SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What’s The Number One Challenge for Scale-Up Stage Founders? In SaaS, once you have even a few million in ARR, the #1 challenge is recruiting top-tier VPs and building a truly top-tier management team: SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You will need a VP of Product to scale your roadmap.

Scale 246

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 246

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 219

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 219

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

On the other hand, if I were selling sales and marketing tools, I’d be all over social media, especially LinkedIn. In the middle is recruiting. He didn’t see the value until he had to recruit at scale. It always helps with recruiting, done right. Selling to CFOs and finance. appeared first on SaaStr.

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Social Media Sales Recruiting Scale Finance 244

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2021

It’s a bit of a bummer than oftentimes, once you finally hire a few great VPs at $1m, $2m, $3m ARR … and they do a great job … that they then don’t scale. A few signs I see again and again of VPs that can’t scale beyond $5m-$10m ARR: Lack of organization. But it doesn’t scale. Not mediocre ones.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 352

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

In interviewing great CMOs , the product marketing leader is the first marketer most startups should recruit, and often the first key mishire. Product marketing is the vital work of developing a customer lifecycle journey, pricing, sales support materials, analyst relations, and press.

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Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 200

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Nothing matters but recruiting and using your personal network. Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 130

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2024

Scaling to $150M ARR and beyond is no simple task. Back then, remote first was a recruiting advantage. Will this change as Grafana Labs scales? But they’re still one of the last remaining open-source companies at scale. All they sold was the visualization layer with no sales team. How did it come to be?

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Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 223

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

What does it take to scale a team from 2 to more than 1,100 people in just a few short years? When Remote had 120 people two weeks into 2021, they planned to scale to 600 that year. At the same time, you want to give trust and power to people who recruit, and you do that by ensuring they understand what the culture is.

Scale 203

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 203

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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 233

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2022

Scaling your sales team can be one of the hardest things to do in SaaS. What’s the best way to help your sales team navigate today’s changing markets and changing priorities? And what’s the right time to fill crucial sales leadership roles? 1 Buyers Expect Personalization in Outbound Sales.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 230

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 230

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. Nine out of 10 founders and CEOs I connect with are involved in recruiting on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Many of them are learning on the fly and trying to juggle being CEO and Chief People Officer/Lead Recruiter/Brand Evangelist all at once.

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Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

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 246

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 246

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. In my first six months at Envoy , I grew the sales team from six to 17. Combine Strategies To Drive Sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 216

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Q: What makes a great sales leader? The best sales managers / directors / VPs: Recruit great team members. Sales requires a linear number of hires to grow bookings. So you have to be a great recruiter to scale. But the best sales leaders know where they are #1. Decrease sales cycles.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 266

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

In the “old” days, there was a rough rule that as soon as you are bringing on more than 1–2 reps a quarter, you needed to hire a director of sales ops. That at that point, at a minimum, there would be too much administrative work for your VP of Sales to handle it herself. You want the sales ops help scaled up and helping before then.

Sales Hiring 219

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 219

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

So there’s a sort of org chart you’ll probably end up with at least twice as you start scaling in SaaS: The “Headless” Sales Org. It’s a bunch of sales reps without anyone to manage them other than … you. But if you end up not hiring a VP of Sales at that perfect moment in time (and most don’t), you’ll end up headless.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 198

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

The other day I saw a VP of Sales flame out and resign with no notice from a SaaS company doing $10m ARR growing quickly. So I thought it might be helpful to brush off the topic of alignment between Sales and Marketing by updating a classic post on the topic. The original version here on Lattice Engines’ Sales and Marketing Hub.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 306

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 361

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 361

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The team is typically highly cross-functional, working together with sales, product, engineering, and marketing, and the goal is to help the other teams make better decisions through data and financial modeling. You must build a lean, impactful team to help your business scale. Sign up for free HERE !

Scale 166

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 166

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

I had a great CTO, but I also needed a truly great VPE to scale past $10m ARR and deal with all those issues. Not becoming a better recruiter. I recruited a great VP of Sales, a strong VP of Marketing, a great VP of Product (now COO at Gong), and a great VP of Customer Success. But I was a sequential recruiter.

