Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 29, 2019

In this week’s episode we’ve dug down into the podcast vaults to bring you some of the best insights shared by our guests about scaling sales. It’s no surprise that one of the key levers for growth as you go from startup to scale-up is your sales team. Hiring for sales with John Barrows.

Scale 172

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Payment Services 172

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 20, 2019

There’s been a lot of discussion around the role of SDRs in modern sales, and what’s changed about the role over the past decade. However, one thing that hasn’t changed is the following: almost every SDR’s goal is to be promoted into a closing sales role, usually as fast as possible. There are a few reasons behind this. Here’s why.

Sales Hiring 35

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Headcount 35

Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2020

Like most things in life, hiring sales talent is a matter of timing. Especially since the best candidates with strong sales skills are usually snatched up within 10 days. That’s why it’s critical to overcome indecision and move quickly when recruiting sales talent. Is it unrealistic sales quotas?

Sales Hiring 99

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation Underperforming Technical Team 99

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

But with so much data to consider, how can you define the help desk metrics that matter for your team? This can empower teams to take strategic action to improve their overall support experience for customers. This metric represents the average amount of time it takes your customer support team to settle a case once it’s opened.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

Sales Hacker

JULY 24, 2018

As sales leaders, most of us assume that many aspects of our sales machine will become inefficient during hypergrowth. As we think of ways to improve sales performance, a number of growth pains may come in the way: High acquisition costs. Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. It’s a byproduct.

Scale 77

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Scaling 77

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

Companies which don’t use mental models risk unleashing mayhem with poor choices or becoming bloated and bureaucratic by reducing the volume and speed at which decisions are made - both scenarios are undesirable and will impact growth. OKRs are a useful mental model - they make it crystal clear what people and teams should be striving for.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is. 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. For Natasha, the answer is a resounding yes.

Outsourcing Services 206

Outsourcing Services Scale Software Sales Hiring 206

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 20, 2022

We surveyed and interviewed key people in our teams to understand how they worked and how they saw Intercom’s internal operations. Honest feedback can be hard to take, but it’s essential to develop the type of culture that encourages people to constructively criticize processes, leadership styles, or approaches. Paul: Yeah.

Underperforming Technical Team 249

Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Sales Hiring Scale 249

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

But as the business becomes more successful – and there are resources to build a support team – additional layers begin to separate executives from their customers. Since 2010, he’s helped the company grow to more than 40,000 customers and helped scale the support team to more than 500 employees to assist those users. Short on time?

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

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. Providing the right cold calling training can make or break the success of a new team member. According to data from RingLead, sales reps spend as much as 15% of their time leaving voicemails.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Headcount 121

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 27, 2019

Sales leaders have a bad habit of dumping people into a new job without properly preparing them to succeed. When I landed my first “big girl job” 20 years ago as an Inside Sales Manager , I was underqualified, overambitious, and soon underwater. What’s So Important About Sales Onboarding? So tune in….

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 92

SaaSOptics

MAY 2, 2022

The two most common go-to-market strategies are sales-led growth (SLG) and, more recently, product-led growth (PLG). . In a sales-led model, sales processes and teams are the primary drivers of revenue growth. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but neither is better or worse than the other.

Scale 97

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 97

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

In August of 2016, Rachel Hepworth embarked on a unique challenge: start a growth marketing team at one of the most successful startups of this generation – one that had long relied heavily on word of mouth. I stumbled upon Eric Ries and Steve Blank, the concept of customer development – it was a revelation. We got sales leads.

Growth Marketing 174

Growth Marketing Scale Marketing Outsourcing Services 174

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. So how do you create a strong, enterprise-ready team? Your first SaaS customer success hire.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Strategy 177

Outseta

JANUARY 20, 2020

I was offered a job as Buildium’s first full-time marketing hire, pulling in a cool $38,400 annually. I was managing a team of 15 and the company had grown to about 140 employees. In light of the sale of Buildium last month I figured now is as good of a time as any to reflect on the most important ones.

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Methods Payment Services 145

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

And yet, downplaying your team’s needs undermines CS’s current impact and future revenue-driving potential. According to our 2022 Customer Success Leadership Study, CS teams are already underfunded and under-resourced. This is something that I’m doing with fractional headcount allocation. Now we have a name for this.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 98

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

As VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, Elad Gil was a key player as company headcount skyrocketed from 90 to 1,500 employees. This wasn’t Elad’s first experience with hyper growth – Google grew headcount 10x during his time as a product manager there – nor the last. Short on time? The second is employees.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

FastSpring

JANUARY 31, 2023

Table of Contents What areas of the payment lifecycle will you be able to manage and what other software will you need for a complete payment solution? Eventually, you’ll need additional software to manage complex recurring billing needs, accept more payment methods around the world, or create a customized checkout process.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Software Review 147

Baremetrics

AUGUST 29, 2021

An effective sales outbound strategy needs to balance two opposing elements: efficiency vs. personal touch. We recommend starting with LinkedIn’s own Sales Navigator. Let’s say your ICP is a web developer running a startup on the East Coast. This will result in poor open and response rates.

