SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Who should you hire, with limited budget? A VP of Sales? A truly great hire is >always< accretive. Hire anyone truly great you can find. And he was proud he’d just hired a VP of Sales at a below-market rate. You don’t want to save money on a great hire. In Just 2 Sales Cycles.

Sales Hiring 291

Sales Hiring Headcount Engineering Banking 291

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. You’ll make a good hire. So hire your first as soon as you can. >>

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 245

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

If you want to hit the plan for Q1'22, You need to be hiring all the sales reps you'll need then … Now. To make the hires you need now, for next year. But you have to hire them NOW, not in January. With precise headcount and budget needs. How many Customer Success Managers. How many reps.

Sales Hiring 262

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Acquisition 262

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

and Lenny asked us to join his podcast to talk about building a sales team — from the perspective of a product-first founder or exec. It was a pretty strong conversation and we took a lot of our learnings over the years and focused on how to learn to do sales right if you come from a product-first background: It’s good.

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Headcount 236

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

This requires effort from your entire organization, and Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso outlines some changes that you can make to your brand, and your application, interview, and offer process that will help find the talent you are trying to attract and hire. Below is the transcript of Jessica’s session. Hi everyone.

Sales Hiring 211

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 211

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2024

Growing Headcount and Expenses, Just More Slowly Than Revenue The story for most SaaS and Cloud leaders. They are still hiring and growing expense in all areas, from Sales and Marketing to Product to G&A. Sales & Marketing expense is up 9.8% — but that’s on 22% revenue growth.

Scale 192

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring AI 192

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. You’ll make a good hire. So hire your first as soon as you can. >>

Sales Hiring 189

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 189

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 242

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 242

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. Sales doesn't. 2x the sales headcount you thought you did to hit the full plan for this year, and Q1 of next year. And finally, it dawns on your there is no leverage in sales. Or you’ll get behind.

Scale 332

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 332

Sales Hacker

MAY 15, 2023

It’s hard to know when you’re ready to hire a sales team — and the consequences can make or break your startup. And that may include owning and executing the sales process , from initial outreach and lead generation to closing deals — not hiring a sales team right away.

Sales Hiring 87

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services Payment Services 87

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. Reason #1 is jumping to Stretch VP of Sales one stage too early. Not hiring people better than you. Do not do this.

Sales Hiring 344

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 344

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 15, 2021

There’s a simple secret to hiring quickly and building a strong team. Invest in great managers early. Post-PMF, the organization must evolve: it has to grow headcount and then manage that headcount well. How many hiring managers are in each of the two hierarchies from above? On the right, three.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 363

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

They focused on building a payment platform that empowers international talent and independent contractors to get paid on time in a compliant way while also ensuring that companies can hire international talent and make payments efficiently. From paid ads to account executive productivity, inform any decision you can with data.

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 218

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, joined Matt Plank, VP of Sales at Rippling, to unlock the secrets to exponential revenue growth. Instead, they focused on how it’s the one that takes away busy work beyond payroll by helping with new hires’ IT requirements, saving founders significant time. Scaling your go-to-market efforts.

Outsourcing Services 204

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 204

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth? It wasn’t until 12 years in that they hired their first commission rep. Now they have sales reps, but still consider themselves PLG.

Sales Hiring 211

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 211

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2021

And you have to hire ahead (of course). Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. Your VPs and Directors of Sales and sales ops leaders are cost centers here. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals. 2 Managers. = 2 Managers. =

Scale 294

Scale Sales Hiring Headcount Sales 294

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 234

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 234

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. That may actually be high, especially if you are scaling quickly and make a few hiring errors. Because that’s more than now.

Scale 238

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 238

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2019

I still see most startups way behind on their 2020 planning, and most importantly, hiring, at this point in the year. With precise headcount and budget needs. Second, you have to try to hire as many of the sales reps you’ll need for the end of Q1 … by mid-Q4. How many reps. How many SDRs. More on that here. This is key.

Sales Hiring 178

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Revenue 178

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Companies were growing their sales organizations and bringing in more revenue. The biggest obstacle to hiring was that there simply weren’t too many great candidates on the job market. Companies everywhere have frozen their hiring and laid off workers — with sales reps often among the first to go.

