SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2022

The world of sales is evolving as rising costs and shifts in buyer behaviors continue to change. An emerging strategy that organizations are adopting to grow revenue more efficiently is inside sales. Inside sales refer to the practice of selling from office premises via phone, email, or video calls. Benefits of inside sales.

Scale 260

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 260

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The very best companies lead their customers in that dance. Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale. Penetration pricing leads to land-and-expand sales tactics. Most startups play defense when discussing pricing with customers.

SaaS Payments 273

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 273

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2024

Bitly CEO Toby Gabriner and CPO Kelsey Stevenson share the three secret ingredients that helped them when scaling to $100M ARR and what they could have done differently. Bitly had an Enterprise sales-focused team. They saw incredible market trends related to QR codes. Where are trends heading, and where is the market going?

Scale 297

Scale Scaling Underperforming Technical Team User Experience 297

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 22, 2021

Modern customers expect a fluid, digital-first sales experience that feels like a good conversation with someone who understands their needs ”. This change in behavior has placed a demand on sales teams to bring their sales motion into alignment with buyer expectations. Create consistent, customer-centric experiences.

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Scale Technology Trends 233

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2024

There’s only a small chance that it’ll be an IPO exit, and Stacey Bishop with Scale Ventures shares what it takes to get to that next level of funding. But that shifts over time, and most of your spend goes into sales and marketing. The 3 Other Vital Signs Investors Look For Sales efficiency becomes more important over time.

Scale 296

Scale Scaling Churn Investment 296

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

This is a positive trajectory, but it presents a challenge for your customer success efforts: How can you scale your support and CS while still delivering a memorable, quality customer experience? According to the Totango report, 77% of respondents said that scale was their top challenge. How Customer Success Drives Growth.

Scale 275

Scale Customer Success Scaling Compensation 275

SaaStr

OCTOBER 8, 2024

So, you have to make more money to justify the sales process and recognize that a lot of what drove the first generation of this was rapidly commoditizing and chasing people to the bottom. If you look at the best sales reps, they smash their numbers no matter what. Sales’ greatest filter is brutal work. You need to do it all.

Scale 273

Scale Scaling SaaS Point of Sale 273

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2024

Still, one of the top mistakes every top founder says is this: “I Should Have Acted on Bad Trends Earlier.” Almost every founder regrets using capital to keep a high-burn rate engine going that isn’t scaling rapidly. #2. Will marketers really buy your product if sales execs do?

Trends 310

Trends Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 310

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about how to scale faster. And I’ve watched them fairly quickly scale, to soon they’ll be at 10 million in revenue. As they scaled, they radically changed how they did sales. Jason Lemkin: Okay. Let’s get it going. Times are good.

Scale 270

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 270

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2025

Bella Liu of Orbee leads a company focused on generative process automation, creating AI solutions that understand and automate complex enterprise workflows. Orbee’s technology aims to transform repetitive tasks across finance and accounting, enabling businesses to dramatically improve efficiency and reduce critical errors.

AI Search 244

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Technical Review 244

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2024

What do you recommend for scaling beyond a founder-led sales motion after attaining $1-2M ARR? ” Question #4: What do you recommend for scaling beyond a founder-led sales motion after attaining $1-2M ARR? If you’re good at sales, lean in there. The point is, go with your DNA.

Venture Capital 259

Venture Capital Scale Sales Hiring Startup 259

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Building ‘opinionated products’ and the importance of customer intimacy Lessons learned from scaling Twitter’s ad business from zero to $650 million in three years. 15:41) Scaling Twitter’s ad business and managing hyper-growth. (26:54) Plus, an analysis of the top 75 trending sales AI tools.

Scale 102

Scale Engineering Acquisition Scaling 102

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2023

As a self-proclaimed accidental entrepreneur, Browder shares a few unconventional ways to scale your company. The DoNotPay journey started six years ago and has led to many unconventional lessons that go against the popular wisdom of starting, scaling, and distributing a product. Virality is similar to a mob mentality.

Scale 259

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Entrepreneurship 259

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2025

In-Person Sales Generate 3x Higher Conversions Per The CROs of Toast, Splunk, Brex and Slice Top Pods: #1. 10 AI Trends in SaaS Right Now with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin on LIVE SaaStr Workshop Wednesday #2. The Revenue Playbook: Ripplings Top 3 Growth Tactics at Scale with Rippling CRO Matt Plank OpenAI to Hit $12.7

Scale 186

Scale Software Review Marketing Cloud 186

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. They initially double their ARR each year in scaling post $10M.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Venture Capital 246

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 19, 2021

It’s a familiar problem for all companies that scale fast – how do you keep your core technologies manageable for the increasing number of teams that depend on them? How our core technologies were being used was also diverging, leading to needlessly increased complexity in our systems. Scaling to Rails. Expanding responsibility.

