SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. But you see growth start to decline in new bookings, that's a sign. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle.

Sales Hiring 309

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 309

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 342

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 342

OPEXEngine

APRIL 12, 2022

Emboldened by this seeming endorsement, I dashed off what turned into a lengthy email on interviewing and recruiting, a topic about which I am passionate not because I think I am good at it but because I think I am not. Thoughts on The Recruiting Process. Remember it’s a mutual sales process. Follow some methodology or book.

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

You’ll see: Bookings that stop increasing. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. To recruit the team and resources it takes not just to meet the plan this quarter, but the next one and the following quarters as well. But then … that’s it.

Sales Recruiting 253

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Metrics 253

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

How much revenue do you want to book for your SaaS startup next quarter? It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period. So does recruiting time.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 120

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2023

So I was on a group Zoom with a number of CROs and VPs of Sales the other day and a consistent theme came up: everyone was surprised how high OTEs (On Target Earnings) had held up in the current environment. In 2021, they might have gotten their bonus for closing say $500k in bookings. Look, it just makes sense. Today they care.

Sales Recruiting 220

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Enterprise Sales 220

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Sign up for free.

Sales Hiring 180

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 180

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

She’s written extensively on the topic and co-authored a book The Customer Success Economy. How you should you go about recruiting the right person? Today, she advises and invests in companies on these topics and others. Allison is an incredible builder of teams. How does the role work with the CEO? If so, at what stage?

Scale 293

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 293

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps. Take say 100 leads a month spread across 2 great reps, then bring in a new VP of Sales that hires 4 weak reps. Your new bookings can plummet 50% almost overnight. More here: Should You Fire an OK-but-Not-Great VP of Sales? Then, manage a small team.

Sales Recruiting 209

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 209

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2021

Still, an overall deep-dive on lessons learned the second and third time around: Not Easier : Recruiting – Not Easier. You might think after (goodness) the best part of 20 years of working in tech, 18 as an executive or CEO, and 13 as a founder … I’d be pretty good at recruiting at this point. I’m not.

Sales Recruiting 340

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 340

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold. They have low attrition.

Sales Hiring 338

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 338

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)? The VP of Sales. Great VPs of sales have gravitas and tact, command the room and hold their end of the table regardless of who is on the other side. Singular focus on sales. As the title would hint at, the VP of Sales should focus on sales.

VP of Engineering 93

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

The template is broken into six sections: People, Bookings & Revenue, Cash, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success. This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics. Bookings and Revenue illuminates the company’s performance in closing new business (bookings) and recurring revenue.

Metrics 208

Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup SaaS 208

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

Every prospect championing a software purchase will be asked by the opponents of the sale and decision-makers : “Who else is using the software?” And the best way to fight the inertia in sales is to equip your champions. That’s worth much more than cash and larger bookings in the early days.

Sales Recruiting 206

Sales Recruiting Banking Branding Software 206

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 256

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 256

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2016

There are two main ways of building a SaaS sales team: top down or bottoms up. Top down SaaS sales organizations start with a VP of Sales who often hires senior account executives. Bottoms up sales teams hire the first account manager and promote from within. Which is better? OTE, $k 125 175 250.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 100

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 20, 2022

Strong sales reps are the lifeblood of your business and how you choose to invest in them matters. For frontline sales managers, attributes like competency, quality of work, ease of execution, and length of contribution indicate reps’ overall job success, but you can’t rely on those inputs to tell you if they are personally satisfied.

Sales Recruiting 98

Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 98

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 30, 2018

Welcome to Sales Hacker’s first-ever Influential Women in Sales list! In this exclusive list, we wanted to honor not just female leaders that promote their own sales platform (no shame in that!) They say “You can’t be what you can’t see,” and the sales floor is no exception.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale Sales Hiring 111

SaaStr

JANUARY 15, 2021

You might also include developers on sales calls from time to time — it makes everyone feel heard. The CEO of Dominoes recruited his Head of Technology personally, telling him that his realm was the most critical thing Dominoes was going to do in the next decade. 3 Assign problems, not tasks. 4 Provide executive enthusiasm.

Sales Recruiting 173

Sales Recruiting Development Software Review Management 173

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 151

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 151

User Pilot

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Start implementing a dogfooding program by recruiting users from across the organization, especially those not involved in the product development. Book the demo to see how you can use it for dogfooding in your SaaS. Recruit employees for the internal beta testing To start with, recruit testers from across the organization.

