SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Sales cycles slowed down, but we still closed deals. I can’t quite tell from the data looking back how much sales slow down. And in fact, many customers shrunk their sales teams and their core users of Adobe Sign / EchoSign. Marc Benioff said not hiring more sales reps in 2009 was one of his top mistakes.

Sales Hiring 350

Sales Hiring SaaS Churn Enterprise 350

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2020

Marc Benioff said one of his top mistakes was not hiring enough salespeople in 2009, during the peak of the last downturn. Can sales help more with customer success? If a sales rep has never closed a deal, how will you really know how good he or she is? If you have to cut, start there. Beyond that is harder.

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success Scaling 305

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2023

Even the 2008-2009 downturn, while truly brutal, didn’t hit SaaS as hard as the rest of the economy. Sales is hard again. But overall, this is how hard sales … is supposed to be in SaaS. Those who grew up in the Boom Times honestly just order-taking in sales. SaaS markets had fully recovered later that year.

SaaS 308

SaaS Churn Sales Software 308

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2023

Wildly Profitable — And Profitable Since 2013. The Trade Desk was founded in 2009 and began to take off in 2012. Self-Serve Means Relatively Low Sales & Marketing Expense — But Not Zero. The Trade Desk spends about 19% of its revenues on Sales & Marketing, which is one way it’s been profitable for so long.

Scale 311

Scale Advertising Scaling Revenue 311

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Folks still continued to search for us in increasing volume, even in the darkest days: No one had enough sales reps once the market came back even a little. We still doubled sales in 2009. Don’t worry about customer success hires and scaled sales reps. That sort of sums it all up. Capital will dry up.

SaaS Payments 280

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale SMB 280

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

After switching to SaaS, she started as an SMB sales leader with no prior management or SMB sales experience. While working at LinkedIn back in 2009, she was offered the role of building out the first SDR and BDR organization. She wanted to jump into a full cycle capacity as a sales leader, but she said yes.

Scale 293

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 293

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 18, 2019

PagerDuty was founded in 2009 by 3 former Amazon engineers who were often on-call. Next, let’s compare the sales efficiency. Sales efficiency is a measure of the marginal gross profit generated by a dollar invested in sales and marketing. In the 10 years since that day, PagerDuty has built an exceptional business.

Metrics 222

Metrics Benchmarks Software Review Engineering 222

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2021

They bring together their respective strengths to drive remarkable product-led growth for PagerDuty, the incident response SaaS that’s been invaluable to tech teams since 2009. Julie finds ways to amplify the happy customer voices and to harness them to brilliantly drive more sales. Instrumenting the product for self-service.

Product Marketing 269

Product Marketing Marketing B2C Metrics 269

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Talk to any experienced SaaS sales leader in a competitive space. 2009: Fully localized platform. Boy we won a lot of deals here with our “Global Edition” Web sales went global and everyone wanted a product where the e-signature app worked in the native languages of signers and senders. She’ll agree.

Scale 246

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 246

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2024

Software businesses, for the most part, require heads to grow a business through sales reps or customer support. Bravado network is like LinkedIn for sales reps, where you can survey different sales professionals on their work. In 2009, that spiked to 35%. Not having those people in place also leads to profitability.

Venture Capital 293

Venture Capital Management Scale AI 293

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2019

Talk to any experienced SaaS sales leader in a competitive space. 2009: Fully localized platform. Boy we won a lot of deals here with our “Global Edition” Web sales went global and everyone wanted a product where the e-signature app worked in the native languages of signers and senders. She’ll agree.

Scale 217

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 217

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2019

He moved the company to San Francisco in 2009. PagerDuty was founded in 2009 and recently began trading on the NYSE under ticker symbol $PD this April, seeing a whopping 50% pop in the stock right at open. His sales focused, actionable content made an impact on the audience. Henrique Dubugras Brex Founder/CEO.

Sales Recruiting 171

Sales Recruiting Software Review Technical Review PayPal 171

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. Then, the sales team went to work. When making a sales hire, Max pays attention to the way candidates approach getting the job.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Leveraging survey data from 66+ enterprise SaaS companies, Matt Garratt, Managing Partner of Salesforce Ventures shares the landscape of how businesses are shifting their sales & GTM strategies to react to today’s uncertain times. Adnan Chaudhry | SVP of Sales @ Salesforce. There was not a lot of outbound sales or marketing.

