SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

When Marc Benioff started Salesforce, he codified the sales playbook. Then Mark Roberge , former Hubspot CRO, wrote The Sales Acceleration Formula with deep insights into quota structures. The biggest challenge to that outlook is an increase in the sales cycle. That elongated sales cycle created pipeline supply shocks.

Venture Capital 331

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 331

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

What’s Changing in Sales: The AI Revolution is Here — and Coming Fast After analyzing 139,000+ conversations through SaaStr’s New AI, it’s now clear from the data: AI is about to fundamentally transform B2B sales. This isn’t some distant futureit’s happening right now.

AI 237

AI Underperforming Technical Team Sales Technical Review 237

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What are the most common mistakes first-time founders make when building enterprise sales teams? The most common mistakes first-time founders make when building enterprise sales teams are surprisingly consistent. Heres the breakdown: Hiring a VP of Sales Too Early : This is a classic. Its harsh, but necessary.

Outsourcing Services 178

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 178

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

So clearly AI is rapidly changing the way we do sales, but how will it all shake out? Over in the contact center and post-sales space, we can already see 20%+ of customer support execs been routinely replaced by AI. But what about the more personal sales side? But is it working yet, these AI SDRs?

AI 326

AI B2B Engineering Customer Support 326

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What Should I Do in a Sales Audit? A sales audit should be comprehensive and focus on identifying strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities across your sales process. Sales Process Efficiency : Analyze how well your sales process is working. Are customers satisfied with the sales process?

Technical Review 178

Technical Review Sales Forecasting AI 178

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2025

Keys to HubSpot’s Success: The “Hub” Strategy : HubSpot mastered the land-and-expand model, starting with Marketing Hub and strategically expanding to Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, Operations Hub, Commerce Hub, and Content Hub. Their ecosystem extends their reach globally.

SMB 272

SMB Scale Education AI 272

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

SaaS pricing isn’t static – it’s a living strategy that grows with your company. In this article we dive into a playbook for pricing across different stages of company growth, inspired by Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. Tiered pricing models emerge to address these differences.

Pricing 108

Pricing Scale SaaS Technical Review 108

Blulogix

OCTOBER 22, 2024

By BluLogix Team Complex Pricing Models: How BluLogix Simplifies UCaaS Monetization Summary: Managing complex pricing models is a major pain point for UCaaS companies. From seat-based pricing to consumption-based and hybrid models, keeping track of various offerings and ensuring transparency for customers can be challenging.

Pricing 110

Pricing B2B Subscription Payment Features 110

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2024

Sales Hub, i.e Sales Hub, Growing Almost Twice as Fast as Marketing Hub HubSpot really has become a CRM company even more than a marketing one. A Per Seat Model is Key to Expansion at HubSpot Long live per-seat pricing! 5 More Interesting Learnings then: #1. Although they are of course highly linked. #3.

SMB 312

SMB CTO Onboarding Scale 312

Tom Tunguz

JULY 10, 2024

Pricing an AI product will be a defining question in software for the next few years. We can observe the market trends today across some of the larger SaaS companies who offer AI pricing. Company Product Base Price AI Price Ratio Github Github Enterprise 21 10 0.67 AI products offer productivity gains.

AI 276

AI Pricing Sales Hiring Strategy 276

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

Relying on Self-Serve Sales Structure for Enterprise Not everything needs to be a PLG product. Instead, the winning approach is human-AI collaboration: – Trained professionals assisted by AI tools – Human oversight for complex operations – Quality control for critical outputs Let’s use the sales agent example.

AI Search 284

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence B2B 284

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2025

Dear SaaStr: How Long Should You Give a New Sales Rep? sales cycles. Sales is tough. And while sales is pretty similar in SaaS at a given price point / ACV, different products are still different to sell.A sales cycles, it rarely works out. sales cycles, I’ve seen that work.

Sales Hiring 167

Sales Hiring Sales Onboarding Pricing 167

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

At least until you have a dominant brand, remove friction from sales. And that includes pricing. One caveat: if your product requires significant onboarding and business process change, monthly pricing sometimes just doesn’t work. Figure out who you sell to, and why, and offer the options each customer segment wants.

Payment Features 261

Payment Features SaaS Churn Pricing 261

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

But it’s clear that it’s still in the investing phase, and increasing spend in sales & marketing. But SMBs in the middle have become more cost and price-sensitive. #10. Today, it’s steadily driving its margins up, now up to 14% non-GAAP operating margins. Just not as quickly as overall revenue growth. #4.

Scale 301

Scale SMB Scaling Enterprise 301

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do I Increase Pricing Again Without Angering Customers? First, plan to increase pricing in general once a year, each year for new customers. So increase pricing annually to reflect that. Try to increase pricing annually for new customers. Don’t increase pricing beyond what you’ve earned.

Pricing 284

Pricing Branding Sales 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Sales teams hired way, way ahead to hit huge plans, and in many cases, ended up with a tough combo of lower quota attainment and higher comp structures. The post We’re All Paying the Price Now for Massive Overhiring appeared first on SaaStr. More often, they planned for a Series B-F that isn’t coming.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Pricing Cloud Startup 322

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

41% of you have sales do some customer onboarding, not just CS or other specialists. Should sales just disappear once the contract is signed? #5. On average, you got a 33%+ boost in revenue when you hired your first VP of Sales. Hire a great VP of Sales, and revenue goes up. 59% of you have raised prices this year.

Sales Hiring 339

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 339

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

When Lindsey joined, she inherited an already built-out self-serve/PLG model for small businesses and a mid-market and enterprise sales, customer success, and post-sales team. But at the start of its expansion play, Checkr’s enterprise motion failed, and sales cycles were slow, taking up to a year for $100k & up deals.