Scale 97

Scale Startup Sales Hiring Sales 97

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

It’s an important question, as your target growth rate determines your hiring plan, budget, and fundraising strategy. What makes things tricky is, first, the uncertainty of how your CACs will develop at increasing scale and of how your churn rate will develop over time. I’ve created a very simple model that illustrates this.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 106

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Pipeline analytics: Offers sales managers a view of their teams’ pipelines that goes beyond what’s available in their native SFA applications. Here’s what we use: CRM (SFDC), Sales Acceleration (SalesLoft), Forecasting (SalesLoft), Conversation Intelligence (Gong), Data (custom in-house), Automation (Momentum).

AI 97

AI Revenue Scale ChatGPT 97

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 19, 2022

Here are a few key takeaways: An Internal Quality Score offers a more holistic view of an agent’s strengths and opportunities for growth and helps organizations gain insight into their teams’ work. To maintain quality as you scale, don’t compromise your bars on hiring – even if you’re doing it under pressure.

Benchmarks 104

Benchmarks Sales Hiring Scale Strategy 104

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that focuses on maximizing revenue by aligning the teams that directly impact the bottom line. … Or, simply put, it’s a connecting link between your sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Is it a Head of Sales? But who’s this mystical “RevOps” creature?

Revenue 52

Revenue Technical Review Sales Hiring Scale 52

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. Providing the right cold calling training can make or break the success of a new team member. According to data from RingLead, sales reps spend as much as 15% of their time leaving voicemails.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Headcount 52

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

It’s an important question, as your target growth rate determines your hiring plan, budget, and fundraising strategy. What makes things tricky is, first, the uncertainty of how your CACs will develop at increasing scale and of how your churn rate will develop over time. I’ve created a very simple model that illustrates this.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

ChurnZero

JUNE 3, 2022

For starters, the CS role has earned its rightful spot as one of a startup’s first ten hires. VC and PE firms now ask founders about the metrics owned by CS teams, specifically NRR and GRR , within the first ten minutes of conversation. You Mon: When I think about being a leader, it’s all about how do I get my team to succeed.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring B2B Technical Review 52

ChurnZero

JUNE 3, 2022

For starters, the CS role has earned its rightful spot as one of a startup’s first ten hires. VC and PE firms now ask founders about the metrics owned by CS teams, specifically NRR and GRR , within the first ten minutes of conversation. You Mon: When I think about being a leader, it’s all about how do I get my team to succeed.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring B2B Technical Review 52

OpenView Labs

JUNE 10, 2019

It’s easy to forget that SaaS product management is a relatively new, and still emerging, function. For proof, might I suggest the classic post Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager , which presents a very different vision for the role of product manager than most of us have today). Role of Product Manager.

Management 55

Management SaaS Scale Sales Recruiting 55

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 29, 2021

And so, Mark Rudden and his team had to figure it all out by themselves. Fortunately, Mark had quite a bit of experience working and scaling teams in demanding, hypergrowth environments. In fact, in some form or another, he’s been working in sales for most of his career. The journey to sales is a bit of a random one.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 223

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 16, 2019

Growing a sales team isn’t as simple as putting a bunch of A players in a room and getting them to start selling your product. If you want to build a revenue engine that will fuel long-term growth, you need to build and scale your sales org with intention. 12 steps to build a world-class sales team.

Scale 156

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 156

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 243

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 243

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

As for Karl, prior to founding the company he spent 6 years at Google in some fascinating roles including Head of Patents, Head of Business Development in China and running Google’s energy investments. How does one know when we need to hire generalists vs specialists? How does Karl structure the hiring process today? What works?

Sales Hiring 239

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 239

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 7, 2025

The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Fred Viet serves as the Chief Sales Officer at Aircall, overseeing global sales and playing a key role in scaling the company’s reach over the last four years. It helps me and the team be so much more productive.

Outsourcing Services 118

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development AWS 118

Kellblog

JUNE 4, 2023

In that (quite popular) post, I shared Mark’s top ten list of mistakes that enterprise software startups make in sales and go-to-market. Compound this general lack of attention with reductions in headcount and tough economic times, and partners can devolve from an afterthought to a never-thought.

Sales Recruiting 115

Sales Recruiting Compensation SaaS Sales Hiring 115

Baremetrics

JULY 25, 2019

Because of its immense impact on warfare and commerce, weather forecasting has commanded significant research and development focus since the 1980’s, second only to cryptography in global consumption of compute cycles. It feels hotter outside than yesterday” : “Our sales team has more momentum than last month.” Yes and no.

Forecasting 88

Forecasting Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 88

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2025

Wiz discovered a direct correlation between territory size and productivity: the tighter the territories, the more effective their sales team became. Contrary to conventional wisdom, hiring based solely on restaurant experience wasn’t effective.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 205