Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2024

Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a post about the minimum viable average contract value to justify a sales team. Most companies typically hire account executives & development reps at $15k or greater in contract value because the economics of lower ACVs aren’t viable for most. What business problems are newly solvable?

CTO Hire 216

CTO Hire Outsourced Development Sales Hiring CTO 216

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2019

The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Why is the sales funnel alone, no longer an appropriate way of thinking about customers? Brian Halligan: Whether we all like it or not, trust in sales and marketing is at an all-time low. We’re going to hire tele-sales reps who are going to cold call.

Scale 55

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 55

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 242

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Leveraging survey data from 66+ enterprise SaaS companies, Matt Garratt, Managing Partner of Salesforce Ventures shares the landscape of how businesses are shifting their sales & GTM strategies to react to today’s uncertain times. Adnan Chaudhry | SVP of Sales @ Salesforce.

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Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 213

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 15, 2020

In this episode, Bob and I chat about his new book Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress. What is it about sales that makes academia hesitant to teach it? Bob wondered where all the sales professors were and discovered that perhaps as a profession it required more art than science.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Sales VP of Engineering Underperforming Technical Team 265

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2023

Small markets are often, though not always, less crowded. If that’s the case, sometimes starting there and then expanding into a larger market segment can work out well. A small segment of a large market is often where most of us star t. One of the best sales people. The best product guy or marketing person.

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Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales Hiring Market Segmentation 246

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 24, 2017

How did a business at this price point scale, especially with an inside sales team? What’s more, they operate “below the minimum ACV to hire an inside sales team.” Critically, Fleetmatics matches their sales tactics to their price point. Fast sales cycles reduce costs further.

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Sales Hiring Strategy Venture Capital Marketing 186

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

From B2C consumer-focused tech to the next B2B enterprise cloud giants, B2B, and B2C technology companies are springing up left and right and sprinting toward multi-billion dollar valuations (whether on the private or public markets) faster than ever. What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?

VP of Engineering 121

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 121

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Discovering the entire market and mapping out all potential verticals early in the process. The incredible power and value of the mid-market segment. This spend is your lead gen, marketing, SDRs, and sales team salary and commission. Building customer feedback into the DNA of your product team and products.

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Scale Scaling Strategy Sales Hiring 309

The Angel VC

SEPTEMBER 16, 2013

The next logical step is sales, and so I want to write about what you can do to convert as many of those leads into paying customers. The next logical step is sales, and so I want to write about what you can do to convert as many of those leads into paying customers.

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Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales 153

Sales Hacker

JUNE 14, 2018

There are many levers a sales leader or organization may pull to gain scale, accelerate revenue, drive cost savings, or augment sales team structures. A viable and proven option is handing over some or all of your sales efforts to outsourced sales professionals. 5) DO ensure sales and marketing are aligned.

Outsourcing Services 81

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 81

The Angel VC

JUNE 28, 2017

Once you have PMF, you can start to focus on hiring, getting more customers, finding customer acquisition channels, optimizing pricing, and so on. Michael Skok added the important element of the “Minimum Viable Segment” in this article , pointing out that “your product isn’t going to fit the entire market from day one.

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Sales Hiring Scale Product Marketing Startup 237

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 16, 2018

A proper outbound sales strategy has real science behind it. Market Segmentation combined with tailored messaging. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in 6 months: our outbound sales system is fueling this growth. How To Build An Efficient Outbound Sales System. Evaluate the attractiveness of each segment.

Scale 105

Scale Sales Hiring Payment Services Payment Methods 105

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2019

It was an inside sales team calling on all regions around the world. And as part of our enterprise transformation, we’ve put more and more feet on the street in local markets where our customers are located. I’ll start with some of the easy ones on the sales side. We had a headquarters office in San Francisco.

Scale 239

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 239

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 22, 2018

Step 1: Identify the job that new users hire your product to do. Your product may do different jobs for different market segments. The solution is to build your onboarding experience around user value and drive new customers to an ‘aha’ moment, not a tour through product features. Here’s how to do that.

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Onboarding Sales Hiring Market Segmentation Branding 188

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 12, 2017

On top of that, why are sales people some of the few employees subject to variable compensation structures? Do other roles have employees that are all equally internally motivated while sales just attracts the classic “slimy” stereotype that everyone loves to hate? Sales performance is easier to measure than other roles.

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Compensation Sales Hiring Sales Payment Services 98

Sales Hacker

APRIL 30, 2024

In this role he oversees all aspects of G2’s revenue generation, including global sales and customer success, enablement, partnerships, and revenue operations. Prior to his tenure at Upwork, Eric held a number of leadership roles at CareerBuilder, most recently as President of Vertical Sales.

Scale 121

Scale Enterprise Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 121

FastSpring

AUGUST 2, 2023

When TestDome was created, CEO and co-founder Mario Zivic knew the pre-employment testing software company wouldn’t be able to rely on domestic sales to succeed. “As We do less than 1% of our business in Croatia, so it’s not really a big market for us,” added TestDome’s head of customer success and sales Igor Novosel.

Payment Solutions 148

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Merchant Services AI Search 148

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 28, 2018

Here’s a recap of the best sales articles from 2018 from Sales Hacker! With 2019 is right on the horizon, I’m taking this as an opportunity to look back at the kickass year we had at Sales Hacker. for making Sales Hacker what it is. The 18 best sales articles of 2018 from Sales Hacker. More on that later…).

