SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team. This realization led to a fundamental shift in strategy, allocating resources to hiring and onboarding rather than lead generation.

Scale 191

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 191

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

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Director+ of Sales at Slack / Zoom / DropBox / Pick Your Brand Name SaaS Company. Because it’s not ARR growth or even an IPO alone that determines if a VP of Sales him or herself is great. And there were probably 100+ RVPs of Sales at that point. Because often, the managers were given a team, or a lot of it.

Sales Recruiting 317

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing 317

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

So you wanna build a channel sales program: Don’t Copy HubSpot! All these companies are great companies with great channel sales programs. . Any channel sales program goes through an evolution. There are many reasons to start a channel sales program. Everything is harder with a channel sales program.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Technical Support Onboarding 305

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. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 260

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.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 246

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.

Sales Recruiting 317

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 317

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

However, don’t this doesn’t mean that your sales teams shouldn’t bring in more revenue –– quite the opposite. Blond says, “You are going to need to figure out how to drive more revenue per sales rep if you are a lower-margin business.”. The 2022 Economic Climate, Barriers to Growth, and Recruitment.

Sales Recruiting 263

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 263

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

You might never have considered a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) because it’s not been a common role until very recently, and because you might not have the kind of revenue that needs its own manager. If you’re a company that has a 100% sales-driven business model, it makes sense to hire a big-deal revenue person. Is a CRO right for you?

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 305

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. I don’t know anything about sales. More power to you.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 290

Incredo

MARCH 11, 2020

Associations face a unique challenge in marketing, in that they have to cater to a very specific audience and ensure they’re going to become long term members. And each association has different challenges to begin with, so traditional marketing strategies won’t work very effectively either. DOWNLOAD YOUR E-BOOK.

Strategy 257

Strategy Social Media Sales Recruiting Marketing 257

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Exit Strategy Slide. An Exit Strategy Slide almost by definition tells me you aren’t. If I wouldn’t work for you … then I can’t help you recruit folks that will. You’re in sales. Recruit the VPs? CEO Doesn’t like Sales — and The Hunt. So do something different.

Sales Recruiting 342

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 342

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2021

The other day, I met with a great founder who talked with me about how he was about to top his VP of Sales. in ARR in pretty short order, recruiting a great small team of reps under her, and had really nailed the formula. Gaetan Gachet ended up taking Algolia from $0 to $50m in ARR, and still serves as its Chief Strategy Officer today.

Sales Hiring 312

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale SMB 312

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 297

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 297

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

Recruitment: Getting the right talent onboard is a critical step. Sales: You must understand how to grow your sales machine, and it isn’t easy. Sales: You must understand how to grow your sales machine, and it isn’t easy. In fact, you need both to optimally grow your sales efforts. Surprises Along the Way.

Sales Recruiting 281

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 281

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Lizzie Mintus Founder and CEO of Here’s Waldo Recruiting and host of The Heres Waldo Podcast about her thoughts on: The most effective recruiting strategies for SMBs. So during the intro, I kind of talked about how you run here’s Waldo recruiting. Jump to video.

SMB 91

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 91

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success. The team has great visionary, product, and execution capabilities and a solid go-to-market strategy. CROs should focus on capturing that unrealized demand which is not a sales-led effort.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 264

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. 50% of the job for a VP is recruiting. A bit more here. Great at engineering. More here.

Sales Hiring 317

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 317

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

I really appreciate you coming to talk about how to attract, hire, and build a more diverse sales team in your organization. So I’ve been building top-producing sales teams for a really, really long time. So over the years, I’ve watched many sales leaders go out and say, “Brian’s my top producer.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

More on that here and a great video discussion below: You’ll probably be ready for your first VP of Sales by $1m in ARR. We’ve talked about this a lot on SaaStr, but hiring a true VP of Sales before you have 2 reps hitting quota (and thus a repeatable, if not yet fully repeating process) is too early.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. This has been a total negative strategy for me. There are ways to make this strategy work. Some sales-y, some very technical. CEO of bit of a b.s.

Investment 312

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 312

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

When approaching a GTM exercise, one thing needs to be very clear: the company’s revenue strategy. This revenue strategy consists of three core questions: What is the market opportunity—the problem that needs to be solved? What is the product strategy? Sales Cycle. Post Sales. Execution is not just a sales process.

Scale 277

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 277

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

“Give the VP of Sales More Time” This is always terrible advice. If a VP of Sales can’t improve things in one sales cycle or less — she never will. In one sales cycle, or less. It doesn’t work because freemium is rarely a go-to-market and marketing strategy. More on that here.

Part-Time VPE 348

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 348

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 232

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SMB 232

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

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? Stage 1: Management by Objectives.

Compensation 195

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 195

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. Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 306

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 16, 2018

First, most founders don’t have a background in either sales or marketing, and even though they’re told to “ start marketing the day you start coding ”, they just don’t know where to begin, or they’re incredibly overconfident. George wrote a fantastic article detailing how to determine the product marketing strategy through beta products.

Product Marketing 223

Product Marketing Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring 223

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022

Going from sales-led to PLG is doable, but it is not easy. Sales-led organizations struggle to adapt to a PLG mindset.”. Let’s use sales-led organizations as a comparison point. If a company has started out with a heavy sales focus, its onboarding process within the actual product may not be intuitive enough for customers.

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting Business Pricing Churn 290

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

And so, now’s the time to start thinking about accelerating our business strategies and grabbing the opportunities it brings. Now that the worst seems to be over, what exactly should your strategy look like? But if the strategy was good to begin with, keep at it. How can we accelerate our current strategy? Paul: Yeah.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales? Continuing the conversation on effective team members, it’s important to hire the right people to manage SDRs. A VP of Sales might seem the logical place to have your first SDR team report. But if they’ve never managed a higher turnover SDR team, they often melt.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

In a fascinating workshop session, Miao shares his thoughts on how finance teams can contribute to company strategy and grow revenue. Growth Strategy Identify and implement new growth opportunities and revenue streams. Growth Strategy Identify and implement new growth opportunities and revenue streams. Sign up for free.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Daniel, you grew to 3 million in ARR before you hired a VP of Sales. You had all the reps and SDRs reporting to you, managed it all yourself. How’d you manage all that? Daniel : We followed a lean start up approach to building our sales process. An engineering team and the sales team was me with a laptop.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 278

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 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 264

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

You were the shoulder I would go and cry on anytime I would have some sort of executive-level problem or executive recruiting problem. We’re coming at it from the lens of not being recruiters. And when you’re in the executive recruiting process, feeling is not scientific. Tell me what the priorities are.”

Sales Recruiting 89

Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 89

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2020

More companies adopt the idea of qualifying buyers through a product embracing the benefits of product-led growth including faster sales cycles, greater ARR per employee, and quicker account expansion make PLG the dominant GTM strategy. Scoring last year’s predictions: The direct listing becomes the standard path to IPO.

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Blockchain Banking Artificial Intelligence 279

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. If you’re hiring a sales leader, you don’t pass up an awesome sales leader that has a killer track record of closing deals just because in their previous company they sold success software, and then with your company, they’re going to sell MarTech.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 263