Sales Hiring 202

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 202

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 5, 2023

What You Will Learn: May’s perspective on the economy now compared to that of 2008/2009. Highlights: (6:12) May’s learnings from Lehman Brothers and the economic crisis of 2008/2009. (14:11) 31:07) A consultative sales process and messaging considerations. (36:56) 36:56) May’s strategy for recruiting A players. (42:55)

Sales Recruiting 121

Sales Recruiting Enterprise Banking AI 121

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

In 2009, the Corporate Executive Board, a consultancy providing expertise to some of the world’s largest companies, studied the distinguishing characteristics of great sales people and well-run sales processes. They surveyed more than 6,000 sales reps across 90+ businesses. Challengers pitch customers in five steps.

Sales 100

Sales Startup Consulting SaaS 100

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

Grammarly was founded in 2009 and is a successful consumer product revolving around a virtual writing assistant that individuals and students use to write better content in their professional, educational, and personal lives. The admin, influential decision-makers, and consumer sales reps can be the same people in a Consumer or SMB setting.

Scale 246

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 246

The Angel VC

JULY 17, 2015

So maybe in 1999 and the early 2000s the world wasn't ready for consumerization yet, or Salesforce.com didn't figure out the right approach or they just saw more success with a top-down enterprise sales approach. The Beginnings of Modern (SaaS) Times Not much happened on the SaaS design front in the following years.

SaaS 188

SaaS Software Review B2B Trends 188

Tom Tunguz

MAY 13, 2015

in sales and marketing efforts in the years before generating more than $200 million in revenue. At the time of its IPO, the company was only investing about 75% of its revenue and sales and marketing. Ariba enjoyed terrific sales efficiency through its first three years. Ariba attained profitability in 2009 for the first time.

Outsourced Development 113

Outsourced Development Software Review Technical Review compliance 113

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

In two one-hour interviews, FastSpring sales leaders Todd Stellfox and Tony Markov each interviewed Kurt about pricing strategies that work in volatile markets and beyond. Note: From global payment processing to global VAT and sales tax management, FastSpring is the easiest way to sell around the world.

Pricing 146

Pricing Payment Solutions Payment Services Scale 146

Sales Hacker

MARCH 29, 2019

Transitioning From Baseball to a Sales Career. With Colorado Springs and my professional baseball career in my rear view mirror, I headed to my new life in software sales. I have now spent an equal seven years in SaaS sales in just as many positions. Now, I catch myself before I say the same thing in sales.

Sales Hiring 102

Sales Hiring Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Sales 102

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2023

It’s 2009, and the Obama Inauguration is happening in town. If you’ve done sales, the common technique is to look at call recordings to see how much time the customer was talking vs. sales. They collect the payment online and take a 15% fee for every booking. That’s it. A lot of the magic comes in the specific example.

Payment Methods 268

Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 268

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 12, 2014

In 2009 and 2010, the company recognized more revenue from services than subscription. Despite that huge revenue growth, WorkDay has the median amount on Sales and Marketing as a percentage of revenue. Just how significant is the professional services component to WorkDay’s business?

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks Deferred Revenue Venture Capital Outsourced Development 113

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

One of those was 2008/2009 when 5 funds were started. It supports them with their go-to market strategy, marketing, sales, customer success, and business development. Founded: 2009. Another was 2011/2012 where not only were another 5 VC firms started but it’s also when international ones set their eyes on this vast market.

Venture Capital 155

Venture Capital SaaS Healthcare Finance 155

InsightSquared

MAY 22, 2019

This article has some key takeaways on the pre-requisites for success from a sales org profile standpoint. My time at Electronic Data Systems (EDS – HP Enterprise) exposed me to the most extreme end of enterprise sales resourcing. The standard sales rep merely sells them software to reduce costs by 10%.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring Enterprise Engineering Outsourcing Services 94

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 2, 2015

LTV/CAC is often used to justify marketing and sales investment to acquire customers. LTV/CAC is a powerful diagnostic tool for the performance of almost every team within the company: product, engineering, sales and marketing. In the 2009-2011 period, churn mitigation improved the LTV/CAC. But there’s much more to it.

