SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2024

Also focus on identifying areas where you can outperform competitors, whether it’s in pricing, onboarding efficiency, or unique features. Get comfortable with headcount gaps, constantly recruit, and build a network of potential hires so you’re prepared when you need to expand your team. Jason says, “There’s no bandaid in leadership.”

Technical Review 298

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 298

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Building revenue operations to support sales Deel had onboarded nearly 100 clients, reports showed good traction, and it was time to leverage this opportunity. Without headcount planning for the support team, the company’s response time and customer satisfaction scores dipped. Use your data to inform. Listen to your team.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 274

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

We all become new customer-oriented, so we say we’re focused on the existing base, but once the sales team becomes 30-40% of headcount, it tends to dominate every conversation. Long-term marketing spend Holding customer success spend flat The study found that 62% of CS teams are maintaining or decreasing their non-headcount budget.

Customer Success 299

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 299

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 17, 2022

For example, a drop in product-qualified leads suggests a recent new onboarding flow filters traffic more aggressively, but the downstream conversion rates indicate higher proclivity to pay. A spike of mid-market leads because a competitor has sunsetted their product raises the question of whether to grow the mid-market AE headcount.

Headcount 253

Headcount Engineering Trends Onboarding 253

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

But it then loses real money on onboarding, at -124% margins, and real money on hardware, at -183% margins. Fairly low revenue per headcount, although being headquartered in Utah with a large presence in India does seem to bring costs down. #7. Historically, Weave gave away several “free” phones with each new account.

SaaS Payments 284

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods SMB 284

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Also, pivot from Garrett’s initial idea and focus on revenue targets, not a specific headcount. #2 3 – Invest in your onboarding process. Providing quality in onboarding is more important than fitting immediate need. Flock Safety onboards classes, no more than one a month. 2 – Get your compensation right.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 255

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

You will need to hire headcount infinitely and linearly with revenue. They exist, but finding someone who can do and own outbound, qualification, training, onboarding, and closing everything is rare. Whatever it’s growing, you have to grow your headcount in sales roughly. If it doesn’t work out, hire another. You can’t avoid it.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 304

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

With precise headcount and budget needs. Even in the best of cases, with the best onboarding and the shortest of sales cycles, it takes 30 days to scale a rep. I’ll Keep it Simple. I just want you to find a way to do 5 things: First, it’s time to build a real financial and operating model for next year — NOW.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Acquisition 284

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2019

Relentlessly take the friction out of the pre-trial, trial and onboarding experiences. Not that much given the overall headcount I nominally had assigned to me. Make your app feel like other apps folks already use. Make your app fun (maybe not cute, but fun) so the headspace is disguised. And when it was gone, it was gone.

Headcount 259

Headcount Enterprise Pricing Onboarding 259

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

This will also help you effectively adjust your round-robin rules – which assign conversations in a circular and alphabetical manner to available teammates – and workflows while onboarding new reps, so they have time to learn the ropes without disrupting team performance. First response time. Customer satisfaction. Tickets by hour.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 20, 2020

Over the last few months, I’ve worked with customers who have seen an explosion in demand for their services and, as a result, have needed help onboarding new team members and scaling their customer experience. On the flipside, I’ve also had customers who are investing more in automation as they’ve reduced their headcount.

Scale 223

Scale Customer Success Scaling Technical Review 223

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Reduced headcount, longer working hours, and a spike in queries have led to burnout. They go big on human support to meet demand, and they end up having to backtrack and cut headcount as costs skyrocket. Are there any other options companies can look at instead of reducing headcount? Support teams seem to be suffering here.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Trends Technical Review Headcount 211

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

This is especially important for small teams, where you need to operate at a scale far beyond your headcount (without burning out your team by working around the clock). Can we easily onboard new employees or teams as our numbers grow? How much training will this tool require for onboarding and maintenance? Questions to ask.

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin also wrote how Customer Success has now morphed into part of the sales team and that the 2024 trends in CS include everyone wanting to eliminate humans from support to replace that headcount with AI and bots. It would also be a shame to cut implementation, deployment, and onboarding as part of this process.

Sales Hiring 320

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 320

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 27, 2019

I’m going to share my top 20 sales onboarding secrets to help your team beat their 30-60-90 day plan. What’s So Important About Sales Onboarding? That’s why it’s so important you get sales onboarding right. There are 4 major benefits I’ve seen from improving sales onboarding. Lauren’s 20 Sales Onboarding Secrets. #1

Sales Hiring 91

Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 91

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

“These are the kinds of things that help our support org to function more smoothly and impactfully so we can support our customers at scale, without needing to increase budget or headcount”. Starting to build out a support operations function doesn’t necessarily mean adding headcount straight away. Baby steps, for sure.”.

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Establishing effective yet efficient ratios requires aligning your CSM headcount with the mechanics of your customer lifecycle design including the definition of the CSM role in your company and the specific activities that achieve successful product adoption with your customers. Establishing dashboards for the customers KPIs.

Technical Review 52

Technical Review Systems Review Headcount Scale 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Headcount maybe goes from 2 or 4 to 10. Mastery of funnels — CS has many funnels like onboarding, usage, case studies, and expansion. Break out onboarding from the Customer Success function. Onboarding vs. Customer Success You do this to create capacity. They sign the contract, onboard, and the motion is done.

Scale 176

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 176

Totango

JULY 26, 2022

For example, a customer’s onboarding , adoption and renewal journeys are shaped by a wide variety of employees within a company. This allows you to enhance value and improve CX by utilizing the resources you already have rather than adding more headcount. Dynamic Assignment. Totango helps you do all of this and more!

