SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2023

To thrive in the present market, companies must figure out how to close their sales execution gap. Redeploy funds from headcount to sales technology. In addition, C2B marketplaces have raised buyers’ expectations regarding interactions with a sales team. Tune your GTM approach to relate to how modern buyers want to buy.

Innovation 246

Innovation Sales Hiring B2B Strategy 246

Payrix

APRIL 10, 2025

The typical trade and field service business relies on revenue from sales and service to run operations, manage headcount, and drive operational growth. However, these profit levers alone may not be enough to help a business achieve its true potential.

Payments 100

Payments Payment Services Outsourcing Services Payment Solutions 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

You need a baked financial model, that includes sales and marketing costs, scaling over time, headcount, and comparison to comps, and when you’ll need the next round(s). This is more important in SaaS than consumer internet, by that I mean, it’s more important you have the details right-ish here. Both bottoms up and tops down.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 299

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2023

That’s your future, not just your present. They kept the headcount kind of flat. If you’re growing at 30%, it’s good to see at least 15% growth in your new customer base. If you’re growing at 50%, you want to see at least 25% growth. They went from -40% to +5%. And it worked!

Revenue 245

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Cloud 245

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

Clouded Judgement

MAY 24, 2024

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen… The Workday earnings call summarized it well: “But within the quarter, we experienced increased deal scrutiny as compared to prior quarters, and we are seeing customers committing to lower headcount levels on renewals compared to what we had expected. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cloud 157

Cloud Software Headcount Scale 157

SaaStr

OCTOBER 8, 2024

Most businesses fall under a power law, where a small number of people run them, yet the company continues to add headcount and spread it out. They make calls, go to meetings, do presentations, write copy, ads, and blog posts. If you look at the best sales reps, they smash their numbers no matter what. Go figure out what they’re doing.

Scale 282

Scale Scaling Point of Sale SaaS 282

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2018

The key is personalizing how you present those case studies. But it’d be far more effective to share how Snapt uses Custom Bots to qualify and book meetings at scale, without additional headcount. “The most convincing story you can tell is one about your current customers’ success” Let me give you an example.

Scale 172

Scale Headcount Communication B2B 172

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 6, 2023

That’s a big difference, especially when you layer in the growth in headcount from 2021 to 2022. Essentially companies grew headcount significantly to add less ARR. We’re obviously seeing the rightsizing of this now with headcount reductions. The second chart comes from the latest MS CIO survey (below).

Cloud 130

Cloud Headcount Subscription Payment Features 130

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Companies have reduced headcount, but new bookings aren’t getting any easier Quarterly net new ARR growth : Some green-shoots! This post and the information presented are intended for informational purposes only. Companies that do not disclose subscription rev have been left out of the analysis and are listed as NA.

Cloud 167

Cloud Software Review Headcount Trends 167

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

First, it models out the annual cash flow of a businesses (say 10 years out), and discounts the future value of those cash flows back to present value (this is why software businesses are sensitive to interest rates - as rates go up, so does the discount rate). , you’d build a DCF (discounted cash flow) analysis. Do you have ARR or ERR?

AI 190

AI Cloud Revenue Technical Advisors 190

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

But, as you grow, you start to reach the limits of what your original ICP presents. What kind of headcount do you have? At this stage, your marketing team should be laser-focused on finding out what resonates with your ICP: what are their needs are, how to serve this market, how to differentiate yourself vs competition.

Scale 280

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 280

Tom Tunguz

MAY 14, 2014

Many customer success leaders were present and I had a great time chatting with a few to understand the state of the market. Gainsight Pulse Presentation by Tom Tunguz. Customer success teams must justify the investment of building a CS team, often at the expense of headcount in another team.

Customer Success 100

Customer Success Startup Headcount Compensation 100

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2023

Many of them said headcount management and spend were common levers they pulled, given the immediate and significant impact they have on spend. You can find the slide deck from this presentation HERE Every Wednesday at 10 a.m. What are companies doing today to scale efficiently? 80% of companies are slowing hiring. Sign up HERE!

Outsourcing Services 182

Outsourcing Services Scaling Venture Capital Forecasting 182

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. Liam: What was the moment when you discovered the problem or the problem presented itself? And so, I started Surfboard.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

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. Discovery Call.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Benchmarks 98

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

Create and present the opportunity for your best SDRs to generate more personal income. Salespeople are partially money motivated so you need to present your reps with an opportunity to cash in. Of course, headcount is always a sensitive topic, so start small to show your executives what is possible.

Scale 104

Scale Development Headcount Sales 104

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

These are just some of the findings in this year’s Customer Success Leadership Study, ChurnZero’s third annual report on the top trends and opportunities in Customer Success, presented in partnership with ESG and sponsored by Higher Logic Vanilla and involve.ai. That’s another indicator of the demand for, and impact of CS. However, 76.5%

Leadership 98

Leadership Trends Customer Success Investment 98

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

DECEMBER 3, 2013

Besides working through your budget, marketing programs, headcount, and whatever else you need to have in place when the new year rolls around, I’d suggest you add another item: Review your value proposition and messages. Here’s why. Most of your marketing plans are meant to deliver your messages to your target audience.