Revenue 293

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 293

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

The good news is, you can support these price points effectively with a very efficient inbound sales team, and/or a mix of self-serve and sales-led. At two different price points. There’s a whole other category of apps SMBs and SMEs can afford that cost $99-$299 a month or so. But how do you get to $100m+ in ARR?

Payment Solutions 261

Payment Solutions Inbound Sales Team Marketing Scale 261

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2024

At this week’s Workshop Wednesday, Lucas Price, former SVP of Sales at Zipwhip and founder and CEO at Yardstick, shares his insights on how to hire and build a high-performing sales team. During that time, he wasted a lot of money on failed sales hires and decided to learn everything about hiring sellers.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

From Sales-Led to Product-Led: How Apollo.io This analysis examines their journey from a struggling sales-led organization to a successful product-led growth company, resulting in over 880,000 paying customers and substantial revenue growth.

Scale 155

Scale Scaling Outsourced Development Sales 155

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Why Do Most Entrepreneurs Under Price Their Offerings Initially? Yes, most of us at first under-price and then slowly raise prices as we gain confidence. It’s because (1) we aren’t trained sales leaders, and (2) we worry most about not losing the deal. But after that, you need some professionals.

Pricing 284

Pricing Sales Revenue 284

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2025

Dear SaaStr: When Should I Hire Our First Sales Person, and Who Should I Hire? "The "The one cheat code to making your first sales hires. Because as a founder, you need to understand the sales process, the objections, and what resonates with your customers. Look for at least 18 months of SaaS sales experience.

Sales Hiring 178

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Pricing 178

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2024

9 Easy Sales Concepts People Get Wrong with Sam Blond A classic. Or your sales team is. #2. How to price and package AI SaaS products with Sandhya Hegde at Unusual Ventures Pricing is always a super popular topic and this was a great one from Unusual Ventures on pricing in the AI age. I guarantee it. #5.

AI 329

AI Pricing Scale Scaling 329

Tom Tunguz

JULY 10, 2022

Let me tell you a tale of two software sales processes. Take 1: An ambitious account executive engages a sales prospect and hustles to sell the customer a mega contract that consumes nearly the entirety of a budget. Smaller commission check, but a faster sales cycle. In both cases, the vendor is out.

Strategy 356

Strategy Sales Compensation Retention 356

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Should SaaS Pricing Be Adjusted for Different Geographical Markets? Your public pricing? Second, your users will see the pricing is “cheaper” somewhere else and get mad. Make the pricing roughly comparable. And you should do this And finally, the biggest “exception” is non-transparent pricing.

Pricing 293

Pricing Marketing SaaS Development 293

Tom Tunguz

JULY 11, 2024

3x as productive as humans, which would parallel mechanical robots, how does a software company price? Building on yesterday’s post , pricing in software companies may change significantly when AI agents become the norm. This would be a significant increase in price, but the value of the software would be much higher.

AI 240

AI Pricing Software Compensation 240

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

Well, first, let’s be clear — it’s tough if your core goal is to get acquired for a big price in most cases. But don’t raise so much that your valuation precludes an acquisition at a tolerable price for certain acquirers. There really aren’t that many good acquisitions done a year.

Strategy 263

Strategy Venture Capital Acquisition Pricing 263

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2022

By moving from Freemium to “Contact Me” only (albeit with transparent pricing), sales went way, way up. So many sales leaders get frustrated with Free editions, very low-cost editions … and the Long Tail in general. The Long Tail : Distracts sales , with leads that never closes.

Scale 326

Scale Sales Engineering Acquisition 326

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2023

Sales cycles shifted dramatically in 2023. Slower sales cycles create pipeline shocks & startups are feeling the impacts. The average startup saw a 24% increase in sales cycle from early 2022 to 2023. 60 day sales cycles are now 75 days. But the latency isn’t evenly distributed.

Startup 350

Startup SMB Headcount Sales 350

SaaStr

MAY 13, 2025

Position custom work as a premium service, and price it accordingly. For example, you could charge a one-time fee for custom integrations or even better, bake it into the contract as a higher annual price. Pricing guidelines for custom work. So try to monetize them. This should include: Criteria for evaluating requests (e.g.,

Outsourcing Services 181

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Enterprise Pricing 181

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2024

In this week’s Workshop Wednesday , SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares the 7 things the best sales reps get right and the 8 ways the rest make things worse. #1: The best sales reps solve your problems. When you’re doing so well that you’re in order-taking mode, sales reps don’t have to solve a problem.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Pricing ChatGPT 284

User Pilot

MAY 27, 2025

Pricing: Whatfix Mobile Whatfix does not publicly disclose its pricing information. To obtain detailed pricing, you must contact their sales team to schedule a demo or request a quote. Whatfix mobile pricing. Plus, mobile is bundled with the web product and isnt sold separately.

Mobile 93

Mobile Technical Review Software Review Systems Review 93

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

His view is your sales team teaches your customers how to get value out of your product. Similar to most structures of a technical sales team. From the early days, we had a more technical sales team.” These early conversations helped shape Databricks product, pricing, and go-to-market strategy.

Scale 176

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 176

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2024

How to Leverage Pricing and Packaging to Drive Revenue with Miro, Loom, OpenAI, and Splunk #3. How to Train Your Sales Leaders with Michelle Benfer, ex-CRO Bill and HubSpot The post Top SaaStr Posts and Vids of the Week: GitHub’s CRO, OpenAI on Pricing, A16Z on AI in SaaS, and More! appeared first on SaaStr.

AI 259

AI Sales Hiring Pricing Scale 259