Sales Hiring 110

Sales Hiring Sales Underperforming Technical Team B2B 110

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

SalesLoft, why was that Pardot, I tried to recruit this guy, Kyle Porter, to come run sales at Pardot. Let’s be 50/50 co-founders and let’s start a company in the sales space.” Product number three for SalesLoft is today’s product, sales engagement software. I sat down with Kyle at lunch.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 201

Sales Hacker

APRIL 29, 2021

Your sales org is fundamentally different today than it was a year or two ago. With the advent of sales engagement platforms (SEPs) and other tools which make it easy to scale outbound sales communications, Rolodexes and spreadsheets are things of the past, with technology taking over many formerly manual steps.

Scale 116

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 116

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

With the rise of AI, new sales technology and automation at the forefront of the sales echo chamber these days, we thought we’d take a moment to bring it back to BASICS – that’s why we’ve rounded up this complete glossary of sales terms and definitions to help you remember where it all started.

Scale 105

Scale Payment Methods Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments 105

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 27, 2019

The direction often falls on the head of sales, marketing or product. Sometimes the CFO is held accountable. Build value calculators and pricing calculators that connect sales to customer success. Train marketing and sales on how to position price in the context of value.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Consulting Pricing Scale 52

Outseta

JANUARY 20, 2020

I was offered a job as Buildium’s first full-time marketing hire, pulling in a cool $38,400 annually. 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. We could branch out into commercial property management. Without further adieu, let’s dig in.

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Methods Payment Services 145

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Enterprise sales is not a simple switch to make from SMB sales—it’s a completely different beast. I recently caught up with a founder I talked to last year who didn’t have the time (or desire) to deal with sales and wanted to hire someone to ‘”validate the market” for him. Let me be clear.

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Enterprise Scale Startup 74

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

And then the sale will commence as far as the people and this was, we were multiple millions of dollars of revenue until I took the first call. That means lots and lots of hiring and I don’t want to say firing, we did fire anyone, but people get reshuffled, you know? Jonathan : Did you have to do any sort of big steps hiring wise?

Scale 206

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 206

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2019

The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Why is the sales funnel alone, no longer an appropriate way of thinking about customers? Brian Halligan: Whether we all like it or not, trust in sales and marketing is at an all-time low. We’re going to hire tele-sales reps who are going to cold call.

Scale 112

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 112

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Those economies of scale may exist as a consequence of a strong brand, monopoly-like characteristics within their market segment, improving sales efficiency, increases in contract size, better rates of customer upsells, etc. It indicates that the company is achieving economies of scale.

Benchmarks 100

Benchmarks Revenue Scale Metrics 100

OpenView Labs

JUNE 3, 2021

Engineering manages IT. Hiring managers take on HR responsibilities. Specifically, I’m talking about product management and product marketing. Product marketing also focuses on understanding the market and market needs, but with an emphasis on understanding the buyer of the company’s products and services.

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Startup Scale 93

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

It’s an important question, as your target growth rate determines your hiring plan, budget, and fundraising strategy. As I wrote here , trying to forecast what happens to your CACs if you 10x your sales and marketing spend is very difficult. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 106

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

There’s no single path to the top in Sales. Sure, I didn’t actually start in sales and work directly up that path. You may decide that you really like being a VP of Sales and want to keep doing that role at a larger and larger scale, or at new companies. So I can’t offer a paint-by-numbers guide or a single specific approach.

Scale 95

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership 95

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 4, 2020

If you are thinking about hiring an analytics agency, here is everything you need to know. Or perhaps you need to discover new market segments by leveraging customer data. For instance, you may choose to double down on a particular sales channel, or realise that you need to remove a bottleneck in your operations.

Artificial Intelligence 136

Artificial Intelligence Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning 136

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 11, 2022

So far, we’ve seen a slowdown in the venture market due to the drop in the stock market, inflation, an increase in interest rates, and a number of other issues. According to Crunchbase, valuations are declining, funding rounds are slowing, and some tech companies are freezing hiring or laying off employees to boost profits.

Scale 97

Scale Scaling Technical Review Venture Capital 97

Kellblog

DECEMBER 27, 2021

SaaS provided provided both a market disruption opportunity and a total available market (TAM) expansion in each market segment. While I’ll cover PLG more below, I think it will have a similar effect, providing both a disruption opportunity in existing segments while simultaneously expanding their potential.

Blockchain 145

Blockchain Technical Review Venture Capital Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2023

The Sales Hacker Newsletter has now merged with The GTM Newsletter to make one of the largest newsletters in the space. As always, you’ll hear real stories/strategies/tactics from real revenue operators spanning: sales, marketing, customer success, operations/enablement, product and hiring. Needs more pre sales support.

Scale 90

Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Enterprise 90

Sales Hacker

APRIL 22, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Nick Worswick, Global Head of Growth for WeWork. How to hack your hiring process to drive scale. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Welcome to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Showpad is the leading sales enablement platform for the modern seller. What You’ll Learn.

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Development Team Review Scale Software Review Sales Hiring 66

Outseta

MAY 8, 2020

Remote work is a setup that’s better aligned with deep work and productivity, and also dramatically opens up the talent pool that companies can hire from. New waves of technology come and go in the blink of an eye, each with its own wave of new founders trying to flip their start-up in a newly hot market segment.

Part-Time VPE 102

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 102