Scale 216

Scale Technical Review Technology Scaling 216

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

Scaling a tech startup doesn’t come easy, and when you’ve tried all the conventional SaaS advice, it might be tempting to give up. But before the years of rapid scaling, it took the company a little while to hit its stride. After the company hit $1M ARR, they began to see a healthy, upward trend. Every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Scale 246

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

Relying on Self-Serve Sales Structure for Enterprise Not everything needs to be a PLG product. Despite the PLG (Product-Led Growth) trend, self-serve models for AI-powered enterprise products are proving challenging. Cost aside, we think most companies would choose the latter.

AI Search 281

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence B2B 281

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2024

Earlier this month, Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov sat down with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin at SaaStr Europa 2024 to talk about all things AI and the lessons learned while scaling to billions. What Does AI-Enhanced Sales Look Like In Two Years Everyone’s thinking about it. First, no drudgery. Yes,” Amit says.

Scale 303

Scale AI Sales Underperforming Technical Team 303

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

And that challenge some of your assumptions on how to scale. 60% of Asana’s customers come from self-service, 40% from sales. This is trending to 50/50 now that Asana has crossed $400m in ARR, but still a reminder a self-serve motion combined with sales jumping on the bigger deals can scale very, very far.

Scale 363

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 363

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2023

As SaaS founders are looking to scale and raise funding, it can be confusing and stressful to navigate in the uncertain market of the past few years. Profitability, Revenue Trajectory, and Efficiency Metrics Historically, EV/NTM sales were evenly driven by profitability and revenue growth. Every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Sign up HERE !

Scale 246

Scale Scaling Software Review Operational efficiency. 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2024

Customer-facing sales is a critical area of SaaS that drives growth and revenue retention. Pia Heilmann, VP of Sales EMEA at Klaviyo, shares how to master the art of customer-facing sales in an increasingly competitive market. Sales has changed massively over the last decade. How do you do this at scale?

Scale 309

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Technical Review 309

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

The Best Speakers In The World With hundreds of sessions from proven SaaS leaders who have scaled companies to significant revenue milestones, SaaStr Annual offers practical, actionable insights you won’t find elsewhere. Sessions typically focus on real metrics, strategies, and lessons learned, not theoretical concepts.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Typically on SaaStr.com, we try to focus our content on mistakes to avoid, lessons learned and how to scale faster, but for the CEO Summit, Jason addressed the audience with what’s most top of mind for him at the start of 2024. 2 Beware Sales / Customer Success Reps who don’t want to visit customers in person.

Sales Recruiting 310

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 310

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.

Sales Hiring 301

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 301

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? How: What sources are the most popular to gather leads?

Scale 288

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 288

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

To $300k-$400k+ per employee at scale. But don’t the headlines obscure what’s really happening, because they tend to shout out quieter trends. Most of you are, in fact: According to our latest unscientific but directionally correct survey of over 2,000 SaaS execs, 64% of you are growing your sales team in 2024.

Sales Hiring 314

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 314

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

At the IMPACT Summit yesterday, I shared our Top 10 Trends for Data in 2024. LLMs are fantastic first-pass filters and phenomenal classifiers that extract insight or build machine learning features from unstructured data like customer support conversations or sales calls. Second, they change the way that we manipulate data.

Artificial Intelligence 220

Artificial Intelligence Trends Data Software Review 220

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2025

We automated contact centers employing >100 human agents and now handle their incoming customer support and sales calls, end-to-end. For another company, our voice AI agents were able to convert 30% of contacted leads within a week of the outbound campaign. Businesses use us for customer support, leads qualification, and more.

AI Search 172

AI Search AI Startup Scale 172

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

As SaaStr Europa 2022 drew to a close, attendees took one more opportunity to ask Jason questions about topics like how to navigate the current market, the future of work, playing in a crowded space, and hiring your first VP of Sales. It was funny for Henry to say he segmented his sales team at 80 million in ARR. Transcript.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

But now the trend has shifted to the other end of the spectrum. Such an acquisition model means shorter sales cycles and more efficiency in lead qualification, with complete emphasis on the customer experience. If users are finding products on their own, what remains of the role of the sales team in such a growth model?

Scale 232

Scale Sales Acquisition Consulting 232

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. I was a local sales manager or regional manager.

Sales Recruiting 332

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2023

This mentality has stayed around and has become a core part of running a business, and the trend will only grow. The key takeaways for SMBTech companies to scale in today’s economy are: Now is a great time to build for SMBs. Know Your Customer and be choosy as you scale. And there’s no going back once you’re “turned on.”

Scale 245

Scale SMB Merchant Services Payment Methods 245

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 310

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 310

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 280

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 280

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

Automation at scale. A few key learnings and top trends to consider: #1 There is unlimited potential; even with COVID ‘craziness’ As we continue to face and adapt to the challenges of COVID-19, many companies are turning to Cloud for Business Continuity and growth. 3: In the cloud economy, scale wins.

Technical Review 349

Technical Review Cloud Software Review Technology 349

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. This will lead to many great things.

Sales Hiring 271

Sales Hiring Scale Churn Metrics 271