SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

Make sure you know how your customers buy and tailor your go to market strategy and messaging to that. When building a list, try to define your potential customer as granularly as possible – size, location, industry, ideal buyer, sales process, technology stack, etc. Very early on it’s weighted towards product vision and sales.

Sales Recruiting 326

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 326

SaaStr

AUGUST 14, 2020

A mistake many founders make is hiring a VP of Sales who has many strengths — but not at sales per se. A VP of Sales who is smart, polished, and worked at the right place, in a management-level position. That can talk about quota attainment and sales operations and scaling and number. you might ask.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 363

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

Sales Recruiting 297

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 297

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

At SaaStr APAC 2023, Scott Pugh, VP of Sales at Figma, shared how to scale these two sales teams while building culture. Pugh’s strategy is simple, albeit not always easy: Recruitment — how to hire the best talent to scale your sales organization. Let’s look at five tips to consider for successful recruiting.

Scale 279

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 279

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, continues a mini-series on founder-led sales with Colin Zima, founder and CEO of Omni. Key Takeaways Building a successful startup is hard work, but you can leverage the resources available to you to accelerate that success.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media Sales 246

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2019

If you must choose a long term headquarters for your startup, call an executive recruiter who focuses in that city. VP Engineering, VP Product, VP Sales, VP Customer Success, VP Marketing, or VP Operations. After establishing product market fit, the startups grow their management team to scale.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 255

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2022

We’ve talked a ton about How to Hire a Great VP of Sales on SaaStr, but I wanted to highlight a few VP of Sales “personas” that I rarely, if ever, see work out. Because again and again, many of your will hire this VP of Sales. Here are the types of VP of Sales that just never work out. Sales is hard.

Sales Recruiting 306

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Biggest Problems You Face as a Startup Founder? From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. Later, once you have a brand, you’ll be competing with Hot Startups nipping at your heals for top VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. This challenge never ends.

Sales Recruiting 291

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 291

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 18, 2018

Startups are business machines engineered to grow quickly. 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. And ship code on time.

Sales Recruiting 270

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Headcount 270

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. So many VPs of Sales disagree with me here — at least at first when I make the point. Sales is hard.

Sales Hiring 308

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 308

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2021

Q: What are the top 3 biggest concerns in managing a first sales team? A few of the top ones: Recruiting. Top sales people want to work for a great VP of Sales. If you don’t have one, it’s very hard to attract top sales reps. Too many startups don’t train or onboard reps properly.

Sales Recruiting 291

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Onboarding 291

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

The template is broken into six sections: People, Bookings & Revenue, Cash, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success. People is the first section because people are a startup’s most important element. This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics.

Metrics 250

Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount 250

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The most frequent mishire in startups is the first head of marketing. Many different disciplines fall under marketing’s purview. The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Each of these kinds of marketers have critical skills for a startup.

Scale 255

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 255

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Dedicated Slack Channel For Every Metric From the early days at Secureframe, they have had a dedicated Slack channel for every metric: every net new sale, every expansion, every churn, and every expense. Work with Great Executive Recruiters ”The first time I saw an invoice for an executive search, I think I had a heart attack,” Shrav joked.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 305

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

Founders are responsible for ensuring a startup always has enough money, setting the vision for the company, and driving things forward. Lesson #1: If You Aren’t Making Mistakes, You Aren’t In A Startup If you do things that always work and maintain the status quo, you’re likely at a major company like Microsoft. And it was true.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 300

Tom Tunguz

MAY 28, 2019

They are are among the best engineers to recruit to the team and the first to join. Today, China, Brazil, India, Argentina, France, Ireland, Germany; you name it, there’s a startup with a remote office there. Sometimes, management spins up new offices to start a functional team like support or success or sales development.

Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Engineering 278

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

When a startup takes form, the first weeks and months and years are spent furiously. The startup raises capital. To recruit 100 people. To understand the competitive dynamics in the market. It’s the same with a startup. The team assembles itself. The lightbulb illuminates. To have built a brand.

