SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. Way too many folks give managers a pass here that never understand the product. Sales is hard.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 233

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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 253

OPEXEngine

APRIL 12, 2022

The other day a founder asked me about interviewing because a candidate had described me as “a great interviewer,” and she wanted to know why. I find interviewing and recruiting difficult, have made plenty of mistakes over the years, and the consequences of those mistakes are invariably painful. Use work test samples.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

In this post, we’re featuring our Recruiting Manager, Elizabeth Faddis! Priority projects are focused on enhancing the company’s recruiting strategy, processes, and programs to deliver on current and future talent needs. You recently started your Recruiting Manager role at FastSpring, how are you liking it so far?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Management Technical Review 88

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

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive. Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 148

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

That result alone should encourage rethinking of AE interviewing. 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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 343

Sales Hacker

MAY 18, 2021

On today’s episode of Sales Hacker podcast, we have Mike Levy of TitahHouse, a transparent and effective platform, loaded with in-depth career and job intelligence, exclusively designed to connect tech-focused sales professionals with their next great position. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Special Announcement.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Data Sales 87

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Specifically, she champions a metrics-based approach for developing world class recruiting teams. Because of her position, Maia has observed recruiting patterns in hundreds of companies, and has developed best practices for startups. Maia reports these five strategic recruiting metrics to the executive team each quarter.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Data Analysis 111

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2023

The best VPs of Sales I’ve hired were Directors of Sales before. And whatever you see as a flag during the interview process, is almost always 10x bigger once they join full-time. No research before interview. “Informational interviews” may make sense at big tech companies. Not ICs, not top reps.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 269

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 175

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing 298

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. You’ll end up with a crummy sales team under a mis-hire. We’ve posted a script to use when interviewing a VP Sales. And lessons learned on what a VP Sales really does. Job #1 is Recruiting. It all clicks.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Engineering 305

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Recruiters are still reporting it as a challenging time to fill roles, with both employers and candidates being more gun shy than previously. Nailing the interview process: Here’s one way to nail the interview process once the interview is landed: 1. Have the 1st interview. At Demandbase, data wins every time.

Interviewing 87

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 87

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

In the first session of the eye-opening CRO Confidential series, SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin interviews Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond about the current economic climate. However, don’t this doesn’t mean that your sales teams shouldn’t bring in more revenue –– quite the opposite.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 209

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2022

So we’ve talked so much over the years on SaaStr on how to hire a great VP of Sales, the difference they’ll make, and how the level-up comes quickly. And VPs of Sales do, too. Don’t hire a VP of Sales that isn’t truly comfortable selling to your buyer persona, especially in B2D and fintech. Be careful.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 258

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. In my experience both as a salesperson and as a recruiter, it’s primarily been four things: They want the work they’re doing to matter to them. Hiring sales leaders will get harder.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 53

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 241

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Chuck is the co-founder of Blueprint Expansion , a GTM roles recruiting firm that has helped over 50 VC-backed companies make amazing Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success hires. By using the power of AI to identify and engage the accounts and buying groups most likely to purchase.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing SMB 103

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. 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. To stick with founder-led sales longer than most folks do, i.e. past $1.5m-$2m ARR or so.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 291

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 6, 2020

The number one thing I grade candidates on is how well did they run their sales process on me? If you’re a job candidate in sales, you should be managing your job application process just like you’d run your sales process with a potential customer. Again, I’m running this like a sales process.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Consulting 70

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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 259

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

What we used to do, from ‘05-‘19: Do 30 interviews per position, ideally. Then when everything super boomed in 2H’20 and ‘21 it went kind of like this: Do 3-4 solid interview for a position, not 30. Even the very best VPs of Sales I know admitted to lowering the bar a bit on their sales teams, when I quietly pushed them.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 261

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 26, 2019

” Prioritizing women is sales and other business sectors continues to be a challenge for businesses, but recruiting women of color—that’s a greater challenge yet. Key Issues in Hiring Saleswomen of Color: Women in sales is challenging. Having women in sales is important. Women in Sales: It’s Challenging.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Company Culture 55

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 325

User Pilot

AUGUST 21, 2023

In this ultimate list of product manager interview questions, we have tried to simplify the process of hiring great product managers. Product management encompasses the entire SaaS lifecycle from ideation to launch and everything that follows. How would you manage a team that works across time zones and remotely?

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Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Management Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hacker

JUNE 10, 2021

There’s one thing recruiters are unanimous about. It’s that sales representatives are one of the toughest positions to hire for. The demand for sales reps is one of the highest of any job. Our recruitment team at EASI has gotten really good at this. Sales courses are largely absent from college curricula.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 103

OpenView Labs

JULY 20, 2020

Interviewing is hard , and interviewing candidates for sales roles can be doubly so. Sales requires a mix of left- and right-brained qualities, and accurately evaluating a candidate’s skills is a challenge for hiring managers. Why is effective interviewing so important? How not to interview for sales.

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Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 73

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep. Move the bottom 10% out and give the best leads to your top performer, and watch sales go up 20%. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave. You should be striving for zero voluntary attrition on your sales team.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 217

Sales Hacker

JUNE 17, 2020

According to statistics from our sales professional user base here at RepVue , only 46.7% of sales professionals globally are achieving quota. And it’s even fewer in software sales organizations. And that’s not where hiring managers should be spending their time during the candidate evaluation process. Not so fast.

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Sales 80

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

If you think sales is a simple job, I have a few hundred professional connections who would like a word with you. By mastering your sales interview questions. As a longtime recruiting leader, I’ve worked with countless hiring managers looking to fill sales roles , and I’ve had a firsthand look at their interview process.

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 76

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. Do at least 20–30 customer interviews before you start writing too much code. 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. A bit more here.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 300

Sales Hacker

MARCH 30, 2023

If you’re new to sales (or don’t have an economics degree), decoding the sales compensation plan on offer can make your head spin. There are 3 key questions you must ask your hiring manager or recruiter when offered a sales role to maximize your earnings and career potential. Variable OTE. Quota attainment.

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Compensation Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 74

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

I’ve never created LinkedIn content with the “goal” of lead generation or immediate-term sales. Another cool example I really like is Tito Bohrt — he stands out with the pseudo, “ Sales Mad Scientist ” — which demonstrates confidence and a unique identity online.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 127

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

When I first wrote this article, we were in a very different place, with unemployment at an all-time low and sales hiring a top priority. You’ll be able to download the interview scorecard template that I use with my clients. Can you ever be sure you’re hiring the right salesperson? Man oh man, how the world has changed so quickly!

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 93

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 184

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.

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VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93