finance, and legal functions for startups. Join us for a revealing conversation on sales and talent from the perspective of a recruiter in an executive search firm. powered by Sounder.

Sales Recruiting 108

Sales Recruiting Retention Scale Sales Hiring 108