Scale 257

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Startup 257

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

The result was a 5x increase over initial projections – growing from an $8M revenue target to $40M actual results – driven by a belief that market demand justified the investment. Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 186

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 186

SaaStr

AUGUST 23, 2022

Dear SaaStr: When Should a CEO of a Startup Stop “Doing the Work” and Let Others Do the Work? So you don’t have to directly manage at least several of the key functional areas in the company at all. A great VP of Marketing that can just get you leads. management team by 50 employees or so.

Part-Time VPE 272

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 272

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

You see this time and time again in startups that are late to “top” their first set of VPs. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. A sign of a marketer that may have reached their limits. What changed? A new revenue team. I see this again and again.

Sales Recruiting 315

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Metrics 315

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

Recently, Redpoint Office Hours welcomed Allison Pickens to clarify the COO role and when startups should consider recruiting one. Whereas a decade ago, a board might have hired a professional CEO to scale the operations of a startup, today, more boards seek COOs. A few hypotheses underpin this trend. The Four COO Archetypes.

Sales Recruiting 212

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Scale 212

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2021

Q: What are some common blind spots and mistakes startups make when hiring for and building out a sales team? Some of the top blind spots founders and even VPs of Sales make: #1. You hire a sales rep to sell before you can prove you can do it yourself. If you pay under-market, you get bottom of the barrel.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Branding 280

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

An oldie but a good on that here: Your #1 Sales Rep Should Be Driving an M8 Convertible By Month 12. It also means cutting lose folks who after a sales cycle or two will never hit quota. Sales is hard. Fourth, make the OTE (“On Target Earnings”) market correct. This sets an example for everyone.

Sales Recruiting 306

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Startup 306

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

Great product, driven team, good early product-market fit, great vision. But after that, it starts to break down when you have to recruit a true management team, and in many cases, additional capital. They’ll know … Who can best recruit a management team? Check, check, check and check. My learning?

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 279

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales. 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. . #1: 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. This one is newer.

Sales Hiring 310

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 310

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Mark Roberge, the Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot, has spent 20 years in startups. As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. The first step is hiring a sales leader.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 184

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. He had a friend help him hire an email marketer to send ticket emails to the events. There’s no choice. Working hard.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 307

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Is a Big Market Really Better than a Niche Market? A big market is better than a small / niche market. 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. What Should I Expect?

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales Hiring Market Segmentation 246

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

Larger technology companies can pay more, offer more benefits, and provide a more marketable brand on a candidate’s resume. and content as well to punch above your weight when recruiting and insights on why the best candidates even say yes to working for smaller brands. How to leverage community involvement to that end.

SMB 108

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 108

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2021

A ways back, I asked Brendon Cassidy, VP of Sales at LinkedIn, Adobe Sign / EchoSign, and Talkdesk to put together his playbook for double sales. … How We Increased Sales Nearly 100% In One Quarter at HackerRank – Brendon Cassidy. Just an FYI: I’ve done some iteration of this 4 times in early stage startups.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 291

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

Your startup is just getting off the ground. You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives?

Compensation 195

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 195

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 363

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

The Return to the Startup Game. Says Bansal, “You should be doing what you enjoy…I realized I really enjoyed the journey of building a startup.” Product-Market Fit: There’s no shortcut –– finding the perfect target will always take time and hard work to get right. But you need more than a vague desire to start a business.

Sales Recruiting 281

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 281

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. They often melt. I say, you just gotta know the product. Not just with buzzwords.

Scale 298

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 298

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We even have 3 great checklists to make sure you hire right: VP of Sales hiring checklist here. VP of Marketing hiring checklist here. Every startup has room for a great evangelist or two, and maybe make space for that hire. Just a few personas I see founders hire in a tough recruiting environment that look like a decent bet.

Sales Hiring 61

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting Startup 61

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 9, 2013

One number investors use to benchmark SaaS startups across sectors and industries is sales efficiency. There are a handful of variants of this metric, sometimes called the magic number, but ultimately they all aim to provide some sense of the incremental revenue returned by sales and marketing investment.

Benchmarks 160

Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 160