SaaStr

JULY 27, 2021

But here’s what happens: They don’t know how to recruit an A+ sales team. Even if they’ve owned a revenue commit — they’ve never owned a true sales number. That alone should discourage any CEO from hiring a VPM as CRO. And if you’ve never been a VP of Sales, well — there’s just no way you can be a CRO. As do deal sizes.

Sales Recruiting 321

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Growth Marketing 321

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2023

Vendr SaaS Consultant Katie Oates and Vendr Vice President of Customer Team Jeff Swank share eye-opening data and insights into buyer trends from 2023. They review the changing market, buyer trends, and tips for the road ahead. Many net-new purchases are for data security, compliance, risk management, and AI-powered tools.

VP of Engineering 298

VP of Engineering Trends Cybersecurity Sales Hiring 298

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2020

Sam Jacobs created the Revenue Collective , a group of more than 1700 sales professionals at some of the fastest-growing companies. With chapters across the US, Revenue Collective has broad reach within the sales community. Typically, sales leaders have reduced quota somewhere between 10-50%. You can download the survey here.

Sales Hiring 334

Sales Hiring Sales Forecasting Travel 334

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 29, 2022

We can examine the sales efficiency of public software companies to get a sense. Since 2016, the average public software witnessed its sales efficiency winnowed from 52% to 47%, a decline of about 10%. Covid, marked in the orange rectangle, didn’t impact sales efficiency initially. I observe a few trends.

Sales Hiring 317

Sales Hiring Sales Startup Acquisition 317

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

But don’t the headlines obscure what’s really happening, because they tend to shout out quieter trends. And so many of you in fact are, well … hiring. Find those still hiring, and find 5 or 10 that truly are a match for your skills. With “SaaS” about $200 Billion of that. Slow it down.

Sales Hiring 321

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 321

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2024

If you’ve read SaaStr or have been around for the last decade, you might be familiar with some of the repeated GTM mistakes founders tend to make, but the world of hiring, people, scaling, and workplace expectations are significantly different today than they were before March 2020. Don’t make the hire. They weren’t getting any leads.

Sales Hiring 311

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search AI 311

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2022

Dear SaaStr: When Is It Too Early to Hire a CRO or a COO? And also a sign they might be hiring someone not willing anymore to be “just” a VP of Sales, Marketing, etc. A VP of Sales is expensive enough. A VP of Sales is expensive enough. Hiring a CRO who brings in 3 VPs under her/him?

Sales Hiring 351

Sales Hiring Startup Trends SaaS 351

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. Want to see more content like this?

Sales Recruiting 332

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2019

One of the biggest things first-time founders intuit wrong is how much sales efficiency plummets … just as it is getting good. Usually, most SaaS start-ups follow a pattern where the CEO starts off doing founder-led sales. Then, after she hires a few sales reps, and makes a few mistakes. what they are paid.

Scale 260

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 260

TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in Customer Success and Sales. ” Prediction #3: CSM Hiring Doesn’t Bounce All The Way Back Things are bouncing back, in 2024, not all the way back, so efficiency still matters. They paused hiring for a year (rather than cut) and got profitable.

Sales Hiring 323

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 323

SaaStr

JANUARY 13, 2023

We’ve had Fractional CFOs for a very long time, and perhaps they inspired the trend. For sure, if you have a strong existing sales team that needs some mentorship, I can see a Fractional CRO working. If you have a new, stretch sales leader doing it for the first time, and they want someone more seasoned to help 0.5-1.0

Sales Hiring 328

Sales Hiring Venture Capital Scale Finance 328

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2024

Canva Head of Sales and Success for EMEA, Jorge Bestard, and Head of Strategic Sales for EMEA, Daniela Nyarko, share Canva’s journey from PLG to Enterprise, strategies to navigate the PLG trap, and why it’s so attractive. You get traction in the market and raise a round to build a marketing and sales team.

Scale 288

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 288

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

based SMB sales positions. SaaS sales execs with even a little bit of experience at other SaaS companies are looking for higher and higher OTEs, often with lower effective attainment and high support costs. based sales reps often aren’t really willing to work, or excel, at sub-$100k OTEs anymore. for non-enterprise sales.

SMB 317

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 317

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2022

And I’m going to suggest two that will worry you a lot as you scale — Churn and Sales Cycle — you should track, but not obsess over, until you are well, well past initial traction, that first $1m-$2m ARR. Absolutely, getting your churn trending downward is important. Why is this? >>

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Scale Churn Metrics 278

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. So yes, it always works.

Sales Hiring 340

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 340

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Getting off the ground is one thing — an easy pitch of being an HR tech startup focused on improving hiring. Hiring is complicated, so you have to build a lot of software to get to $200M ARR. Now, over the next decade, they need to think about other things their customers do in hiring that aren’t done well and could be scaled.

Sales Hiring 286

Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 286

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. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. If that’s true, then you should absolutely hire more salespeople.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 306

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

SaaStr Annual attracts thousands of high-quality SaaS professionals across functions like engineering, product, marketing, sales, and customer success. Many companies strategically use the event to meet potential hires, conduct interviews, and build their talent pipeline. Competitive Intelligence and Market Insights and New!!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Scaling a sales organization isn’t easy. Knowing which metrics matter and how to analyze them to increase your revenue and hit organizational sales goals is essential. . What makes a sales organization grow? What’s the best way to grow a sales organization? Enter your email below for the latest SaaStr updates.