Sales Hiring 95

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 95

Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2021

In 2020 I was building my sales team at Livestorm , and at the time we were going through a big hiring boom. For the first time in my life, I was in charge of vetting and hiring new team members at scale. This was a big challenge for me because I am very passionate about hiring without bias. First impressions still count.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 93

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Some of the changes we’ve seen in the last year or two include: CAC reduction Headcount optimization Price complexity Quality of revenue A different environment means a different strategy, and Notion Capital lays out four business model changes that could be helpful based on what peers are doing. You don’t want to be there.

Business Model 234

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 234

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Three overarching learnings from incredible sales leaders who have lived through the ups and downs of growing sales teams at some of the fastest growing SaaS companies is exactly what we’ll dive into today – so you can get the learnings and insight without being in the driver’s seat. This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Flex.

Sales Hiring 106

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 106

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2023

Monday has held the line on hiring and costs, but kept up strong growth — the combination of which “flipped the switch” into a radically more efficient model. At least in the short term, it is turning most of us can do more with about the same headcount in SaaS. #4. Headcount Growing, But Slowly.

Headcount 274

Headcount Sales Hiring Scale Cloud 274

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2024

Sales Qualification You’re entered into a flow when you sign up and enter an email on Runway’s website to join their waiting list. Then, they draft a customized email for that person and put the draft inside the draft folder of a sales rep. Everything below “Runway Sales Copilot” is written by AI. Automate before hiring.

AI 187

AI Engineering Sales Hiring ChatGPT 187

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Same Sales Commissions for Upsells as Net New Deals Always interesting to see what folks do here. #8. Adding Back Sales Capacity Now. I.e., Hiring More Reps. Salesforce also just announced its accelerating hiring again. Keeping headcount flat got everyone to be more efficient.

Sales Hiring 224

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Engineering 224

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2022

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. That may actually be high, especially if you are scaling quickly and make a few hiring errors. 2 Managers. 2 Managers.

Scale 201

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 201

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

We all become new customer-oriented, so we say we’re focused on the existing base, but once the sales team becomes 30-40% of headcount, it tends to dominate every conversation. All public companies did hiring freezes last year, which is a hidden layoff. They tap back into sales for upsells and cross-sells.

Customer Success 221

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale AI 221

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 225

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 225

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2021

A few of the best: “Hire more relationship managers. Pay sales reps on renewals (enough to keep them from overselling year 1). Pay sales reps on renewals (enough to keep them from overselling year 1). Hire 9s & 10s ONLY. You can’t cut corners in headcount in success with automation.

Churn 309

Churn Sales Hiring Headcount Technical Review 309

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

From its bootstrapped founding in 2002 all the way to a $5 billion valuation in 2016, Atlassian famously had no sales people. ‘No No sales’ became nearly as synonymous with Atlassian as ‘no software’ was with Salesforce. Atlassian now has a sales team. Public PLG Businesses Are Doubling Down on Sales.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2020

Like most things in life, hiring sales talent is a matter of timing. Especially since the best candidates with strong sales skills are usually snatched up within 10 days. That’s why it’s critical to overcome indecision and move quickly when recruiting sales talent. Is it unrealistic sales quotas?

Sales Hiring 76

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation Underperforming Technical Team 76

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 167

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 167

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 31, 2023

We should expect the advances in AI to improve sales efficiency, even if modestly. AI Efficiency Gains +2% Headcount Reduction ? But the dominant strategy has been to hire more reps while maintaining quotas rather than increasing quotas meaningfully - perhaps an artifact of the easy money era.

Headcount 180

Headcount Sales Hiring AI Cloud 180

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2023

A nice sweet spot for a mix of inside and outside sales. #3. Slowing headcount growth — like lots of others. Okta headcount grew 32% year-over-year, fairly consistent with revenue growth, but then Okta like others slowed down hiring. And that’s up from 118% at IPO. #2. It only grew 4.5% Wow what a story!

Scale 270

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring SMB 270

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2021

In the run-up to the 2021 SaaStr Annual , SaaStr’s very own Poya Osgouei sits down with Bryan Elsesser, VP of Sales at SaaStr. Bryan shares tips and his perspective on what’s been effective and useful during his first few months as the VP of Sales at SaaStr. “I should have hired faster.

Sales Hiring 235

Sales Hiring Headcount Sales Branding 235

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

Everyone is basically doing more with not much more headcount (see next point). #4. Growing Headcount, But Much More Slowly That Revenue. Headcount is up 29% year-over-year, but revenue is up 50%. Also you can see sales & marketing headcount is basically flat, while hiring is almost all in engineering / R&D.

Headcount 193

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 193