SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Sessions typically focus on real metrics, strategies, and lessons learned, not theoretical concepts. Finding and recruiting top talent is consistently ranked as one of the biggest challenges for growing SaaS companies. Meet and Find Your Next VP / CXO! Competitive Intelligence and Market Insights and New!! Be There.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

Sales Hiring 311

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 311

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2022

Having learned from thousands of customers and prospects, Sarah Lash, Envoy’s head of enterprise sales, will talk about what it takes to guide and scale enterprise sales programs during an uncertain future. Metrics That Matter. In my first six months at Envoy , I grew the sales team from six to 17. Hiring For Growth.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 246

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

As Colin describes it, “I went to the CEO and asked to generate more revenue and hire more people, which is counter-intuitive to the standard approach where revenue leaders may sandbag to over deliver and crush numbers.”

Scale 185

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 185

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

What was the first warning sign your VP of Sales wasn't going to work out? A new VP of Sales doesn’t always double sales in 30 days — although it can happen in SMB sales. The old playbook does help, but every great VP of Sales knows they quickly have to evolve it to any new role.

Sales Recruiting 274

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 274

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

When building a list, try to define your potential customer as granularly as possible – size, location, industry, ideal buyer, sales process, technology stack, etc. This will allow you to be much more targeted with your messaging when reaching out and will help you optimize your sales funnel. Pricing is always evolving.

Sales Recruiting 322

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 322

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics The first thing Secureframe thinks about is metrics. If you don’t know your key company or North Star metrics, talk to your investors or other experts to figure out what they should be. So they can take action on the metrics in real time if they’re going in a direction they don’t like.

Sales Recruiting 299

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 299

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

Did you hire a good enough VP? 4 part test: – who great did they hire in the first 60 days? – did their #1 key metric improve? Hiring your VPs as a founder is tough. How do you know, quickly, if you’ve hired a “good enough” VP? 50% of the job of a real VP is recruiting.

Part-Time VPE 248

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Metrics 248

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

The cost of a failed account executive hire is about 8 months of lost productivity. What does it cost the organization to hire the wrong executive? In terms of time cost to the startup, a failed executive hire is roughly similar, 9 months. Hiring takes longer and is less fruitful. Looker was one of those examples.

Sales Hiring 197

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Branding 197

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. How to hire a great VP of Sales (tons on that here ). What a great VP of sales really does. When to hire her (more here ). How to manage customer success. How to hire a great VP of product.

Sales Hiring 357

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 357

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. Prepare your presentations with this in mind, balancing metrics with high-level strategic insights.

Technical Review 298

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 298

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep. Move the bottom 10% out and give the best leads to your top performer, and watch sales go up 20%. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave. You should be striving for zero voluntary attrition on your sales team.

Sales Recruiting 281

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 281

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

In 2021, there was much less focus on efficiency and more on revenue metrics like ARR. Still, the good thing is that companies have the power to use levers to help improve their efficiency metrics: “There is the ability to control that gross margin on the expense side,” says Blond. A New SaaS Playbook.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 260

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. You need to hire 2 to really see what works, and what doesn’t. More here.

Sales Hiring 313

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 313

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. Higher than he imagined in terms of the founder quality bar and, the stage of the business, and growth and efficiency metrics. On the sales side, people hired way too much.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 300

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

Imagine a coverage model, from end to end, for the full customer life cycle: from demand generation to sales to post-sales. Sales Cycle. This includes everything from inside sales to account executives to strategic asset allocation. Post Sales. Hire those who have proven their value. Land the account.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 273

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period. They build a pipeline, learn the sales motion, and close a few accounts in the first few months.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 124

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. Recruiting is easier, but the things that don’t change are customers don’t care.

Sales Recruiting 261

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 261

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

A great VP of Customer Success in just a quarter or so decreases churn and increases account revenue growth. It’s hard enough just to maintain KPIs and metrics as you scale. Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps. You’ll know in a quarter which you just hired. Then, manage a small team.

Sales Recruiting 256

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 256

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2024

Back then, remote first was a recruiting advantage. Communication is easier You can ramp people faster You can hire junior people The tradeoff is global talent. All they sold was the visualization layer with no sales team. They believed talent was global, and the co-founders loved to travel. Today, not so much. Step 2 – ??

Scale 291

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 291

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Specifically, she champions a metrics-based approach for developing world class recruiting teams. Because of her position, Maia has observed recruiting patterns in hundreds of companies, and has developed best practices for startups. Maia reports these five strategic recruiting metrics to the executive team each quarter.

Sales Recruiting 113

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Data Analysis 113

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. The CEO wants to hire someone with demand generation experience. What’s your advice when hiring a CMO? When you think about how to hire a really good CMO, you’re actually thinking about how to hire somebody that’s gonna do that.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 263

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Sign up for free.

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 200

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

AUGUST 11, 2021

A ways back at SaaStr, we did a post “If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days” At first, so many VPs of Sales I know hated the post. A great VP can’t always double sales in a month or two. They can’t hire. Shares the key metrics they plan to improve.

Sales Recruiting 307

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Scaling 307

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. For the first time in my life, I was in charge of vetting and hiring new team members at scale. This was a big challenge for me because I am very passionate about hiring without bias. First impressions still count.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 125

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

For us, it’s about fixing this problem, serving the customer well, so a very service driven mindset, which I gave a talk on a few days ago here, has been a big part of Gusto and affected our hiring from the early days. Certainly, at YC where our version of hiring is basically choosing which founders to fund. Get tickets here.

VP of Engineering 293

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 293

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2020

You can also totally change your sales team. In a way, this is the same point as #1, almost — except you can recruit even more of the team here. The sales team can call back every single prospect, not just the good ones. Again, all without a new feature, lead, or hire. NPS is A Great Core Metric.

Sales Recruiting 350

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Churn Onboarding 350

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. Here are three things that helped 6sense reach this mark and beyond: Defining their revenue operating model by hiring for RevOps and not taking the common DevOps and SalesOps approach. The friction between sales and marketing.

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 241

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 3, 2017

Every startup’s sales commission plan is different. But it’s key to understand the theory and the benchmark data that governs the creation of sales commission plans to create a good one for your business. Sales compensation is communicated in OTE, On Target Earnings. Before we begin, let’s define a few terms.

Sales Recruiting 160

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Data Sales 160

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

If you think sales is a simple job, I have a few hundred professional connections who would like a word with you. But as straightforward as their metrics may be, their jobs are anything but simple. How do you make sure your potential new hires have the right skills? By mastering your sales interview questions.

Sales Hiring 104

Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 104

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. Growth for us is about massive scaling and hiring. What we do is look at all those metrics and our hope, goal is that every one of them continues to show this. The technology is perfected.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 274

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)? The VP of Sales. Great VPs of sales have gravitas and tact, command the room and hold their end of the table regardless of who is on the other side. And this is exactly why you hired them! Singular focus on sales.

VP of Engineering 122

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 122

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2020

The first thing is, and this is a little crazy, but recruitment is incredibly overrated. How many people out here spend more than a third of your time recruiting? Tough Management Lesson #1. A lot of CEOs spend over half their time recruiting people. Tough Management Lesson #2. Okay, wow, that’s a lot.

Sales Recruiting 196

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Management Marketing 196

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 Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242