Headcount 100

Headcount Social Media Interviewing Mobile 100

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2012

Afterwards, the findings are presented to the board and the company in an all hands. A financial plan for next year including a headcount plan, a sales plan (if applicable) and a forecast for out of cash date and timing of next fundraise. What went well? What could the company have done better? Team evaluations.

Startup 100

Startup Sales Hiring Headcount Compensation 100

ChurnZero

MARCH 22, 2023

As a CS leader, these tools help keep your team lean, standardize your operations, and give your C-suite visibility into decisions about headcount and tooling. Once you arrive at a ratio of customers to CSM, you have what you need to meet with your finance team to discuss budget and headcount in a data-driven way.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Headcount Finance Leadership 97

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

The most impactful chart I ever made is the one below, which I’d present at QBRs back in the day Business Objects. The Market Lens. Every quarter I’d divide ours and our key competitors’ quarterly revenues by our quarterly revenues, creating a relative size factor where we were definitionally always at 1.0 (the

Benchmarks 127

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Startup 127

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

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2019

For a cross-functional role like product ops, it’s not only about convincing leadership for headcount and resources. Think about why your organization needs product ops, and make sure you’re presenting that information as clearly as possible. Explain the “why”.

Headcount 113

Headcount Interviewing Leadership Content Marketing 113

OpenView Labs

MAY 24, 2021

For private SaaS companies that do not publish their financials, you can alternatively compare R&D headcount with Sales and Marketing headcount using LinkedIn data as an approximation. According to the company’s most recent investor day presentation : Veeva’s Commercial Cloud customers have adopted an average of 3.72

Scale 98

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Benchmarks 98

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

I went from being the 8th hire at Invoca to helping grow headcount to 140 at the time of my departure. When a similar opportunity presented itself at FastSpring, I knew I couldn’t pass it up! My time at Invoca (formerly RingRevenue) and PDT reaffirmed my passion for startups and growing teams and talent. A: The relationships!

VP of Engineering 113

VP of Engineering Company Culture Headcount Scale 113

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

If we believe that AI will ultimately allow us to do “more with less,” we may see headcount growth slow for traditional roles. This post and the information presented are intended for informational purposes only. This one is interesting to me (and a little more abstract than the above discussion on margins).

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

So often, when we think about investing in a support team, sometimes the conversation becomes about getting the headcount higher, higher, higher. But where else can you be investing outside of headcount to maintain that customer centricity? Michael: For sure. This debate is not actually a new one, right?

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

ChurnZero

APRIL 29, 2022

But realistically with you having a headcount, there’s no question that pretty much one churned customer at most enterprise organizations is going to pay for that. You don’t even necessarily need headcount. Once you know the why, the how presents itself, and everything clears itself up. It’s a really simple question.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Headcount Compensation Churn 98

Totango

JULY 5, 2022

It also gives you the ability to build out and scale automated communications, allowing you to send the right message at the right time to thousands of customers without the need to add more resources or headcount to your team. . Make the Most of Upsell Opportunities.

Customer Success 104

Customer Success Scale Headcount Churn 104

ChurnZero

JANUARY 11, 2024

Most company budgets that earmark dollars for customer success intend for it to go towards headcount. ChurnZero refers to that portion of the budget as the “non-headcount budget.” 2023 non-headcount customer success budgets as a percentage of revenue: Most non-headcount customer success budgets range from 0.08% of revenue to 0.2%

Headcount 52

Headcount SaaS Leadership Benchmarks 52

InsightSquared

FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Making these picklists more colloquial allows other teams to more easily digest the information you’re presenting to them. Is all of the data currently being presented to a player useful to them? Keep paying attention to the way you present information, not just the content of that information. 1 Bourdain, Anthony.

Scale 82

Scale Sales Headcount SMB 82

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

By allowing support teams to get ahead of known problems and provide help to customers before they need to reach out, proactive support has enabled major companies to scale their support without increasing headcount, drive down inbound conversation volumes ( in some cases by up to 80% ), and maintain incredible customer satisfaction ratings.

Scale 118

Scale Customer Support Headcount Engagement 118

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

So before I get started, I wanted to talk about something that one of my AEs said in a team meeting, while I was preparing for this presentation. 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.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 264

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

Minto Pyramid Principle The Minto Pyramid Principle is a framework for writing and presenting ideas. The Horizons Framework is an effective way to categorise projects, which in turn helps with assigning budget, headcount and timelines. Source: McKinsey 17.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213

Sales Hacker

JUNE 16, 2021

Startup hurdle: headcount. Does your platform offer formats (PowerPoint presentations, call recordings, team exercises) that engage visual, auditory, and tactical learners? Can sellers customize content for their buyer and presentation needs? The types of obstacles will vary based on the size of your company. SMB hurdle: buy-in.

Sales Enablement 122

Sales Enablement Scale Sales Hiring Technical Review 122

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 9, 2020

We want to use outbound emails infrequently and wisely these days, but can you also present it on your website? Our headcount didn’t grow 2x because of COVID-19, so it’s just really important to make those conscious decisions about who you are prioritizing in this process. Can you then maybe proactively email that out?

Customer Support 245

Customer Support Healthcare Sales Hiring Travel 245