SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2023

SaaS companies must implement flexible and innovative sales strategies that can weather the future. The state of B2B sales in 2023 Before creating a dynamic strategy, it is essential to understand the current state of B2B sales. Redeploy funds from headcount to sales technology. Digitalization of the buying and selling process.

Innovation 246

Innovation Sales Hiring B2B Strategy 246

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2023

Workstreams within SaaS companies are specialized : content marketing, a valuable GTM strategy for many businesses, represents a low-single digit percentage of the employee population. Assume a 15% productivity improvement that results in a 1.5% improvement across the company.

AI 321

AI Startup Scale Headcount 321

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 11, 2022

In today’s digital era, customer expectations are rising but many support teams lack the modern tools and strategies needed to provide personal, efficient support at internet scale. And they’ll be able to do this efficiently, without increasing headcount or hours logged. Get a sneak peek at the key strategies you’ll learn in the guide.

Headcount 237

Headcount Customer Support Strategy Branding 237

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 24, 2018

“There is more to scaling up than just machine learning and bots” A key part of our strategy revolves around automation, including our recently released Answer Bot , but there is more to scaling up than just machine learning and bots. Here’s a look at how we have managed it and how you can too. Automation.

Scale 178

Scale Customer Support Scaling Strategy 178

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

Don’t Tie Revenue To Headcount “You want to get away from a business model where every incremental dollar requires incremental hiring,” says Deatsch. So instead of focusing on scaling headcount quickly, work toward growing revenue quickly. But if you don’t require a top-down approach, pay attention to two things.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 258

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Deel solved this by scaling the revenue operations team in conjunction to support sales, design quotas, and go-to-market strategies, and leverage data to identify the best strategies. Without headcount planning for the support team, the company’s response time and customer satisfaction scores dipped. Listen to your team.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 269

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

For CS, you’re likely building relationships, guiding strategy, and driving product strategy, which is a different motion from technical support. Headcount isn’t the right story for them, though. Eventually, this team moved out of growth, so their success wasn’t dependent on budget or headcount.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 284

SaaStr

AUGUST 21, 2024

Only Grew Sales & Marketing Expense 12%, and Cut R&D (Product + Engineering) and G&A Expenses Toast has gotten to profitability by truly holding the line on headcount and revenue expenses. Sales & Marketing has only grown 12% as revenue has grown 29%, and R&D expense actually went … down. #5.

Scale 294

Scale Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 294

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 31, 2023

AI Efficiency Gains +2% Headcount Reduction ? But the dominant strategy has been to hire more reps while maintaining quotas rather than increasing quotas meaningfully - perhaps an artifact of the easy money era. All of these technologies are still nascent & imperfect, but they should improve through the course of the year.

Headcount 216

Headcount Sales Hiring AI Cloud 216

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

Do you have to double your headcount to make it from $10M to $20M or even $2M to $5M? For headcount specifically, make sure that the constraint to growing faster is that you don’t have enough salespeople to work the demand that exists for your business. When those outcomes are achieved, the hire gets their headcount.

Sales Hiring 294

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 294

Sales Hacker

JUNE 27, 2025

GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies. Mary Meeker doesn’t publish often.

AI Search 87

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 87

Tom Tunguz

JULY 21, 2022

Management teams expect to reduce operating expense by 20% predominantly through headcount reductions or hiring freezes - everyone from sardine startups to public megalodons. Software automates manual work, provides leverage, and the total cost is often less than a headcount. Software does more with less.

Sales Hiring 189

Sales Hiring Headcount Software Finance 189

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Lots of SaaS founders are preoccupied with employee headcount as an important growth metric, but this indicator is not always true. So they always prioritize the most high-ROI projects, the most high-ROI tasks, and because there is a small group of people working on a multitude of things, they have a very 360-view of business strategy.

Compensation 258

Compensation Leadership Company Culture Headcount 258

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Vimeo just hired their first sales rep 3 years ago to spearhead $20k+ deals … and now they have 100 reps, and are on track to double that headcount. If nothing else, a reminder that strategies are different in different geos, and deserve their own team. #10. My Top 10 Learnings: #1. 50% of Vimeo’s revenue is international.

Enterprise 292

Enterprise Scale Sales Hiring Headcount 292

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 23, 2022

With increasing business costs and reduced headcount, companies are feeling the squeeze as they also grapple with rising consumer expectations. So, with a great support strategy you can reduce churn, improve customer lifetime value, and overall boost your bottom line. Here are four areas where you can supercharge your strategy.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Retention Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 211

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

The headcount and other ongoing operating costs do add to expenses and hit earnings, however. If the acquisition fails years down the road, that Goodwill may need to be written off, and impact earnings for a quarter as a one-time expense. But even there, it’s years later, and a one-off expense.

Acquisition 293

Acquisition Investment Headcount Banking 293

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

The key is to make sure that your sales aren’t entirely dependent on the founder, but that the product and strategy are strong enough for a good sales team to run with themselves. Hire a VP that knows what they’re doing and then get fully aligned on strategy. 1 – Have a recruiting strategy. Removing the founder effect.

Sales Recruiting 248

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 248

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2021

Even if the decision is made to invest more, future headcount is often sourced from internal team members and processes. Around Year 2, a BigCo typically has to measure the experiment in the acquisition and see how it’s performed. This can result in shrinking the team down if it’s underperformed, or investing more if it’s performed well.