Part-Time VPE 193

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting CTO Scale 193

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

She was hired because they saw a bit of softening in new business growth, and she came to help diagnose what was going on and help scale the business. Lattice had a product-led growth flow on the website while the sales team was still trying to sell the PLG companies The good news is Lattice had a lot of activity and initiatives at play.

Scale 221

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 221

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2023

Some engineers by training, others in sales or product originally. But a few uniting characteristics of the very best: Relentless Recruiters. You have to be constantly recruiting the best. The best founders usually spend at least 20% of their time recruiting. You can’t do it all yourself, at least not as you scale.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling Engineering 204

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. Here are some things to remember when you think about scaling your next big SaaS company.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 175

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2022

Q: Dear SaaStr: When Should The CEO Step Away From Sales? It’s just, as you scale, what you do in the sales process as CEO evolves and changes. Anyhow, my VP of Customer Success, VP of Product and I were in one small conference room working with the Sales Operations team. But you don’t get to stop doing sales.

Sales Recruiting 218

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 218

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2021

I’ve written a lot about this, but for most start-ups, you can boil it down to two criteria any first VP of Sales just has to meet: Has she built at least a small team before? If you can hire 2–3 great ones, you can likely scale and hire 20–30. No VP of Sales is equally great at both inbound and outbound sales.

Sales Hiring 277

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Development Team Review 277

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. Execution is not just a sales process. Land the account.

Scale 211

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 211

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. As you finally begin to scale, you’ll have enough revenue to hire some great folks, but not enough to build very redundant teams. More here: From Initial Traction to Initial Scale (~$10M in ARR): The Hardest Phase.

Sales Recruiting 251

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 251

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

It formed the basis for a career at HubSpot predicated on consistent quantitative analysis to scale the go-to-market, which he detailed in the Sales Acceleration Formula in 2015. I think it’s still one of the best books on how to repeatably scale sales teams. What would the chart above look like for your sales team?

Sales Hiring 334

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 334

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2020

On how to recruit in the early days, when not everyone gets it. The Q+A at the end is especially good — stay for it: #3: “Zendesk’s Secret Sauce to Scaling to $1B: SMB and Mid-Market Success” with VP Global SMB Sales Sharon Prosser and VP GTM Strategy Astha Malik. . How to recruit in a less hot space.

Scale 180

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SMB 180

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 245

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 245

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2020

I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting asked about the top mistakes hiring your first sales team so many times over the years, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List. Make fewer of them and you’ll scale faster with less stress. Yes, you may be terrible at sales.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 326

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

The toughest part in the end is always recruiting. Recruiting. Over time, that’s recruiting more and more senior folks, so the target changes. As your company scales, you’ll start to hit 15%+ attrition in your employee base just naturally each year. You’ll have to be recruiting new ones all the time.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Compensation Business Model 167

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

2021 will be the year SaaS sales evolves the most since the Appexchange ecosystem started to take off ~15 years ago, which spawned the entire notion of a true sales app stack. The permanent move to distributed sales teams. Almost every SaaS VP of Sales and CRO I’ve talked to in the past few months isn’t going back.

Sales Recruiting 347

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 347

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 29, 2019

Have you ever wondered how other sales professionals are tackling their roles? Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on the day-to-day for a sales recruiting firm owner, and for that, we talked to Amy Volas. What You Sell/Quick Pitch: Taking the cringe out of sales recruiting for startups. Structuring their days?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 61

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

We’ve talked a ton on SaaStr over the years on how to make sure your VP of Sales and top hires really work out. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at your average ACV. for that type of sale. That they are the right ones. Ask who they are.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 328

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

This happens with some regularity in SaaS, I’ve learned (and to be clear: I’m not talking about any company I’ve invested in, am an advisor to, board member of, etc – Because when it’s still a very small team, with no true management team … co-founders can kind of hack it to $1m-$2m in ARR together.

Sales Recruiting 227

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 227