Scale 117

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Customer Success 117

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 2, 2019

Headcount Planning. But headcount planning is often a useful place to start because the inputs required to make decisions are the least dependent on factors outside of the sales organization. This decision will drive many of your other headcount decisions. How many AEs can the infrastructure of the sales organization support?

Headcount 41

Headcount Sales Hiring Scale Sales 41

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

“This includes proactive outreach to understand what our largest and our smallest users need most from us throughout their lifecycle, as well as maintaining touchpoints throughout Stripe with all of the employees who have user-facing roles, like account management, onboarding services, and so on.”.

Technical Review 222

Technical Review Systems Review Customer Support Headcount 222

Stax

JULY 1, 2024

Yet it isn’t always cost-effective to hire an in-house team to manage payroll, especially for businesses with a small headcount. TL;DR Small businesses have specific payroll needs thanks to challenges such as growing headcount, limited resources, and a lack of internal payroll expertise.

Payment Solutions 88

Payment Solutions Payment Services Payment Methods Payments 88

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2021

We’ve defined what must stay the same as we onboard more salespeople. Whether you’re bringing on your tenth or hundredth salesperson, you need to discuss the “must-haves” with your leadership team. Your non-negotiables are your core values and ways of working.

Scale 160

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 160

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

As a Customer Success leader, do you get anxious at the thought of asking your CFO or CEO for additional headcount? Using these models, you too can learn how to go toe-to-toe with your Finance team by presenting trade-offs to get the headcount you need. How to Build a Customer Success Budget for Headcount. Onboarding.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Benchmarks 98

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. And I don’t necessarily mean 10X in terms of headcount – I mean 10X in terms of efficiency.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

ChurnZero

JULY 14, 2021

3 Strategies for Best-In-Class CSM Onboarding – Learn three areas to consider in order to ensure your team onboarding is effective. If you only offer one product at one standard level, it is going to be near impossible to allow your customers grow with you over the years. Customer Success Around the Web.

Customer Lifetime Value 98

Customer Lifetime Value Scale Headcount Churn 98

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

If you’ve decided to hire employees, onboard and support them and change your customer coverage model, the answer needs to be a resounding “yes.”. ” In our case, a resounding “yes” required seeing a positive impact on customer expansion and one big enough to justify the fully-loaded cost for the additional headcount.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

ChurnZero

JUNE 9, 2023

Good sales teams typically get the budget, headcount and tools they desire because the function is tied to revenue. As a result, CS teams often have to work harder to make the case for headcount, technology and even product requests on behalf of customers. How can CS leaders address this challenge?

Finance 98

Finance Metrics Customer Success Headcount 98

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Any great VP of Sales knows other VPs of Sales and up-and-comers because sales is usually half the headcount in a startup. You don’t want them in operations, customer success, onboarding, or renewals. If you don’t have anyone to do onboarding, the head of sales can fill the gap. There are a couple of exceptions here.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 157

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 19, 2024

2024 Onboarding Hero: Ollie, a Next Glass company Ollie used ChurnZero journeys and plays to enhance their onboarding process for time-pressed customers. The Ollie team reimagined the process, using ChurnZero to structure and systemize their onboarding and keep customers on track. Here’s who they are, and how they did it.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team Innovation 52

SaaSOptics

MAY 2, 2022

Whereas, in a product-led model, the product itself is used to acquire, onboard, and retain new users. Product-led companies use many different tactics to acquire, onboard, and retain new users, including: Free trials . In a sales-led model, sales processes and teams are the primary drivers of revenue growth. On-demand training.

Scale 97

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 97

ChurnZero

JULY 9, 2024

As well as losing headcount to RIFs directly, companies have seen CSMs leaving in anticipation of a RIF, adding pressure on those who remain. Meanwhile, create more growth and training opportunities for your CSMs, especially around new hire onboarding and technical product training. First, what’s going on?

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring Headcount Scale Customer Success 98

Chart Mogul

MAY 7, 2020

Onboarding a new member of your sales team is challenging on its own, but especially so when they have to call prospects out of the blue. If your new hire represents added headcount to your sales team, you may need to reconfigure your sales territories or lead assignment protocols. Nobody likes cold calling.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Headcount 121

Totango

MAY 26, 2021

A ratio of one customer success manager (CSM) to 50 customers just doesn’t work for companies with hundreds or thousands of customers – and requesting more headcount is simply impractical. Incorporate a Mixture of Both Digital and Human Touch. Resource: The Customer Data Platform Benefits You Should Know. The Customer Journey is Not Linear.

Scaling 99

Scaling Business Headcount Customer Success 99

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2019

As companies become product led, their product becomes the vehicle for every stage of the customer experience — from trial and purchase all the way through onboarding, expansion, and referrals — and product ops is key to the optimization of that experience.

Headcount 113

Headcount Interviewing Leadership Content Marketing 113

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

If you only have one or two headcount to add to your team this year, it’s going to be really hard to make significant improvement in this area. Everyone should be a brand ambassador and onboard with the process. And those one or two hires become critically important in making the change. So this is a big one.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 261

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

To improve net dollar retention, examine just how you’ve designed your product packages, pricing model , customer onboarding, and sales compensation. The fastest-growing startups allocate only 7% of their headcount to services and supporting their customers (half that of slower-growing startups). .

Headcount 73

Headcount SaaS Compensation Acquisition 73