Software Development 93

Software Development Sales Recruiting Development Software Review 93

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 3, 2023

” Links & Resources Mark Cranney’s LinkedIn: [link] The Hard Thing About Hard Things , a book by Ben Horowitz What You Do Is Who You Are , a book by Ben Horowitz The GTM Podcast Don’t miss The GTM Podcast dropping every Tuesday discussing true stories and experiences including trials and tribulations in the Go-To-Market world.

Sales Recruiting 94

Sales Recruiting Revenue Sales Hiring Acquisition 94

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2020

Each quarter, the bookings plan starts at $0 again. To want a head of sales operations and a director of sales to help carry the load not later … but on Day 1. To not have to manage any customers yourself in customer success, and instead be a strategist. Because SaaS is hard. as you race past $10m+ in ARR.

Sales Hiring 237

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS 237

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 7, 2020

When it comes time to book a speaker for your next panel, presentation, or podcast there’s a lot to consider. Fortunately, more organizers than ever before are consciously seeking out female sales experts for panels, presentations, and podcasts. Sales Development. Sales Growth. Sales Enablement. Enterprise Sales.

VP of Engineering 121

VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 121

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. “The Leads are There, the Problem is the Sales Team.” And you are better off without her.

Part-Time VPE 319

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 319

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. The Founder isn’t willing to be the first salesperson Many of the best founders we work with don’t have a sales background and are either product or engineering focused.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Before you rush in for the sale, you need to assess everything. Tailor your solution and sales material to meet their specific need in the same language they use when they talk about their problems and desired solutions. Remember, not every conversation is a sale. Recruit advocates (actual insiders) early.

Enterprise 141

Enterprise Technical Review Sales Recruiting Scale 141

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 3, 2017

Every startup’s sales commission plan is different. But it’s key to understand the theory and the benchmark data that governs the creation of sales commission plans to create a good one for your business. Sales compensation is communicated in OTE, On Target Earnings. Before we begin, let’s define a few terms.

Sales Recruiting 118

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Data Sales 118

CloseSaaS

MARCH 12, 2015

One of the most useful frameworks for assessing a potential sales hire is something I learned a long time ago from reading a book by Jack Welch, former CEO and chairman of GE.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 52

Sales Hacker

JULY 19, 2022

Celine, who transitioned from agency sales to SaaS, is the Vice President of Boardable. Join us for a great conversation about transitioning in sales and technology selling. Sometimes you have to take one step back to go two steps forward in sales. Sales is all about building internal relationships. powered by Sounder.

Sales Recruiting 82

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales 82

Incredo

APRIL 8, 2020

2 Company: InternX , University Recruiting Platform InternX created a constantly updating list of hiring companies who are still looking for new employees during the coronavirus. They also decided to shift their focus to providing virtual fairs. In response, The Cut launched a gift card donation program for the barbers community.

Sales Recruiting 269

Sales Recruiting Travel SaaS Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hacker

APRIL 19, 2022

In this article, I’ll outline the principles of compensation design , how to build sales compensation plans , and include resources to set OTEs and quotas that keep your reps happy and hungry for more. Why Sales Comp Planning is Key to Rep Retention. Who should be responsible for sales compensation planning?

Compensation 86

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Retention 86

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2019

I actually worked in sales for five and a half years and that’s probably why I have tended to gravitate to B2B marketing. Worked as an AE and then a sales manager. Decided to go to business school, did that for a little bit and then came out in management consulting, a company. So, they’re a B2B piece.

Sales Recruiting 185

Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 185

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2019

The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with Fmr. PatientPop SVP of Sales Justin Welsh. The Playbook to Hiring Your First VP of Sales and Not Screwing it Up… with Cassidy Ventures Founder Brendon Cassidy, the first VP of Sales at LinkedIn, Talkdesk and EchoSign. BOOK A BRAINDATE.

Scale 147

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Sales Hiring 147

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

Company raises money and is now ready to “scale the sales team.” Their current seller has done a great job, so the natural inclination is to assume that we want to replicate that person and sales will continue to grow, right? Fast forward 1 year later: “Oh no, my entire sales team looks the exact same…”. Sound familiar?

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 74

Buffer Resources

JANUARY 18, 2024

  Your options, in order of cost: LinkedIn Premium Career  LinkedIn Premium Business LinkedIn Sales Navigator LinkedIn Recruiter Lite The primary differences between the plans are how far back you can see profile views, people browsing, more advanced search filters, and saved leads.   Yes!

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Systems Review Sales Recruiting AI Search 106

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process. After getting slapped on the wrist a few times for my after-sales support, I knew things had to change. We had presales, and we had post-sales.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98