SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Who should you hire, with limited budget? A VP of Sales? A truly great hire is >always< accretive. Hire anyone truly great you can find. And he was proud he’d just hired a VP of Sales at a below-market rate. You don’t want to save money on a great hire. In Just 2 Sales Cycles.

Sales Hiring 344

Sales Hiring Headcount Engineering Banking 344

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2021

We’ve talked about how all the Second Timers are hiring in customer success way early , ahead of sales, ahead of revenue. To hire in customer success. First, let’s make a rule, a compact, and a commitment: You Must Hire your First Customer Success Manager as a “Single Digit” Hire.

Sales Hiring 299

Sales Hiring Customer Success Headcount Churn 299

SaaStr

AUGUST 23, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Growth Has Slowed and My VP of Sales is Pushing Me To Hire More Reps. In fact, the #1 sign your VP of Sales is really struggling is when their best answer to slowing sales is to hire even more sales reps. As if more humans, on their own, magically equal more sales. Not 9+ times out of 10.

Sales Hiring 298

Sales Hiring Headcount Sales 298

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2023

Hiring has way slowed down, but many folks are still hiring, albeit at a reduced rate. 56% of you aren’t hiring, or barely hiring. And very few of you are doubling headcount, vs everyone in 2021. But a good chunk of you are still hiring, albeit in moderation. The post 43% of You Are Still Hiring.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Headcount Engineering Revenue 278

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

He actively approached the CEO to push for dramatically higher targets and accelerated headcount expansion beyond the original plan. Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 191

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 191

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

If you want to hit the plan for Q1'22, You need to be hiring all the sales reps you'll need then … Now. To make the hires you need now, for next year. But you have to hire them NOW, not in January. With precise headcount and budget needs. How many Customer Success Managers. How many reps.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Acquisition 290

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. Reason #1 is jumping to Stretch VP of Sales one stage too early. Not hiring people better than you. Do not do this.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 359

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. Hi everyone.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. You’ll make a good hire. So hire your first as soon as you can. >>

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. You’ll make a good hire. So hire your first as soon as you can. >>

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. Sales doesn't. 2x the sales headcount you thought you did to hit the full plan for this year, and Q1 of next year. And finally, it dawns on your there is no leverage in sales. Or you’ll get behind.

Scale 352

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 352

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2025

This structure enables a seamless experience that starts when a company hires someone. One button click in Rippling sets up the new hire across HR, payroll, all relevant apps (Slack, Dropbox, GitHub, email, Salesforce), provisions their computer, and establishes them within the company’s financial systems.

Startup 162

Startup Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Cloud 162

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 15, 2021

There’s a simple secret to hiring quickly and building a strong team. Invest in great managers early. Post-PMF, the organization must evolve: it has to grow headcount and then manage that headcount well. How many hiring managers are in each of the two hierarchies from above? On the right, three.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 363

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2024

So just a little while back, Lenny Rachintsky had me on his hyper-popular podcast to talk about scaling sales, from the perspective of a founder who hasn’t really done sales. They really are a great checklist when you are starting to scale sales in SaaS: #1. And sales go down, not up. #2. It’s a tough job.

Sales Hiring 315

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 315

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2019

I still see most startups way behind on their 2020 planning, and most importantly, hiring, at this point in the year. With precise headcount and budget needs. Second, you have to try to hire as many of the sales reps you’ll need for the end of Q1 … by mid-Q4. How many reps. How many SDRs. More on that here. This is key.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Revenue 242

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2021

And you have to hire ahead (of course). Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. Your VPs and Directors of Sales and sales ops leaders are cost centers here. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals. 2 Managers. = 2 Managers. =

Scale 317

Scale Sales Hiring Headcount Sales 317

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

and Lenny asked us to join his podcast to talk about building a sales team — from the perspective of a product-first founder or exec. It was a pretty strong conversation and we took a lot of our learnings over the years and focused on how to learn to do sales right if you come from a product-first background: It’s good.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Headcount 290

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 5, 2020

On the brighter side, it is a resource for startups looking to hire as they grow. But starting that week, startups began reducing headcount by about 700 per day. ClassPass, one of the fitness startups to reduce headcount, reported a 95% drop in sales in 10 days. First, let’s look at layoffs by day.

