SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2020

These days, it can really feel like the Old Bag of Sales Tricks is starting to just not work anymore: With maybe 500x the SaaS vendors of 10 years ago, there’s so much noise. Are there categories where outbound sales just doesn’t work? The old sales playbooks of 2009 and even 2019 may not work as well in 2021.

Sales Hiring 355

Sales Hiring Outbound Sales Team AWS Engineering 355

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2020

A Good Day: Hiring My Real VP of Sales. A Good Day: Dec 31, 2009; Dec 31, 2010; Dec 31, 2011; Dec 31, 2012. A Bad Day: The Day My Mentee Quit on Me to Go Off and Do Better in 2009. But since It Was Clearly Hopeless (see point #2), I was pretty deeply bummed to have this option pulled out from under me. And again in 2018.

Sales Hiring 354

Sales Hiring SaaS Revenue Churn 354

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 238

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success Scaling 238

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 264

Product Marketing Marketing B2C Strategy 264

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 272

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale SMB 272

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 195

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 195

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 29, 2019

Founded as a gaming company called Tiny Speck in 2009, the company’s initial product, Glitch, didn’t catch on as expected. Slack’s sales efficiency exceeds 111%, which is sensational. One dollar of sales and marketing spend today generates $1.11 Zoom’s sales efficiency is at 180%.

Benchmarks 279

Benchmarks Metrics Scale Revenue 279

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

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 168

Sales Recruiting Software Review Technical Review PayPal 168

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 110

Pricing Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments 110

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 SaaS Consulting 100

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

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 83

Sales Hiring Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Sales 83

OPEXEngine

MAY 10, 2022

We have been asked quite a bit lately how companies navigated the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and what companies can do today to protect against a downturn. They maintained spending on Sales and Marketing, and investing in R&D. may mean there is room for growth opportunities thru increased investment in Sales and Marketing.

Technical Review 59

Technical Review Systems Review Benchmarks Investment 59

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 174

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 174

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 210

Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 210

Sales Hacker

MAY 16, 2019

In 2009, I was desperate… I had just spent six miserable months trying to become a financial advisor after my dream career of being a spy for the DoD didn’t pan out. Nothing really stood out until I stumbled across a “Director of Sales and Client Relations” role with a company called Jammony. Director of Sales and love what I do.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 93

Stax

APRIL 18, 2024

Mobile credit card processing first came on the scene when Square released its original mobile credit card reader in 2009 and by the early 2010s, it had become a common method of accepting payments for small businesses. Losing a sale because of your cash-only policy is simply unacceptable in this day and age.

Payment Services 88

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 88

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 194

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 194

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 114

Outsourced Development Software Review Technical Review compliance 114

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

In this episode, David Skok , General Partner @ Matrix Partners , uncovers the crucial step missing when it comes to finding product-market fit for B2B companies, how to set-up your sales team for success early on, and what metrics really matter when it comes to a payback period. Finding the right VP of Sales can be an especially hard task.

Scale 233

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling B2B 233

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 107

Sales Hiring Identity management Cloud Innovation 107

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 28, 2020

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Ellie Tamari , the VP of North American Sales at Namogoo. Today we are incredibly excited to have a recent friend, member of the Boston chapter of the Revenue Collective, and female sales leader that came to the role somewhat later in life — Ellie Tamari. What You’ll Learn.

Sales Hiring 67

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Management 67

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 75

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Outsourcing Underperforming Technical Team 75

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 114

Benchmarks Deferred Revenue Venture Capital Outsourced Development 114

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

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 114

Startup SaaS Churn Engineering 114

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

It was 10 years in, 2010, 2009-ish when we launched our freemium plan, everything took off. Jason Lemkin: So, that’s interesting so before you went freemium, which was like 2009-ish, is that right? It was 2009, we were still reeling from the recession and people needed it badly. Ben Chestnut: It had to be freemium.

Scale 158

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Branding 158

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 114

Benchmarks Metrics SaaS Investment 114

A Smart Bear

JANUARY 4, 2018

The next sale isn’t quite as sweet.). The Silicon Valley-oriented technology press outlets don’t cover us because we’re not in San Francisco, even though we’re more successful than most of the startups they cover. I’ve always said nothing beats the high of getting that first customer to sign up.

Engineering 70

Engineering Investment Revenue Technical Review 70

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 2, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Mary Rogul , a VP Sales Consultant, who’s currently an Enterprise Sales Advisor at Crayon. Fresh out of college, Mary started out in accounting, but it didn’t take long before she began a 20-year sales career that led her through Monster.com, HubSpot, and several others.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 52

OPEXEngine

MAY 19, 2020

They cut R&D across the board, scaled back on sales and marketing activities, laid off valuable talent and ruled out acquisitions. They pointed sales teams to top priorities among accounts and prospects, as determined by the account’s all-in profitability and potential lifetime value.

Scale 59

Scale Strategy Technical Review Acquisition 59

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

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 10, 2018

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast , we talk to Brent Adamson , who co-authored the foundational sales book, The Challenger Sale, and who has recently released The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results. . What is the Challenger Sale and who are Challenger Sellers?

Scale 55

Scale Sales Mobile Enterprise 55

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 26, 2020

SEO, PPC, even some social media sites can drive online sales for your luxury brand. Despite what you might think, online sales of personal luxury goods are growing, too. McKinsey estimates 8% of all luxury sales are made online or around €20 billion. That’s a five-fold increase from 2009. Next, define your goals.

Strategy 145

Strategy Marketing Social Media Underperforming Technical Team 145

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