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

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. Do you have to double your headcount to make it from $10M to $20M or even $2M to $5M?

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 305

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 296

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 296

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 18, 2018

Every lead hired today, whether marketing , sales, engineering or product, will have a very different job nine months from now, much less two years from now. Imagine you work at a startup that is growing headcount 125% year over year. Priority one for the engineering lead: hire two engineering managers to reduce the span of control.

Sales Recruiting 267

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Headcount 267

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

I really appreciate you coming to talk about how to attract, hire, and build a more diverse sales team in your organization. So I’ve been building top-producing sales teams for a really, really long time. So over the years, I’ve watched many sales leaders go out and say, “Brian’s my top producer.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 263

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

The template is broken into six sections: People, Bookings & Revenue, Cash, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success. This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics. It’s important to track the number of leads in the conversion rates to sales generated by sales.

Metrics 205

Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount 205

The Angel VC

JUNE 25, 2015

For most SaaS startups, the VP of Sales (along with the VP of Marketing) is one of the most crucial hires they need to make. Unless you have a no/low touch sales model and you're growing virally (a.k.a. hunting rabbits or deer ) or a field sales team (a.k.a. hunting rabbits or deer ) or a field sales team (a.k.a.

Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 185

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. Starting a new sales team is not unlike doing improv.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive. Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive.

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 162

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

Inspired by the release of our book Intercom on Sales , we wanted to take a fresh look at three big topics – speed, automation, and growth. We wanted to know: what are sales leaders doing to bring velocity to their sales cycle? How are they using automation to bring new efficiencies to their sales orgs?

Scale 139

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Trends 139

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. Then, the sales team went to work. When making a sales hire, Max pays attention to the way candidates approach getting the job.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Getting the team right is one of the hardest parts of scaling sales. But no sales team can afford to grow without intention. While building a sales team, we’ve focused a lot on our sales culture. Here’s how we went about growing a sales team that is both world class and culture-additive.

Scale 160

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 160

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

If you’ve got a good setup, then more teams equal more product, and more product equals more marketing and more sales and all sorts of stuff like that. ” I think the “Sure thing boss, give me more headcount” is obvious. The only challenge there is your recruiting capacity, right? We could charge X.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 25, 2019

Given that the primary metric we measure growth in is revenue, it follows that sales feels growth more acutely than almost any other function. As the Senior Vice President of Sales for Pipedrive , she’s currently responsible for building nimble sales teams who drive sustainable revenue.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 136

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 29, 2021

Ever since he was hired as the Director of EMEA Sales at BrowserStack , a web and mobile testing platform that lets developers test their websites and mobile applications across browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices, he had to completely rethink how to successfully onboard hundreds of salespeople just as everyone was going remote.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 223

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 29, 2018

In this blueprint, we provide insights on how to structure your sales organization. The changes in SaaS require that we no longer look at salespeople as individual contributors, but rather a team that crosses disciplines, not just within sales but also across other parts of the organization such as marketing and product.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 81

Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2021

In 2020 I was building my sales team at Livestorm , and at the time we were going through a big hiring boom. Over the course of time, I’ve interviewed and talked to hundreds of sales candidates. This was the case for me years ago when I started applying for sales positions in France, Ireland, and Luxembourg.

Sales Hiring 102

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 102

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 85

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation Underperforming Technical Team 85

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Companies were growing their sales organizations and bringing in more revenue. Companies everywhere have frozen their hiring and laid off workers — with sales reps often among the first to go. I’ll be honest: as the leader of a sales-focused recruiting company, this has been tough for me and my team.

Sales Hiring 105

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 105

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

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

JUNE 26, 2018

Today, everyone working in and around sales and marketing knows that bots are hot, in vogue and quite simply, of the moment. In my role leading sales enablement at HubSpot in EMEA, we deliberately carve out time to think about ways to leverage tools, technology and software that will make sales reps more effective.

Sales Enablement 100

Sales Enablement Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 100

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process. After getting slapped on the wrist a few times for my after-sales support, I knew things had to change. We had presales, and we had post-sales.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 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. The processes are probably new.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

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 83

Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 83

SaaSX

JULY 26, 2020

Here are 5 roles you may not have thought of and how they can help drive immediate revenue & sales efficiency impact. Role: Also known as Sales Engineer, but I prefer to call it Product Specalist. This is a dedicated role that helps distribute product knowledge across a fast-scaling sales and customer success team.

Sales Recruiting 64

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Scale Startup 64

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 6, 2020

Old school recruiting is out, social recruiting is in. This was needed anyway as we had grown in headcount and mission quite a bit since the beginning. Your LinkedIn is your resume in today’s business world, especially in sales. You’ll work closely with me, and other Founders, VP Sales, and VP Marketing.

Sales Hiring 66

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting PayPal Headcount 66

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. Since then, you’ve spent over 12 years in post-sales leadership. Going through all parts of the customer journey.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Strategy 177

OpenView Labs

JUNE 3, 2021

Specifically, I’m talking about product management and product marketing. Unlike functions such as sales, engineering, or finance—where the roles, responsibilities, and outcomes are clearly understood (and measurable)—product management and product marketing can’t always make those claims, particularly in early-stage companies.

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Startup Scale 93

Outseta

JANUARY 20, 2020

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. There was no strike price or vesting schedule associated with these units—they were simply granted to employees based on performance or as a recruiting tool. The business was structured as an LLC.

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Methods Payment Services 145

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 18, 2020

Like let’s take a more conservative approach in the earlier months of the year in terms of adding headcount. Can we recruit hiring new team members from January to April, or from January to June this year, just to make sure that as we enter in the next year, we’re able to start off with some wins and not get upside down.

Customer Success 87

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Finance 87

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

Skillset 1: Sales acumen In 2024, driving revenue is a primary responsibility of CS. This means that sales acumen is no longer just a bonus for CS professionals—it’s a new baseline for many companies. Customer success manager roles The CSM role is becoming more strategic, with increased responsibility for driving revenue.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2020

We’re going through layoffs and furloughs, recession planning and for me as the CMO, facing really massive cuts to marketing budgets and headcount. Meagen, sales. Launch it to our customers, launch it to the sales team, launch it to prospects.” And then of course, sales pipeline and the livelihood of our business.

Travel 207

Travel Scale Marketing Outsourcing Services 207

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 28, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Amyra Rand , VP of Sales & Strategic Partnerships at Criteria Corp. Amyra is also a member of the Revenue Collective & the Chapter VP at the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals; she is an MBA from Pepperdine. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast.

VP of Engineering 41

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale 41

OpenView Labs

JUNE 10, 2019

Inner Workings of Product Management at Product Led Growth Companies. At product led growth (PLG) companies like Atlassian and Intercom, product management may look very different from a ‘traditional’ SaaS company. These companies have fewer sales reps (or none at all), meaning more resources get invested into product and engineering.

Management 55

Management SaaS Scale Sales Recruiting 55

OpenView Labs

MAY 5, 2021

Other businesses, like LinkedIn and Netflix, have strong histories of being producers of open-source projects, which provides a strategic recruitment and retention tool for top-tier engineering talent. Related podcast episode: How MongoDB Scaled Their Open-Source Product with a Bottom-Up and Top-Down Sales Motion.

Business 52

Business SMB Scale DevOps as a Service 52