Acquisition 249

Acquisition Technical Review Headcount Finance 249

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

The Right Amount of Headcount Is Far Less Clear When Bootstrapping. Almost everyone I’ve talked to that does profit sharing or similar initiatives gives up and just ends up doing traditional bonuses in the end, traditional sales comp plans, etc. #6. Probably Far Less is The Answer. SaaStr has 7 employees. Should we have 70?

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Headcount Startup Revenue 245

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

They grew headcount fairly aggressively from ‘21 to ‘22, and then Q4 of last year dipped and held flat before starting to regrow. Monday will probably add 25% headcount this year. With Monday, which happened with so many leaders, they hit headwinds, and NRR went from epic to pretty good. Salesforce is back to hiring.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 278

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Instead of celebrating headcount, focus on growing efficiently in scalable ways.” . Develop impactful messaging to tell your product story and embed that into your outbound strategy. It was imperative at this stage to get more effective with emails. Unconventional scaling ideas to accelerate growth.

Outsourcing Services 276

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 276

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 14, 2020

Maintaining a 100% real-time experience typically requires: Increasing headcount to keep pace with a growing customer base and their conversations. And if you don’t increase headcount, you risk burning your team out. That’s less than ideal, especially if you see spikes in customer demand at different points throughout the year.

Headcount 224

Headcount Retention Customer Support Scaling 224

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

The headcount and other ongoing operating costs do add to expenses and hit earnings, however. If the acquisition fails years down the road, that Goodwill may need to be written off, and impact earnings for a quarter as a one-time expense. But even there, it’s years later, and a one-off expense.

Acquisition 257

Acquisition Investment Headcount Banking 257

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Reduced headcount, longer working hours, and a spike in queries have led to burnout. It takes strategy, processes, design, technology, and the right people to build an empathetic mindset that impacts customers and employees. Are there any other options companies can look at instead of reducing headcount? Doing more with less.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Trends Technical Review Headcount 211

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

We recently sat down with Linda to chat about how customer success matures as you move upmarket and which strategies can help you to better serve your customers going forward. You’re a big part of their tech stack, you’re a big part of their investment strategy, you’re a big part of their spend. What do I love?'”

Customer Success 177

Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring Strategy 177

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2021

In a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Intercom undertaken in April 2021, Drive Conversational Experiences for a Future-Ready Customer Support Strategy , we learned that only 37% of support leaders and decision-makers are satisfied with their organization’s current digital channels and solutions.

Underperforming Technical Team 232

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Scale Headcount 232

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 7, 2022

Increase your leads without increasing your headcount. But one of the major benefits of live chat for sales is that it allows you to capture and qualify more leads without needing to increase headcount.

Sales Funnel 245

Sales Funnel Sales Headcount Subscription 245

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

But specializing across the sales process will take more headcount. Dominant-Dominant Strategy Sales & Marketing is Very, Very Expensive. Whatever it is, you’ll want to move away from a generalist approach. In the end, you can raise AE quotas to pay for this, at least in theory. It will take more of a village.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 269

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Help desk metrics are measurements that allow you to track your performance and effectively adjust your strategy to provide better customer support. It can also guide your hiring process if increasing headcount is required to guarantee 24/7 coverage for customers. What are help desk metrics? Customer satisfaction. Tickets by hour.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

It used to really bug me because I am a firm believer in the strategy of Zero Voluntary Attrition and trying to hire fewer, more committed resources over a higher volume of mercenaries that turn over more often. Because sales is a lead-driven but headcount- closed business. Sales Strategy. What markets should we expand into?

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Authoritative, actionable strategies on how to grow your business. A substitute for strategy or planning. For example, our leadership team might decide to focus our company strategy on targeting the segments with the best revenue retention. Assessing progress on our strategy. Download The Growth Handbook.

Business 184

Business B2C Scale Headcount 184

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2024

In their most recent earnings call, they made a change in strategy to lean more into product-led. One of the strategy changes is to say, “Hey if we turn up the innovation and actual product quality, can we ultimately get around having to spend all this money on advertising?” And how do you think about CAC for those free-ish people?

AI Search 268

AI Search SaaS Advertising Sales Hiring 268

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

1 Thing That Changes in Marketing As You Scale: The Product Maturity Curve Determines Marketing Strategy Your marketing strategy should be extremely tightly aligned to the product maturity curve. The takeaway: determine your marketing strategy and tactics based on where you are in product maturity curve. #2

Scale 268

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 268

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. Theres more to this strategy than just the nice revenue bump. 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

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 2, 2019

How do you ensure a great customer experience globally without adding a ton of headcount? Although it may seem like a no-brainer for businesses to offer customer support in multiple languages, in a recent survey we found that the vast majority of businesses struggle to implement an effective multilingual support strategy.

Scale 209

Scale Outsourcing Services Scaling Technical Review 209

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Often, founders are unsure about the headcount split between India and the US. At the highest levels, competition is about product strategy and brand. That means showing up in every quadrant of your category, hiring A players, putting yourself out there. Putting yourself out there, even a little bit, helps. Sequencing products is key.

Scale 286

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Cybersecurity 286

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 10, 2021

“Companies want to do right by their customers, but support teams are always stretched during this time of year and the global supply chain issues are causing an even greater strain for both the support teams and the consumers they’re supporting,” says Des Traynor , Intercom’s co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer. hours per week.

Headcount 195

Headcount Customer Support Scale AI 195