Sales Recruiting 357

Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount Sales Hiring 357

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

We can derive the table above if we look over the entire respondent base and bucket headcount by ARR. The median startup with between 1-5M in ARR will have 12 engineers, 6 in sales and 3 in marketing. Meanwhile, the size of the marketing team increases only by 4X, compared to a 10X increase in sales and a 5X+ in engineering.

Scale 363

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, joined Matt Plank, VP of Sales at Rippling, to unlock the secrets to exponential revenue growth. Instead, they focused on how it’s the one that takes away busy work beyond payroll by helping with new hires’ IT requirements, saving founders significant time. Scaling your go-to-market efforts.

Outsourcing Services 287

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 287

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

Hiring for Customer Success When Braze was looking for their first customer success hires, you couldn’t find a CSM with seven years of experience in software because those people didn’t exist yet. Every incremental hire with a small team matters, so it’s worth being clear on what you want.

Scale 296

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 296

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

They focused on building a payment platform that empowers international talent and independent contractors to get paid on time in a compliant way while also ensuring that companies can hire international talent and make payments efficiently. From paid ads to account executive productivity, inform any decision you can with data.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 278

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. That may actually be high, especially if you are scaling quickly and make a few hiring errors. Because that’s more than now.

Scale 322

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 322

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 260

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2024

Growing Headcount and Expenses, Just More Slowly Than Revenue The story for most SaaS and Cloud leaders. They are still hiring and growing expense in all areas, from Sales and Marketing to Product to G&A. Sales & Marketing expense is up 9.8% — but that’s on 22% revenue growth.

Scale 304

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring AI 304

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2021

A few of the best: “Hire more relationship managers. Pay sales reps on renewals (enough to keep them from overselling year 1). Pay sales reps on renewals (enough to keep them from overselling year 1). Hire 9s & 10s ONLY. You can’t cut corners in headcount in success with automation.

Churn 328

Churn Sales Hiring Headcount Technical Review 328

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2022

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. That may actually be high, especially if you are scaling quickly and make a few hiring errors. 2 Managers. 2 Managers.

Scale 277

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 277

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 303

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 303

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. If that’s true, then you should absolutely hire more salespeople.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 306

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

And often, if you are capital efficient, your marketing cost will be close to $0 at this point (you are barely spending anything to acquire most customers), and your sales costs are pretty predictable. Generally speaking, one Director of Sales can manage about 8 closers, account execs, max. Why would this be?

Sales Hiring 270

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 270

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth? It wasn’t until 12 years in that they hired their first commission rep. Now they have sales reps, but still consider themselves PLG.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

But to Go Big, almost everyone in SaaS at least eventually adds a sales team. But to scale it quickly added a very effective sales team : Yes, Atlassian for a long time had almost no “direct” sales team, well after the IPO. With, and through, a sales team. You don’t need 100% sales-driven revenue to Go Big.

Scale 342

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 342

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2023

Monday has held the line on hiring and costs, but kept up strong growth — the combination of which “flipped the switch” into a radically more efficient model. At least in the short term, it is turning most of us can do more with about the same headcount in SaaS. #4. Headcount Growing, But Slowly.

Headcount 328

Headcount Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 328

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. SaaStr’s own Jason Lemkin shares the top 10 mistakes he sees during the hiring process during Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. The last 18 months have seen the biggest changes in the VP of Sales in his SaaS career.

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 162

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in Customer Success and Sales. ” Prediction #3: CSM Hiring Doesn’t Bounce All The Way Back Things are bouncing back, in 2024, not all the way back, so efficiency still matters. They paused hiring for a year (rather than cut) and got profitable.

Sales Hiring 323

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 323

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2021

In the run-up to the 2021 SaaStr Annual , SaaStr’s very own Poya Osgouei sits down with Bryan Elsesser, VP of Sales at SaaStr. Bryan shares tips and his perspective on what’s been effective and useful during his first few months as the VP of Sales at SaaStr. “I should have hired faster.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Headcount Sales Branding 279

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2021

Your sales headcount. Hire a real management team. Hire a VP of Sales that knows what they are doing. Hire a VP of Marketing that knows demand gen cold. Hire a VP of Marketing that knows demand gen cold. You’ll “magically” get more MQLs, and the funnel will be managed more efficiently.

Sales Hiring 312

Sales Hiring Headcount Pricing Market Segmentation 312