Startup 113

Startup SaaS Churn Engineering 113

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

While the median SaaS company spends between 50-100% of their annual revenue on sales and marketing, Atlassian has spent between 12 and 21% of their revenue on customer acquisition in the last three years. They also imply a sales efficiency, normally in the 0.8-1.2 It’s a case study in sales efficiency. range of 2.5

Benchmarks 124

Benchmarks Metrics Venture Capital SaaS 124

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 8, 2015

The business was founded in 2004, but hit its stride 2009 and went public in 2012. sales efficiency for every year on record but 2014. amazingly, the company was able to achieve an estimated sales efficiency of 1.8 ServiceNow grew from$19M in revenue to $178M in 4 years, sustaining a 75% CAGR during that period.

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks Metrics SaaS Investment 113

SaaStock

MARCH 1, 2019

DST Global is a global investor in growth internet businesses, founded in 2009 by Yuri Milner. Founded: 2009. Capstone Partners typically exits investments through a trade sale. It’s one of the leading financiers of top notch companies like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and many more. Size of fund: $1.7B. Stage: Late Stage.

SaaS Payments 190

SaaS Payments Venture Capital Payment Services Telecommunications 190

Sales Hacker

JUNE 13, 2025

In 2005–2009, the 99th percentile venture exit was around $1.4B. If you’re looking to scale your sales and marketing teams with top talent, we couldn’t recommend our partner Pursuit more. Exits are compounding faster Liquidity is great, but what about upside? The data shows that venture outcomes are getting significantly bigger.

AI Search 87

AI Search Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale 87

Tom Tunguz

JULY 29, 2015

Netsuite’s revenue per customer averaged $19k in 2008, and $23k in 2009, the last years for which the company provided customer counts. Netsuite’s sales efficiency is below the SaaS median of 0.6 The company manages sales and marketing spend as a percentage of revenue to about 50%, which is in line with the median.

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks Outsourced Development Metrics Scale 113

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

“I was working for Salesforce in 2009 when I decided to start Okta, an identity management company that connects people with any application on any device. Prior to this, he was VP of WW Sales with EMC (Dell)m Data Domain as well as an EIR with NEA. Before Procore, he held several sales and management roles with Cloudera.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Identity management Cloud Innovation 121

Sales Hacker

APRIL 26, 2019

when interviewing for a sales position? You answered the sales interview questions in a way that made you look like a winner. In this article, we’re going to review the 27 most common sales interview questions, PLUS the types of answers your interviewer is looking for, so you can raise the bar on your interviewing skills.

Sales Recruiting 22

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 22

The Angel VC

JANUARY 15, 2015

The point that I made was that most of the tactics which smart SaaS entrepreneurs developed around 2007-2009 – inbound marketing, conversion optimization, lifecycle marketing, etc. – As I've written before , when Mikkel told me how Zendesk was doing sales and marketing in 2008, I was intrigued but also slightly confused.

Growth Hacking 113

Growth Hacking Scale SaaS Content Marketing 113

Hitenism

DECEMBER 26, 2016

Looking in hindsight over the past decade, it’s now unimaginable to think about how easy it used to be for a SaaS business to grow fast by just executing really well in sales or marketing. There are now thousands of tools (most of them are SaaS products) to help with marketing and countless tools for sales too.

Scale 152

Scale SaaS Marketplace as a Service SMB 152

Neil Patel

APRIL 23, 2021

Some people think it’s just social media monitoring, while others believe it has something to do with public relations, and still others have no idea the impact it can have on sales. The other is what I define as “online reputation bombs,” which affect your reputation and sales long term and can severely damage a business.

Management 145

Management Social Media Sales Hiring Branding 145

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

I have, since 2009, hired 20+ outsourced resources from all over the world for tasks such as data research, web design, translations, voiceover talent and more. No wonder you never want to eat out again… The Sales Development outsourcing industry is broken for that exact reason. RELATED: B2B Sales Outsourcing Is Dicey.

Outsourcing Services 91

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Outsourcing Underperforming Technical Team 91