Scale 297

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 297

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2023

Revenue Operations Is Much More Than Sales Revenue ops aren’t just GTM, GTM strategy and ops, sales or marketing ops, but you’ll see these titles and roles in various companies. Considering aspects of sales and GTM strategies. They seek out someone for campaign management and leveraging the right tools for marketing.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Education Scale Strategy 245

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Lemkin expresses concern about the changing work ethic and loyalty of sales and marketing professionals, observing a trend of multiple job-holding and lack of commitment. Lemkin acknowledges the challenge of meeting people’s high expectations and the existential nature of finding solutions to these hiring and motivation issues.

Sales Hiring 298

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 298

Tom Tunguz

JULY 10, 2024

We can observe the market trends today across some of the larger SaaS companies who offer AI pricing. Salesforce Einstein 1 Service & Sales Cloud 330 170 0.51 Instead of hiring a sales development rep, hire a robot. Company Product Base Price AI Price Ratio Github Github Enterprise 21 10 0.67

AI 276

AI Pricing Sales Hiring Strategy 276

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

The collection of these three earnings calls presages continued reduction in growth rates, likely through the end of the year, as most businesses favor profits over growth - a trend echoing across Startupland. Less hiring growth means smaller expansion. Amazon: Net sales increased $21.4 With an operating loss of $480m on 7.3b

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 314

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Cloud AWS Sales Hiring 314

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

In this Ask Me Anything Part 1, Lemkin answers the questions: Many VCs talk about funding, yet you’re so focused on sales. Question #1: Why Are You So Focused On Sales When Other VCs Are Focused On Funding? Question #1: Why Are You So Focused On Sales When Other VCs Are Focused On Funding? Their sales doubled in 60 days.

Outsourcing Services 291

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 291

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Big Bet #2: Find Tomorrow’s Great Anglers — Hire Talent With A Learning Mindset In 2010 and 2011, San Francisco was the place for SaaS talent. So, if he wanted to hire customer support, it could be a biomechanical engineer. Instead of hiring for skill, he focused more on core traits like empathy, patience, and being detail-oriented.

Sales Hiring 289

Sales Hiring Scale SMB SaaS 289

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2023

Things don’t always get better by hiring someone new. It’s easier to swing and miss when hiring someone new vs. betting on the people you already have. The Lesson: Many times, Nick thought, “I should hire for the role I’ll need four years from now.” What does this mean for the company? That you get over your skis.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing Customer Success 259

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 19, 2021

The trends are ubiquitous and plain. With Hex, I can ingest both data sets using SQL into a DataFrame, cluster the data with a Python library like scikit-learn, and share a link to an interactive customer segmentation dashboard I’ve just created with the sales and product teams. We believe the 2020s are the decade of data.

Sales Hiring 335

Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Data Analysis 335

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2023

B2B founders and sales agents feel pressured to keep up with the rapidly evolving market. It can be both costly and exhausting to stay privy to the latest trends and able to predict the next big thing. SaaS companies must implement flexible and innovative sales strategies that can weather the future. QOL functionalities.

Innovation 246

Innovation Sales Hiring B2B Strategy 246

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

If you haven’t read it yet, head on over to Part 1 of Ask Me Anything with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin to learn about sales in SaaS, how to create great SDRs and AEs, developing an impactful content strategy, and potential SaaS trends for the next 12-18 months. Hire great people, and they’ll run with it.

Sales Hiring 297

Sales Hiring SaaS Banking Enterprise 297

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Sales-assisted, product-led growth strategies that close Enterprise leads. For example, if someone in their TAM is hiring for a CX lead, this is a signal for Gorgias to help them figure out a CX motion since their product is a help desk for e-commerce. In this playbook we’ll share: Automated outbound at-scale strategies.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 278

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

App Layoffs Were Brutal, And Hiring Is Slowly Resuming If you haven’t worked in Fortune 500 or tech companies, you’ve never seen this. The reality is there was an explosion in sales and marketing and other categories in 2021 when the goal was to grow, grow, grow. They’re a public pure-play leader in sales and marketing.

Sales Hiring 289

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 289

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 26, 2020

When COVID-19 first hit the United States in March, many sales organizations thought the adjustments they had to make would be temporary. Mary Shea, Principal Analyst at Forrester, addressed this in a recent Sales Hacker webinar. Mary Shea, Principal Analyst at Forrester, addressed this in a recent Sales Hacker webinar.

Trends 138

Trends Sales Hiring Software Review Sales 138

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. I should have hired someone in some role like six months ago, a year ago.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 264

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

To keep up with these changes, last year we released our first Intercom Customer Support Trends Report. We have just published the second edition of the Intercom Customer Support Trends Report. You can download the full report at intercom.com, but for now, I’ll give you an overview of our customer support trends research.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Trends Technical Review Headcount 211

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2023

Believing I had to do a job before I could hire someone to do that job It makes sense: How can you hire someone, and hold them accountable, if you don’t know anything about the domain? Then I tried hiring SEO experts. It didn’t — we get barely any sales, and those we got were low-dollar and high-churn.

Engineering 297

Engineering Sales Hiring Interviewing Scale 297

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

They highlight aggregate trends over the past five to ten years, particularly how to think about these in today’s business environment. The top quartile companies from ICONIQ’s portfolio show two consistent trends in their journey of growing ARR. This trends downward over time.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Venture Capital 246